Weddings - What do people typically deliver?

A

ASchear

Well-known member
I've been shooting weddings freelance in my spare time for about a year now. I recently graduated from college and am looking to continue doing weddings, but do everything legitimately; register my business, pay taxes, legal music, etc.

I've e-mailed a few great wedding cinematographers that I know of, but for the most part have only gotten terse, cocky responses, if anything at all. I began last summer without really any idea what I'd be giving to my client in the end, only that I would go and film at the wedding and then figure it out later in the editing room. When editing time came, I eventually delivered a DVD with 7 chapters, including all the full wedding events like the ceremony, first dances, etc, as well as 2 highlights chapters with songs that the bride and groom chose. I've continued doing this for about 10 weddings now.

I've began to notice that what I do might not be typical, and rather than delivering everything in full and then pulling what I can out for the highlights chapters, some cinematographers focus solely on making a "short film" where it's not necessarily important to capture and document every single second, but to be able to capture mostly everything in an artistic way for use in this "short film."

Can someone with experience go into more detail about what this "short film" actually is and how it differs from my 3 or 4 minute highlight segments? Anything available online for me to check out? I'm just trying to establish more of an identity with what I plan to do before going ahead to book more work.

Thanks!!!!
 
My understanding is that most of the short format deliverables are meant as a highlights piece separate from the actual documentation, but it depends on who you hire. I usually provide a forty or so minute long primary piece in addition to the smaller highlights piece, unless I've taken the smaller edit off the table (among other things) to accommodate a lower price to the customer and quicker turnaround... which is usually. Your style depends on you. I find that clients are rarely satisfied with the amount of footage included and want you to be as thorough as is reasonable.
 
A genre of "short film cinema-documentary" was pioneered by Pat Moreau of StillMotion, check them out on Vimeo. The best one I've seen is their film on "J.C. & Esther". It was amazingly shot by one cinematographer (Pat, he's a living legend!) and really captures the emotional story behind the bride and groom. You really feel what they felt during the wedding. Truly epic.

A philosophy I'm learning through studying Pat's work is "Interrpretive Videography/Cinematography". It means as videographers, we allow our free agency to guide us in HOW we capture the live events that surround us.

It also means, allowing things to happen naturally, thus our challenge is to be present in the moment without altering what is going on (in the case of a wedding for example). It means allowing our curiosity to drive us forward each and every step of the way to FIND and to help FORM the narrative.

For instance, you see the Best Man and the Groom talking. The first question you should ask your self is "What are they saying?". And the second question should be "How does and would it add to the overall story?". Then as a curious videographer you go listen in and find out, and at the same time you capture the imagery and audio that comes from that "scene". And as you are recording that conversation, you mentally connect what they are saying to the overall "picture" and to what you've recorded already. Hence, this is "Live Event Storytelling".

The challenge is to always be present in the moment and to always be mentally connecting everything together into a unifying story. Of course there are some material that you can reject, but for the most part you want a story of some sort to form.

One thing StillMotion does very well is they get to know the Bride and Groom before the wedding. Thus, they gather as much pre-knowledge as possible to aide in their live filmaking. For instance, knowing the social dynamic between each individual (i.e. between the Bride and her Bride's maids) will help you to value each shot better.
 
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As ectobuilder said, definitely look at Stillmotion for top-end wedding videos. You can learn a lot through their blog.

Lee Morris, from fstoppers, created a cool wedding video that effectively bridges the gap between photo slide show and short film. It's not perfect but is an interesting take, for sure.

I'm not in the wedding video business so I can't speak to your specific questions. However, from a broader business perspective, I think it's great that you are exploring the market because that will help you understand competitor offerings and give you insight into customer expectations. At the same time, don't be contained by what everyone else is doing. If your customers are happy with what you are doing, keep doing it and think about how to capitalize on all that footage you're capturing, either literally or figuratively. As an example, I haven't seen anybody create a "wedding from every angle" video yet. The mother's view/story. The father-in-laws view/story. The groom's story. Etc. Maybe there's a reason why it's not being done, IDK.

I like what the guys at 37signals say, and I'm paraphrasing; don't pay so much attention to your competition that you begin to look just like them.
 
Thanks guys for the replies.

