Using Only The Best Lenses
When youre packing your equipment, preparing for a wedding videography shoot ahead, remember to choose your lenses wisely, for this one single decision can make a big difference between your wedding video looking cinematic vs. mediocre.
Remember: glass matters!
A lens that has the smallest minimum aperture is ideal for shooting weddings.
With sufficient lighting, it can ensure that you get an extremely shallow depth of field when the aperture is near-closed, so you succeed in getting a very cinematic wedding video that is guaranteed to delight viewers.
With low light conditions, you might opt for a lens with a larger aperture to compensate for less light, as a result of shooting indoors and at night .
Lenses can get expensive, and its not enough to rely soley on a 50mm. In fact, youll likely need to rent more lenses if you are going to do multi-camera setups. At a minimum, youll likely need a 24mm, a 50mm and an 85mm.
Finally, if youre budget allows it, then strongly consider getting the CANON 24-70mm ZOOM LENS. It has great versatility and perfect for run-and-gun shooting. You can stick a 50mm on a second camera in the corner and just use this bad boy as you work the crowd and get close up shots of the action.
If you are going to purchase, we recommend going with ROKINON LENSES.
For more detailed info in choosing a lens for your wedding camera, check out our series on camera lenses.
See Your Wedding Through The Eyes Of Your Loved Ones
Did you know that guests can use apps such as Vidicrew to upload the videos they capture for you to see? Friends and family help you to video the wedding so you see it all from their perspective, giving you a unique, personal and fun view, and capturing the moments youd normally miss. Even those who cant attend the wedding can be in the final video! says Alex.
Plus, filming neednt begin and end on the day when shooting yourself – your loved ones can capture every moment of your wedding journey and the team at Vidicrew can edit them all together to create a unique wedding video: Your wedding is so much more than just one day. From engagement celebrations and picking the dress to stag and hen parties, even the honeymoon, you can capture and include it all. Plus, people who cant attend can include messages/videos from anywhere in the world, so all of your loved ones can be in the final video.
Check out Polly and Alex’s highlight video below for some ideas of what you could include in yours!
Polly & Alex | Highlights from Vidicrew on Vimeo.
Wedding Videography Tips How To Shoot The Best Wedding Videos
With clients willing to pay as much as $10,000 for the best wedding videos, no wonder cinematographers fresh out of film school are flocking towards the lucrative industry of video production services.
However, you dont need to pay thousands of dollars to a film school to get started on wedding video production.
Theres a thing called the Internet to get videography tips on how to shoot the sweetest wedding videos for your clients.
Heres a table of contents for quick reference:
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Rehearsal Dinner: Your Practice Run
Most couples plan a rehearsal dinner prior to the big event. During the rehearsal, everyone who is involved in the wedding party will go through the important wedding day motions. This includes meeting at the venue, walking down the aisle, and working out any kinks.
For a videographer, the rehearsal dinner is the ultimate chance to scope out the venue, see how the wedding day will go, and make necessary adjustments. You may, or may not, be paid to attend a rehearsal dinner. If the bride and groom do not want to pay you for your time, you may want to attend this event anyway .
Simple Steps To Create Your Wedding Slideshow
Now that youre fully prepared, its time to create your masterpiece!
Well demonstrate how to create a video slideshow of your wedding photos similar to the example below in less than 15 minutes using Animotica .
All images used belong to Lu c Anh.
Lets get cracking!
1. Open Animotica and click Slideshow
This is obviously the first step. Clicking on Slideshow will lead you to a window where you can upload your photos.
Just click on Slideshow, and youre ready to go.
2. Add Photo
3. Add Music
This is also pretty straightforward. Click on the Add Music button to fetch your already downloaded background music. Animotica also comes with some great musical clips you can choose from! Once youre done picking your music, hit Next.
4. Set your Aspect Ratio
This window allows you to define your slideshow based on the platform youre planning to upload it to.
