Edmonton Wedding Videographer - Articles/News : How to Choose a Wedding Videographer

How To Choose A Wedding Videographer
By Tim Mayer

When all the excitement surrounding your engagement and picking out your wedding date finally start to subside a little, its time to start seriously considering the videographer who will be capturing all the sights, sounds, highlights and emotions of your wedding day.

These days, choosing a videographer can be challenging. It seems that anyone who owns a video camera and prints off a business card on their home computer, thinks that they can call themselves a videographer! This article will help you to extract the facts from the fictional, and the truth from those who dare.

What is a wedding videographer… really?

Like most things in life, there exists a high and low end of the spectrum. This principal holds true in the world of wedding videography. In the end, its up to you to decide what’s most important to you, and ultimately, what you are willing to invest into your wedding memories.

As far as videographers go you do get what you pay for, so keep that tidbit in mind during your selection process. If you only have $200.00 to spend that’s fine, but don’t expect to get a Hollywood feature film with all the bells and whistles. Anyone who promises you the moon for a small price or brags about how they can undercut everybody should be highly suspect and thoroughly researched before hiring them.

The Lows

At the primary level, a wedding videographer will videotape your wedding day so you can watch it back after everyone has gone home. This may or may not include basic editing (taking out any undesirable shots, sounds or sudden camera moves that make viewing the video less enjoyable or fluid).

The Highs

On the high end of the scale, a professional wedding videographer should be able to offer you pretty much anything you can dream of… which, is where some of the confusion may begin for the uninformed bride-to-be.

A professional videographer may offer customizable packages, which are unique and created specifically for you. Some may offer only pre-formatted packages to choose from.

A professional videographer can be, but is not necessarily a real artist, one who understands and utilizes basic and advanced techniques in composition, lighting, sound design and motion graphics.

The professional videographer may offer you diverse styles to choose from to suit your viewing preferences i.e.: news, photo journalistic, documentary or cinematic styles. Each different style requires specific expertise in shooting and editing techniques to be successfully implemented.

Does the style of the videographer you are considering rely heavily on gimmicky or dated special effects? Or does their style represent class, elegance, artistic flare or cutting edge visuals that you would expect to see on a hot television series? There is no right or wrong at this juncture. Ultimately, you choose what you want your wedding video to look like from this point on.

Obvious… or is it? Get personal.

• The first question that should be asked to any videographer you happen to interview is, "What kind of training and background do you have?" A professional videographer will have some kind of formal training and education in the industry i.e.: trade school, film school, broadcast television etc. Obviously, this is an important question. You wouldn't want your doctor operating on you without proper education would you? It’s no different with your videographer. Although there is something to be said for years of hands-on experience and natural God given talent, but knowing whether your videographer has had formal training for their craft can be an indicator of their level of commitment to both you, and the industry they work in.

Formal training should also have instilled your videographer with proper techniques and troubleshooting ability to start and complete your video competently. Troubleshooting? Yes. Your wedding is a live event. In a live event, it is rare that everything will always go as planned. Your videographer needs to be able to instinctively adapt to whatever unforeseen things may occur to ensure that your precious moments are caught and immortalized onto your wedding video. Unlike a Hollywood production, a live event (your wedding) won’t have multiple takes to get everything “just right”. Even the Oscars and other major award shows that are broadcast "live" have had the benefit of fully live rehearsals long before air time. Your wedding event is a one shot deal for an intensive 12 – 18 hours. That’s a lot of pressure for anyone in any job description.

• The next question you should ask a prospective videographer is, "Why are you interested in covering my wedding?" The answers may surprise you and will give you a unique insight into their true passions or lack thereof. A professional wedding videographer should be interested in you and your wedding day. They should give you an opportunity to express your thoughts and ideas and, they should be willing to offer you advice and give you solutions as to how your dreams can best be realized in a competent manner. This doesn’t mean that they will have an answer to everything, but they should be willing to find a solution for you should you have a unique or unusual request.

• Ask to see a demo of a real wedding, not a demo reel. A demo reel is usually similar to a highlight reel which showcases only the best of the best shots and doesn’t give you accurate visual information to make an informed choice. A demonstration utilizing a real wedding video will give you a more complete picture of what your wedding day coverage may look like and, if you want to, you can skip around to the parts of the video that are most important to you.

Speak geek?

Time and time again I see different articles pointing to what you should be looking for in terms of equipment from your prospective videographer. And, time and time again I see a myriad of information smeared on pages that to the average reader, really doesn’t mean much. Although I won’t bury you afresh with more geek speak, here are the most important things that you should know and should ask a potential videographer.

Digital or Digit-all?