I've gotten a few responses from a couple of videographers, but only when I pretended to be a potential client over e-mail. One videographer managed to figure me out (I assume by Googling my name, I used the real one in my e-mail) and was pretty upset that I would do such a thing, in an almost defensive way. I was a little taken aback by this, but I suppose it is not surprising. People do whatever it takes to have an edge in South Florida I guess. I just know I'll never let my ego get in the way if I'm ever as successful as any of those people.

Just to report back on my findings, I did find that a common trend seems to be not doing what I am, but rather crafting a trailer, short film, or highlights; much of the time a combination of two of those. I used what information I could gather to form my own new ideas about what I feel a wedding video should be. Previously, I'd been delivering everything major at the wedding (ceremony, grand entrance, first dance, etc) in full, but found it to be a little frustrating at times, seeing other cinematographers get beautiful, emotionally motivated shots while I stayed with safe, objective shots that simply documented what happened. This frustration led me to investigate in the first place. If people were getting these beautiful shots, how could they deliver the product I was delivering? There would be no margin for error.

My research proved correct when I found it to be uncommon in high end cinematography that we all envy that anyone ever deliver anything in full. Instead, they deliver one centerpiece, the short film, ranging from 10 on up to 25 minutes, and usually one accompanying piece, the highlights or the trailer. I saw a couple of these short films (though the highlights and trailers are 99% more common online) and really enjoyed them. I felt that I could sit and watch it, whereas I would dread watching what I was delivering. So, giving it some thought on how I could make it my own, I decided to create an all new package that I'd never heard of. It includes all three pieces I listed above, and, while they may be separate, on the final DVD they will all flow together like one piece. My goal, to make the bride and groom itch to see more with the beginning (the trailer), make them want to relive their wedding again and again (the short film), and put a smile on their faces (and maybe a tear in their eyes) with the highlights at the very end. I'm offering the package at a pretty steep discount for now, since I have nothing like this to show for myself, so I'm hoping someone will take the risk! I know the reward would be great.

I'm glad to have a new direction to take my wedding films in. I will finally feel happy with what I'm creating.
 
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sorry to resurrect an older thread, but this is so close to a question i was going to post myself. I have been working as a wedding videographer for the last 12 months, (previously working as a photographer.) Im really happy with how my bookings are going and the product im delivering but i do wonder if i offer "too much" compared to my peers. I deliver full recordings of the ceremony, speeches and the first dance along with a 15-20 minute "trailer" that summarises the day and shows the parts of the day they may have missed as well as the key higlights. (I hire an assistant to help me gather the b-roll).

Thing is delivering all these elements sees me sitting in the editing suite ( lol, my cramped office) for many many many hours. Especially when patching together a multicamera ceremony to an external audio source.

I feel that the "trailer" is really the only bit that people will watch more than once since the ceremonies are quite long drawn out affairs ( usally 45 mins - 1 hour) which means people will lose interest, no matter how many camera angles i provide.

I would love to know how you have gotten on with your new package system ASchear, as im trying to work out how i can streamline my deliverable content.
 
Couple of quick thoughts.

-- Head on over to the wedding and events section at dvinfo.net. People there are pretty friendly and open, and I haven't yet found a better wedding videographer forum (if you do, would love to hear about it).

-- To provide full coverage as well as shoot in a more cinematic style: you probably need at least two shooters. Maybe one person armed with an Ex1 or HVX for the documentary, and another person running around with a DSLR all day for the highlights. Or two people shooting both documentary and highlights style...

-- There's no right package... There really isn't. Plusses and minuses to everything. Some cultures expect extended documentary coverage. We're talking 6-8 hour DVD sets (eg Serbian, Macedonian people living in southern Sydney). They don't care if it has a CCTV-footage look, they don't care if they'll never watch it, what they want is the moments captured. Other clients really want the raw footage for similar reasons, even if you're not shooting documentary style and the raw footage is full of dodge.

I do work for five different wedding companies around Sydney, and occasionally for myself. Most of these companies provide highlights (usually 5 minutes or 15 minutes; sometimes both) + full coverage of formal parts of the wedding (ceremony, speeches, rituals, plus entertainment, like when you have a bellydancer or magician). Editing the formal parts needn't be that taxing, depending on how particular you are and how bad the footage is, if all the cameras are lined up properly -- sync them up with Plural Eyes, then use multicam mode in your favourite NLE to switch between tracks.
 
Paper_bag said:
Couple of quick thoughts.

