Your Guide to a Great Wedding Video

You’ve made many important decisions as you’ve planned your wedding day. The priority you’ve placed on videotaping is a very personal one. There are a few guidelines that, if followed, will dramatically improve the quality of your video.

Video Restrictions

Many times, a church's restrictive video guidelines are the direct result of abuses by unprofessional videographers. We will be glad to meet with your coordinator or church representative to discuss any part of our production as well as meet with you at the church to discuss your plans.

Camera Placement

It's very important to include us during all the planning stages of your ceremony. Our videographers can usually work around bridal party obstructions, but poor lighting or restrictive camera placements will affect the quality of your wedding movie.

We will attempt to attend all rehearsals, regardless of how many times we've produced a wedding at a particular site. It's during this time that we make sure you and or your church coordinator, have allowed for placement of our cameras and equipment.

We will try not to disrupt the ceremony, in any way. If our cameras are blocked by flowers, a candelabra, the altar table, or even bridal party members, it will affect your movie. We will not attempt to move any obstructions that are in our way, but the camera man may have to move around to get intimate close-up shots. If this is allowed then we usually can work around obstructions. The best way is for everyone to know where we plan to be with our cameras. If church restrictions do not allow cameras in some of these locations, we may still be able to shoot the ceremony from the sides with unmanned cameras or even the back of the church. Although this type of placement is thought to provide greater intimacy for the couple, it doesn’t provide us with close-up footage with the emotion that results in a great video.

We can review your movie plans with you, your bridal party and the officiate(s) during the wedding rehearsal. We'll ask them to be aware of the front cameras, and to avoid blocking our camera views of you and your fiancée.

We need your Best Man and Maid of Honor to make sure they are not between our cameras and you during the vows, the ring exchange, or anytime they have to move around. It's okay if they take a quick check over their shoulder, so we can let them know if there's a problem.

Another tip: if the church will let you, place a small piece of tape where each member of the bridal party should stand during the ceremony. It helps them know where to stand, and it helps us.

Photographers

It is important that you inform your wedding photographer that you have hired a professional wedding videographer and that your video is important to you. It is important that they work with us and we will show the same courtesy. We would be glad to discuss where we need to place our cameras so we can yield to each other.

Also, please inform friends and family who may be planning to bring personal video cameras that you have contracted professional videotaping and will appreciate their cooperation in yielding to our cameras and equipment.

Lighting

Guidelines on lighting are fairly simple... If your setting is dark, your movie will be dark. The key to excellent quality movie lighting is bright and balanced. You should ask your coordinator to provide maximum and balanced lighting throughout the ceremony location.

We will examine your church's lighting system at the rehearsal, and make recommendations, however many coordinators have their own policies concerning lighting from which they will not deviate Therefore we suggest you discuss our production needs during the initial meetings with church personnel to clarify their existing policy. If you are planning a portion or all of your ceremony to be conducted in candlelight we will most likely need to use some type of additional on-camera lighting.

Reception Lighting

At your reception, your DJ, band or site coordinator may also want to dim the overall house lights to set a certain mood or atmosphere. We can work with that as long as you understand that we may have to compensate for dark setting by using our on-camera lights.

As with the lighting at your ceremony, these lights have adjustable settings, which allow us to use only the amount of light necessary to properly illuminate the setting. We will only use these lights when we are actually shooting. At all other times, they will be turned off.

Microphones
We use varying combinations of wireless and hardwire microphones during the ceremony and the reception. All of our microphones are placed to provide the best quality sound and pick-up pattern for the bridal couple and the officiate conducting the ceremony.

Our wireless microphones are generally worn by the officiate and/or the groom. Please allow our personnel to clip-on and position all microphones that are to be worn during the ceremony. Please DO NOT try to remove or reposition these microphones by yourself. Their small size makes them very fragile. Our personnel will put them on before the ceremony, and will remove them afterwards. Please avoid moving the microphones once our personnel have placed them.

The Love Story
Depending on the coverage option you choose, we may need to conduct interviews with both of you before and/or after your wedding day. These interviews are a very important part of your Love Story coverage. We will do our best to put you at ease so that you can have fun with this. We will be courteous and respectful of you and your wishes at all times.

Working together
The final quality of your wedding movie is very important to us, and we want it to be something you'll treasure for many years. We know what an important decision you have made concerning the production of your wedding movie. Please call us if we can answer any questions, offer suggestions, or confirm any detail concerning your Wedding Movie.