The Digital Video Camera Guy

The Fine Art of Taking Wedding Videos

A huge number of decisions go into planning a wedding.  Where will the ceremony be held?  What should the cake look like?  Does this dress look too poofy?  How many guests should we invite?  What should we serve them?  How are we going to pay for all of this?  Who should we hire for photography?  What about flowers?  One of the items on most couples to-do lists is to look into hiring someone to do a wedding video for them.  Though it’s been standard for years for couples to hire professional photographers to shoot their wedding photographs, the idea of a wedding video only really cropped up with the popularity of the home video camera.  What started small has eventually blossomed into a huge industry.

Of course, the first question should be, do we really need a wedding video?  Well, that qusetion can be also asked whether we need wedding gifts such as groomsmen gifts.  The decision will depend both on personal preferences and budget, but a handful of things need to be considered in addition to these two criteria.  How long do you want the wedding video to be?  Who’s going to watch it?  How much can you afford to spend on hiring a professional to shoot the video?  Though many couples still opt for having a wedding video done to capture their special day, other couples content themselves with the photographs and the memories of the wedding.

If you do decide to get a wedding video done, who are you going to hire to shoot the video?  Professional videographers are good bets but not for your unique groomsmen gifts though, especially since most will have samples of their work for you to view to decide if you like their styles or not.  Unfortunately, professional videographers are expensive, and you can easily end up paying as much for your video as you do for your photos.  However, hiring a student from a local university or community college film class can be a great option, since many of these students are quite talented but haven’t had a chance to flex their creative muscles.  Fortunately for you, this muscle-flexing comes cheap, especially if they can use the video to fulfill a class requirement.    If you do opt for a student-produced video, make sure to go over exactly what you want with the student beforehand, and make sure that the student knows what he or she is doing. 

In the end, your wedding video and wedding gifts is more for you than anyone else.  How it looks and what it captures should be up to you and your fiancée, since it will allow you to finally sit back, relax, and watch your own wedding unfold.