-- Head on over to the wedding and events section at dvinfo.net. People there are pretty friendly and open, and I haven't yet found a better wedding videographer forum (if you do, would love to hear about it).

-- To provide full coverage as well as shoot in a more cinematic style: you probably need at least two shooters. Maybe one person armed with an Ex1 or HVX for the documentary, and another person running around with a DSLR all day for the highlights. Or two people shooting both documentary and highlights style...

-- There's no right package... There really isn't. Plusses and minuses to everything. Some cultures expect extended documentary coverage. We're talking 6-8 hour DVD sets (eg Serbian, Macedonian people living in southern Sydney). They don't care if it has a CCTV-footage look, they don't care if they'll never watch it, what they want is the moments captured. Other clients really want the raw footage for similar reasons, even if you're not shooting documentary style and the raw footage is full of dodge.

I do work for five different wedding companies around Sydney, and occasionally for myself. Most of these companies provide highlights (usually 5 minutes or 15 minutes; sometimes both) + full coverage of formal parts of the wedding (ceremony, speeches, rituals, plus entertainment, like when you have a bellydancer or magician). Editing the formal parts needn't be that taxing, depending on how particular you are and how bad the footage is, if all the cameras are lined up properly -- sync them up with Plural Eyes, then use multicam mode in your favourite NLE to switch between tracks.
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Thanks for the quick response/advice. I will check that forum out :)

I have never been able to get pluraleyes to work. It always seems to stack everything together or only match a couple of bits of footage to the master audio track, even if every camera has good audio. I even clapperboard ( well i clap in the middle of teh church lol) to sync the first files. I end up manually going through it all finding sharp letters in sentences and manually syncing the audio that way.

Seems like teh package i offer is very similar to what you describe. perhaps its as simple as me getting better/faster in my NLE use.
 
ASchear said:
I've been shooting weddings freelance in my spare time for about a year now. I recently graduated from college and am looking to continue doing weddings, but do everything legitimately; register my business, pay taxes, legal music, etc.

I've e-mailed a few great wedding cinematographers that I know of, but for the most part have only gotten terse, cocky responses, if anything at all. I began last summer without really any idea what I'd be giving to my client in the end, only that I would go and film at the wedding and then figure it out later in the editing room. When editing time came, I eventually delivered a DVD with 7 chapters, including all the full wedding events like the ceremony, first dances, etc, as well as 2 highlights chapters with songs that the bride and groom chose. I've continued doing this for about 10 weddings now.

I've began to notice that what I do might not be typical, and rather than delivering everything in full and then pulling what I can out for the highlights chapters, some cinematographers focus solely on making a "short film" where it's not necessarily important to capture and document every single second, but to be able to capture mostly everything in an artistic way for use in this "short film."

Can someone with experience go into more detail about what this "short film" actually is and how it differs from my 3 or 4 minute highlight segments? Anything available online for me to check out? I'm just trying to establish more of an identity with what I plan to do before going ahead to book more work.

Thanks!!!!
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I'm a little late to this thread, so I apologize for that. What I typically do with the companies that I partner in and the one that I own is deliver a highlight film which can be 3-5 minutes or 6-8 minutes, along with a documentary edit, which is the realtime playback of the main events of the day.

Short films, for weddings are essentially a highlights reel. There are some companies, like Pacific Pictures that do legitimate films where they shoot for the edit of the film during the morning preps and most of their b-roll, but a lot of people just shoot as much stuff as they can in an interesting way and piece it together later; usually once the client has given them their song choices, etc.

Here are a couple of links to films that my companies have produced. One is a 3-5 minute highlight film and the other is a 6-8 minute (actually just over 8 minute) short film.

Marla + Drew - http://vimeo.com/43761863
Shaina + Andrew - http://vimeo.com/47474331

Hopefully that helps you!
 
Just like still photographers, the less you deliver the more you charge. That's what it seems like anyway. There are always lots of people at the low end, that will do hours of multi-camera coverage, with minimal artistic editing, and just deliver the lot. And of course there are lots of clients, that want that. For the few that I've done, I found it very easy to assemble like that without much thought.

The 'creative' short films I would imagine, take a lot of effort, not to mention talent to get the right shots. You also need to be able to sell the client on the fact that less is more and that a good short film is worth more than hours of coverage. You'll also not get the premium short form jobs without proving you can do it. If you want to move toward that style you may need to deliver some free bonuses in the long form loop, for your reel. When confident you can deliver that you could try to get that work. But it will always be a much smaller market. There are still a lot of people that will not consider budgeting for any kind of video, let alone a premium that should cost more than the stills.
 
