What Should A Videographer Provide?
Every company is unique and offers slightly different things when it comes to videography. In this article I will go through the main items and edits a videographer should deliver. In my opinion these are things you definitely and also maybe want from your videographer:
A highlight/summary/recap video of the day (under 15 minute runtime)
Full edited coverage of the main events such speeches, ceremony etc
A USB or hard drive with the deliverables
Some potential additions:
Online hosting of all the edited videos
RAW unedited footage
A long form edited video covering the entire day (runtime can very greatly but it should be at minimum 30 minutes)
A pre-wedding/engagement shoot
Live Stream of the main events
Same day edit
Types of Wedding Film/Video Edits
A Highlight Video which we call a Cinematic Short Film at Parallel. This edit is meant to encapsulate your entire wedding day, you should be able to throw this video on anytime and easily relive your whole day. In our opinion these are best when they include lots of cute speeches, vows and letters. In my opinion the average wedding requires around 7-9 minutes to properly showcase, anything over 15 minutes and you are venturing into a different type of edit. At Parallel we don’t really see the value of a short, under one minute edit but many companies do provide these short teaser style edits for social media. I don’t see them having much long term value to couples and have never pushed to introduce them into our service. Maybe if demand increase we will succumb but currently we think it’s best to spend our time creating the piece to resistance that you can share and watch yourself for years to come!
A Full Day Edit might go by a lot of different names but it is more or less the same concept everywhere, it is an edit that covers the whole day with some sections being real-time of the main events. We call these Cinematic Feature Films at Parallel Weddings. This edits type is not as popular as it has a limited scope in terms of use. The only people you will be able to get to sit through your entire hour and half film would be close family and friends, if your lucky! But this is a great film type for your kids and for yourselves to be able to sit down and watch the entire day! At Parallel we offer this but I never push people to go with it unless it specifically meets their needs. We sometimes films weddings and all they want is the Feature Film, so it really depends on your desires!
Full Coverage Event Edits, which we refer to as Multi-Camera Full Event Edits or some variation of those words. This is a deliverable in our packages that many people have a hard time understand, I have found it hard to name! But the idea of these edits is to provide you with the long form real-time edits of all the main events, all the events you would want to rewatch. The includes 3 camera edits of the ceremony, speeches cut with reactions etc! These accompany the Cinematic Short Film to provide full coverage of your wedding day, in my opinion full coverage edits along with a highlight video is the best combination of edits to properly document your wedding and meet your needs for years to come!
Extra Video Options for on the Day
Live Stream, this is an amazing option for couples who have relatives out of the country or just aren’t able to make it to the festivities. This is a new service that Parallel is offering this year but not fully rolling out until the 2020 season. We will connect one of our cameras to a video streaming program and host the video privately on YouTube and we can easily send the stream link to the contacts you’ve predetermined so they can join in and watch from home! This service is currently dependant on a strong Wi-Fi connection at the ceremony and reception locations.
Same Day Edit is an interesting concept in which the videographer quickly edits together a video recapping the day prior to that point in the reception and then showcases the video on a projector for the guests to watch. Parallel doesn’t offer Same Day Edits and we are very detail oriented and love to take our time crafting and perfectly timed and edited wedding film. Our films are our pride and joy and I can’t see myself denigrating the process by rush editing a video. I also personally don’t see the long-term value of that edit as it will effectively be replaced once a proper recap video is produced. I much prefer the concept of a pre-wedding video if you are really wanting something cute to be played at the reception, I will explain the conceptual pre-wedding video later!
Wedding Videography Delivery Methods
RAW Footage, is requested by many couples, and I totally understand why! It is scary to think that all your wedding day footage will be deleted forever, which is why we offer a 1TB hard drive which will contain everything we produced in connection to your wedding day: stills, all films exports, full coverage exports, RAW files, Instagram length trimmed video, etc.
USB Kit delivery is essential as it is nice to receive something tangible as well. The USB can come packaged many different ways and even at Parallel we have changed our delivery style multiple types. Currently we deliver in a slick grey box that has an aesthetic and style that I feel perfectly matches the elegance and smooth style of our films. We used to deliver a camera shaped USB in wooden boxes with hay, and before that we delivered diamond studded heart USBs in a ring box (I thought that was a cute set-up).
Online Hosting, which at Parallel Weddings has two aspects. We ‘host’ the film on our Facebook and YouTube page so you can easily just hit share! But we also upload all the full coverage edits, stills and films to Google Drive so you can easily access it whenever you want and also share the folder or video with whoever you’d like! In our modern day I feel this is an essential delivery method.
Videos Filmed Before the Wedding
Pre-Wedding Video is a type of video we haven’t really coined our own unique naming for yet, but this does keep it nice a clear. A pre-wedding video can be a number of different things depending on the couple, but our go-to pre-wedding video is a cute videoshoot with the couple along with nice audio of the two of you discussing your love story, your future plans and what you look forward to for your wedding day. We will edit together a nice standalone video which you can use as you please but we do recommend this type of video as a far better option compared to a Same Day Edit (SDE) for a reception video. I personally feel it is far more enjoyable for the guests and also has value its self. You will be able to watch a well produced video of you two sharing your love story for years to come, but as I mentioned the SDE will become useless once it is replaced by your actual wedding film which includes your whole day. I think two well produced, unique and valuable videos is a far better use of your money!
Engagement Video is not an entirely separate concept to the pre-wedding video, it is sort of a sub category of a pre-wedding video. If you want to use the shoot and video as an engagement announcement that is totally an option when we are setting up your pre-wedding shoot!