There are several options ranging from YouTube to Classic TV, and you can select your choice by just clicking on it. Its usually best to leave it at its default setting. Once youve chosen your aspect ratio, hit Next.
5. Set a Background and Photo Fill
Animotica provides a bunch of great options for your slideshows background. These options are provided in the categories of Blur Background and Color Background. Also, you can set how the pictures are shown on your screen by setting the Photo Fill. However, its usually advisable to leave it at Fit.
Once youve made your selection, hit Next.
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Wedding Congratulations Messages For Cards
There are many things you can write while composing a letter for a couple, depending on the closeness of the relationship between you both. If you are close to them, then you can add a lot of personal thoughts or little memories you have kept in your heart, like you both bunking classes together or something along those lines. If you only know one side of the couple and not the other person, it still doesn’t matter! A heartfelt letter is never disregarded, so you better be saying a lot of nice and sincere things in your letter. Some of the ideas are given below:
Wishing Better Bonding for Future
“I hope through the years you become even better friends and share every possible kind of happiness life can bring. Congrats.”
Wishing for Everlasting Joy
“May your marriage be filled with all the right ingredients: a heap of love, a dash of humor, a touch of romance, and a spoonful of understanding. May your joy last forever. Congratulations!”
Wishing for Love Growth
“Your wedding day may come and go, but may your love forever grow. Congratulations to the perfect couple!”
Wishing for Passing Storms With Love
“Through the storms of life, may your love for one another be steadfast and strong. Wishing you joy and happiness on your wedding day. Congratulations!”
Wishing for Upcoming Adventure
“Congratulations on finding each other! Your greatest adventure has just begun.”
Wishing for even Better Future Memories
Wishing Simply with Congratulations
“Congratulations on tying the knot!”
Ask Some Reliable Friends To Help
When you assign wedding day roles to your wedding party, think about the video footage you are looking for. Chose friends that you trust to capture all the fun. Guests that can be in the right place at the right time and know how to use their camera properly. Roping in your friends can be super exciting and ensure really relaxed, real content. Have a think about which key moments you want to be captured on your day. Then simply ask the right guests to be in the right spot at the correct timings.
Read Also: How To Address Wedding Card
Adopt Your Own Approach
Theres no right or wrong way of filming weddings. However Ive carefully analysed everything about the day the structure, the people and the details and all this affects the way I shoot. My own approach is based on four key concepts:
Read Poetry That You Wrote For The Happy Couple On Their Special Day
You can read poetry that you wrote for the happy couple on their special day, or you can read poetry that you think fits the couple. The poetry can be heartfelt, or it can be funny too. You can record yourself while reading it and then share it on their special day to make your presence known. This is a great way to entertain the guests and make the day even more special with these recorded messages.
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Make The Most Of Your Downtime
Or, if you dont want to get there early, use every moment of downtime to your advantage. If you know youre not going to use specific frames from the photo sessions, grab your establishing shots of the flowers or a timelapse of the clouds. If you only need to film the first five or 10 minutes of cocktail hour, spend the rest eating and replenishing. Youll need it to survive the rest of the evening!
How To Make A Wedding Video: Useful Tips
Lets start by discussing some tips and tricks to make a high-quality wedding video. While much of it is up to your own creativity, there are some common strategies that you can leverage to create the best possible video.
First, make sure that your video captures all of the major moments. This is clearly an obvious point, yet it is easy to forget when you are in the thick of the wedding. You may be shooting an interview with guests when an important moment occurs in another room. Because of this, it helps to sit down with the bride and groom before the wedding day. Ask them what their vision is for the wedding video. Once you have that information, develop a gameplan on how you are going to shoot the video including the moments that you need to capture.
Next, make sure that your wedding video tells a cohesive story. It should be cinematic. Here, your limit is your imagination. You can include long, dramatic cuts of all of the key moments of the wedding. You can create a video with pictures. You can even add a montage of guest interviews or a photo collage to conclude the video. Whatever it is, ensure that you are captivating your audience through your storytelling.