I shoot photos for weddings, not video, but I have studied and taken classes on this business aspect via WPPI (Wedding and Portrait Photographers International) in Las Vegas. Lots of fun at those.
Anyhow, there was a famous wedding photographer named Monte Zucker who died a few years back. Many of his students are now famous and off on their own. One student is Clay Blackmore (clayblackmore.com).
Clay took a few experts in the video format and created - cinestories.com. They shoot and teach event video using a story format rather than dry, boring documentary style. They are very good at it.
They made a national training tour a few years ago. Lots of great tips and materials provided. Here are a few samples of their work:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qT-N-ru2o0&feature
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsxxLpjNGVE&feature
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTM1gZq0_TE
 
ASchear said:
I've gotten a few responses from a couple of videographers, but only when I pretended to be a potential client over e-mail. One videographer managed to figure me out (I assume by Googling my name, I used the real one in my e-mail) and was pretty upset that I would do such a thing, in an almost defensive way. I was a little taken aback by this, but I suppose it is not surprising. People do whatever it takes to have an edge in South Florida I guess. I just know I'll never let my ego get in the way if I'm ever as successful as any of those people.
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I don't blame you for doing what you need to do in order to learn, but I wouldn't blame the people who's time you're wasting in pretending to be a client so that they will take their time to lay out a plan for you.
 
ASchear said:
I've been shooting weddings freelance in my spare time for about a year now. I recently graduated from college and am looking to continue doing weddings, but do everything legitimately; register my business, pay taxes, legal music, etc.

I've e-mailed a few great wedding cinematographers that I know of, but for the most part have only gotten terse, cocky responses, if anything at all. I began last summer without really any idea what I'd be giving to my client in the end, only that I would go and film at the wedding and then figure it out later in the editing room. When editing time came, I eventually delivered a DVD with 7 chapters, including all the full wedding events like the ceremony, first dances, etc, as well as 2 highlights chapters with songs that the bride and groom chose. I've continued doing this for about 10 weddings now.

I've began to notice that what I do might not be typical, and rather than delivering everything in full and then pulling what I can out for the highlights chapters, some cinematographers focus solely on making a "short film" where it's not necessarily important to capture and document every single second, but to be able to capture mostly everything in an artistic way for use in this "short film."

Can someone with experience go into more detail about what this "short film" actually is and how it differs from my 3 or 4 minute highlight segments? Anything available online for me to check out? I'm just trying to establish more of an identity with what I plan to do before going ahead to book more work.

Thanks!!!!
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Videographers/Photographers aren't all kind like they are on this forum. Most of the wedding videographers in Orlando I have ran into are rude. When I started I tried contacting them and most ignore me or response with a cocky response like you have said.

What I do for editing is a Documentary Edit which is anywhere from an hour to 2 hours. That is the entire day put into a documentary style. Then I do a wedding film which is edited like you are watching a TV show. Then I also do a short film/highlight film which is about 5 mins which highlights the entire day.

Screw that old traditional style of weddings haha.

Most short films are just event highlight videos.
 
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Sunk99 said:
I shoot photos for weddings, not video, but I have studied and taken classes on this business aspect via WPPI (Wedding and Portrait Photographers International) in Las Vegas. Lots of fun at those.
Anyhow, there was a famous wedding photographer named Monte Zucker who died a few years back. Many of his students are now famous and off on their own. One student is Clay Blackmore (clayblackmore.com).
Clay took a few experts in the video format and created - cinestories.com. They shoot and teach event video using a story format rather than dry, boring documentary style. They are very good at it.
They made a national training tour a few years ago. Lots of great tips and materials provided. Here are a few samples of their work:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qT-N-ru2o0&feature
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsxxLpjNGVE&feature
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTM1gZq0_TE
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I watch part of the first one... The audio was terrible.
 
Might be an issue on your end. The audio sounds great to me.
Personally I think it is brilliant form of storytelling having her open the gift then he buys it while she reads.
It was a smash hit at WPPI and they built a national tour to all major cities from it.
Well, to each their own I guess.
They are considered some of the best in the video wedding industry and they are just plain good guys.
 
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