We now live in a digital world, this is a fact. The days of analogue technology are fading quickly into the sunset (thankfully). Make sure that your videographer is using digital technology throughout the entire video production; audio, video and post production (editing). This should ensure that you have the cleanest and clearest video product possible.

Video Cameras

Tape Formats and picture quality.

Your professional videographer should be using one of the following formats to record your wedding:
DV, DVCAM, Digital Betacam or HD. These formats use digital technology.

DV and DVCAM are the generally accepted formats for wedding videographers today with Digital Betacam and HD being at the extreme high end, and are usually reserved for broadcast television.

Non-digital tape based formats include: VHS, Hi8, S-VHS, and Betacam SP. In this day and age these formats should be considered unacceptable. They are prone to much noisier looking pictures and will suffer the most generation loss during post production (editing).

HDV
A special note should be made here about the format of HDV. Some videographers are trying to sell clients HDV as HD. There should be no mistake, they are not the same thing. Although HDV does have a higher resolution than a standard SD picture acquisition it certainly does not have even close to the full breadth of picture information and color as real uncompressed HD footage.

The HDV format was not originally designed to be a format used for acquisition (shooting) or editing, but for distribution. As a result, there are some very large challenges that exist within the format when used outside its intended purpose.

HDV uses "Long GOP MPEG2" compression technology. Because HDV uses "Long GOP MPEG2" compression, it uses the same digital tape stock as standard definition DV. This form of compression has been shown to be problematic in "mission critical" shooting. When there is an error in the compressed image as it is being laid down onto the digital tape there will be missing footage (between 15 frames to a full second and a half). This is not a big issue where multiple takes are acquired, but in the case of weddings it means potentially missing parts of your vows, speeches and other special moments. The format of DV or HD does not have this problem as these formats use a different mathematical formula to store their images.

Further for consideration of the HDV format is what you will use to view the higher resolution footage with. There are currently two formats battling for market dominance: HD DVD and Blu-ray. Until there is a clear winner in the marketplace or until someone develops a market standard and accepted multiformat playing system, you may have ended up choosing a format that becomes obsolete within a year or so (this happened once before in the 1980's with Beta and VHS).

Cameras should have 3CCD’s. CCD’s are critical to image quality, and therefore all professional cameras use 3CCD technology. Each CCD is responsible for a primary color: Red, Green or Blue. 3CCD systems will give you the most natural and true-to-life color possible.

How many cameras?

Is your videographer going to use more than one camera to capture your wedding day?

As a general rule, the more cameras you have covering your event, the more complete your coverage should be, ensuring that your special moments aren’t overlooked. If you are paying to have your wedding videotaped, your videographer should be using no less than 2 cameras to cover your day. I guarantee that if any fewer than 2 cameras are used, something will be missed.

Does each camera at your event have its own operator?

Many videographers will use 2 camera setups but will only provide a single operator to run both cameras. A lone videographer can only be in one place at any given time. So, they will deploy the second camera in an unmanned and “locked off” static position. This second camera shoots whatever is in front of it. If a guest, photographer or officiant etc. steps in front of what is supposed to be “the shot”, that angle is lost, and what’s worse is, the videographer won’t even know about it until he is back at the studio watching the tape. Not to mention that the “locked off” camera can run out of tape, a battery can easily expire or the beautiful sunlight streaming through the stained glass of the church is suddenly obscured by a large passing cloud leaving the camera improperly exposed. If you are paying to have more than one camera covering your wedding, is it not worth it to you to insist that there is a full-time operator attending each?

Next, are all the cameras you are paying for “matched cameras”? Matched cameras are cameras that are the same make and model. Many videographers will use two camera systems, but the cameras aren’t the same. Different lenses, CCD technology etc. will give you very different pictures, so ensure that your videographer is using matched cameras.

This is the first edition to a series of several articles on how to select your wedding videographer. Hopefully, this information has helped to clear up some of the concerns that you may be dealing with. In upcoming articles we will examine other issues including: sound, lighting, contracts, being comfortable with your videographer and much more.

If you have any questions please feel free to inquire by email or give us a call, we would be happy to answer any questions you may have.

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About the Author

Tim Mayer is an accomplished professional television editor for the last 11 years. He is a multiple
Alberta Motion Picture Industry Association award nominee. His nominations include: Best Editing,
Best Documentary, Best Commercial and Best Promotional categories. Tim owns and operates Visual Vapor Inc. which deals exclusively in film & television post production. Crush Pictures is a separate division of Visual Vapor Inc. which is operated by Kathleen Mayer. Crush Pictures is dedicated to producing the highest possible quality in wedding videography and visual art.

This article is protected by copyright. Any reproduction whether in whole or in part without the expressed written consent of the author and Visual Vapor Inc. is strictly prohibited.