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Tips To Storyboard Graceful Wedding Videos Like A Hollywood Blockbuster
Weddings are indeed costly. And one thing’s for sure – you can save a lot on video editing expenses! Save money on pricey video editing subscriptions and create your dream wedding video yourself. And what if you are stressed out in planning your own wedding and adding the video editing task to your schedule? Worry no more – here are the four simple steps that will surely help you finish the wedding video in no time!
Collect stunning images and videos of weddings and love.
If you have a pre-wedding shoot, you have better chances of having professionally shot images and videos to include in your video. Also, you can make use of our images and video templates to level up your wedding video! Even the simplest photos taken with your phone camera can be turned into something more exquisite.
Piece them together like a love story – just as how you see it in the movies!
Choose from the available templates to place your wedding photos and videos together. Or, just drag and drop visuals into your storyboards and start from scratch. Easily incorporate your wedding’s theme color into your film. You may easily modify the font colors, background images, transitions, and find extensive love graphics to match the color palette you used for your event.
Add heartfelt words to the wedding video.
Choose a romantic song as the background music.
Editing A Wedding Video
Editing a video is a delicate matter. On the one hand, its important to make a video look as good as possible. On the other hand, you dont want to edit out anything that may be important to the newly wedded couple. In addition to careful editing, its also important not to go overboard.
Some wedding videos are edited so heavily that they look like very bad montages. Avoid adding too much color, too many captions, or music that doesnt fit the style of the wedding. As with any other part of the wedding, editing begins with your first bride and groom consultation.
Personally, we use Adobe Premiere Pro. But there are several programs to help you edit from Final Cut Pro to Sony Vegas. Heres a good tutorial on how to edit in Adobe Premiere:
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Send It To Be Professionally Edited
By getting it professionally edited, the bride and groom can put together all of their favorite clips into their own customized wedding video. While you may have a passion for video editing, it might take you a loooooooong to actually finish the project. So instead of giving it to them as a 5th anniversary gift, leave it to the professionals.
Or better yet, a highlight of the whole day. From the getting ready to the silly, post-wedding antics:
What To Deliver As A Final Product
It depends on what wedding videography package the client selected. If the client requested the full coverage and the highlight video, then you will likely need to put the videos in a DVD and send it off to the client.
For clients who opt for the basic wedding package, putting a video online with a password will be fine. The ones we use at 2Bridges are the following:
Vimeo
Youtube
Obviously, password protect the video if youre going to put it up online. Another alternative solution is to find a cloud solution to upload your video. This might cost extra but its actually worth it. When you have other videography jobs , you might need to share files with your customers. Its handy to have a trusty cloud service to share sensitive videos and documents.
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Secrets To Shooting Great Wedding Videos
by Hal | Feb 24, 2009 | Articles, Documentary, Post Production, production |
Have you wanted to use your camcorder and video equipment to make some money, or are you already shooting live events? Shooting great wedding videos is a smart great way to profit from your equipment and experience. Whether youre just entering the videography field or looking to add wedding videography to your list of services, these 10 insider secrets will help you produce professional wedding videos, right from the start.
1. Choose the Right Gear.Video equipment becomes obsolete very quickly because of the constant advancements in technology. You dont need the highest-end gear to shoot great wedding videos the basics will do just fine. The basic equipment that youll need to shoot wedding videos includes a fluid head tripod, remote microphone system and or audio recorders. Oh, and an HD camcorder, of course.
2. Back up your audio.Audio for wedding videos can be touchy. Remote microphones may pick up some voices better than others and last minute glitches could prevent you from getting any audio at all. This is why many wedding videographers are investing in audio recorders to back up their audio. They are also affordable enough that you can have several for micing various audio sources. Just like a wireless mic, the audio recorder is easily carried in the grooms pocket, with a lavaliere microphone.
Go to Page 2 for more Wedding Video Tips
