Wedding DVD - Full Version

[Diana Fisk]

Hi All

I have been doing weddings for around 18 months now and have had maybe 10 weddings in this time. I have had amazing feedback when it comes to my 'features/trailer' and am very proud of what I have produced.

I am struggling with what to include in the 'full' version. At the moment I provide more of a documentary style edited take of their wedding day which ends up to be around an hour. I include lots in this but compared to my highly edited and stylised feature I wonder whether it might be a bit of a let down.

What do other people normally provide? I am thinking about doing a few examples of an 'extended features' which I would aim to run for around 30 minutes and then I could give people the option?

Any help would be appreciated!!

Thanks
Diana

[Chris Harding]

Hi Diana

Look at Pete Rush's post and what to include on the DVD ... I always feel that if you shoot doc style then include ALL the events including full speeches so expect that to run for more than 30 minutes.

I think you must supply either a very harshly cut highlight clip that runs for a few minutes OR give them a record of how the day unfolded from start to end. My DVD's are usually 80 -100 minutes for a full wedding

Chris

[Nigel Barker]

Managed to post in wrong thread

[Robert Benda]

Originally Posted by Diana Fisk

What do other people normally provide? I am thinking about doing a few examples of an 'extended features' which I would aim to run for around 30 minutes and then I could give people the option?

Hi, Diana,

it's important for you to figure out what your style is. For us, our main video is a 15-20 minute wedding film... it's not everything, but designed to be an emotional piece and is something I'm proud to put on our website as an example of our work. On the DVD, I also provide the 'all-day edit' which usually runs 60-90 minutes and is documentary style.

Personally, I find this split, doing both, covers the folks who want to see everything, and the folks who want a video a bit more stylized.

Olivia and Lewis' wedding film on Vimeo

[Nigel Barker]

We deliver an arty-farty cinematic highlights video of 3-5 minutes plus a pretty traditional documentary style edit with the ceremony, speeches & first dance in full with live audio plus other chapters to a song track e.g. preparations. after the ceremony, evening etc

We have been delivering the highlights online within a couple of weeks & then the full edit on Blu-ray & DVD in our own sweet time but from the lack of feedback I think that full edit is falling a little flat as the highlights "Wows" them while the wedding is fresh in their memory & for most couples the highlights is what they will watch over & over share with friends & family etc. I think for next year that we might try delivering the highlights online at the same time as full edit on disc & see if we can get them 'Wowed' by the full edit too.

[Christian Nachtrieb]

Diana,

Here's what I found is the best thing to do… ask your clients. Every city, state, country demographic is going to be different. What works for me in Boston might not suit the brides in Australia. To be successful, you need to solve a problem for these people. Find out what they'd rather have, interview your past clients.

[Arthur Gannis]

After many years of doing weddings, the main thing is to know what the client expects as the finished final work, and that is only by asking and communicating before the event. I learned the hard way that condensing the event to under an hour which also includes 8 minutes of highlight material at the end, I was met with a barrage of " why didn't you capture the entire 1 hour ceremony ? where is the receiving line ? where did most of the dances go ? etc..." I had to re-edit the whole thing again to deliver a 2 hour production. Never again. I ask and most of the time now, they do want a short version of an hour or less with the highlights included BUT want also the unedited raw shot stuff, regardless if it contains retakes, bloopers and such. No problem and makes my guessing and editing much easier.

[Travis Wilber]

I wouldn't go all out and spend a ton of time on the doc edit. I always give links to both and people hardly ever share the long form edit. If you aren't too proud of it I'd maybe just down play it. I've always spent so much time on it but more recently I'm just throwing it together faster and not getting nit-picky about it. Make your main video sound like that's what they are really paying for and the doc edit is sort of just the chance for them to see extra footage so they don't have as high expectations for it.

[John Nantz]

First off, a disclaimer: I'm not a wedding videographer and I've never done one. Now that this is out of the way, here is my thought. A video, basically any video, even a documentary or a crash test with a car dummy, should "tell a story".

Now here is my question: Since video is ideal for telling a story, why not, for a wedding video, actually start with a few photos from the years before, maybe like a short slide show? Something where the bride or groom were young kids, then teen/high school age, then a few of them as a couple "going together" but not married, maybe engaged, and then ... start in with the wedding video?

If the video would be distributed to friends and relatives, I suspect that many of these people never saw those pictures and would be interested in seeing how they grew up and getting to the point where they are now. I'm thinking maybe a dozen pictures or so at a few seconds each would do it???

What do you think?

[Chris Harding]

Hi John

One of my "bright ideas" was to do a real wedding documentary with bridal/ family interviews and almost run it the same as a reality program. A guy does them in Miami and it impressed me!!

I put together a new web page along with exciting stuff and samples and was really confident it would take off in a big way as it was far more interesting to watch than a boring ole wedding of just the day.

Brides had no interest at all!!! I just don't understand it but thems the breaks!!! They simple want a record of the day like everyone else does and the only story telling is the sequential day as it happens ...yeah it's boring and mundane I know BUT that's what my brides want.... I'd love just a few to take me up on a decent wedding storyline based video but it seems they have a one track mind!!!

Chris

[Don Bloom]

John,
Around my area 20 years ago, adding a montage as you described into the beginning of the video was a popular thing to do. I finally rallied against it and stopped doing it especially when I started doing short form edits back in the mid 90s.
IMO and only my opinion No one really cares what they looked like in their baseball or cheerleaders uniform when they were 8 years old EXCEPT their immediate family and by that I mean their parents.

I, like many others here have seen hundreds of poorly done montages shown at receptions. BLAH!
If they want to do something to really tell their story do a professionally done well crafted Love Story!

Sorry if I sound jaded and grumpy...jaded because of all the weddings over the years and am frankly tired of them...grumpy because I'm still on my first cup of coffee. I'll get better as the day goes on.

Anyway, to the best of my knowledge, no one is doing the montages as a part of the wedding video anymore. seperately, sure. Hell I used to make a lot of extra money doing them to be shown at receptions.

[Robert Benda]

Originally Posted by Don Bloom

I, like many others here have seen hundreds of poorly done montages shown at receptions. BLAH!
If they want to do something to really tell their story do a professionally done well crafted Love Story!
.

I'm with you, Don. I've been an MC for 15 years and seen so many horrible montages. The worst was 19 minutes long. I actually played it in .10X time (basically, in fast forward) on a laptop to trim about 2 minutes off.

I finally started to offer to make them for people on the condition we do it my way: I do interviews with the couple and layer in stories and get them talking about OTHER people. Oh, and short. 7 minutes max, 5 minutes is good.

[Max Palmer]

It's funny, I'm in the same boat as the OP and some of the rest of you as well. Since I'm just starting out, I've wondered countless times what I should be shooting and/or including. Right now, I'm doing very long days (from the start of the prep, until the last dances of the night) and putting together 2-hour doc-style discs plus 5-min highlight. I'm flat-rate, so I tell the B&G that you pay me $X, and you get me for the whole day, and every client gets the same thing. Makes life easy for me and easy for my clients, while I figure out my fee structure (still in the process of raising rates, and improving my feel of things.)

All my clients that have booked me so far have done so after viewing the first highlight video I ever made. I think they enjoy seeing themselves captured in a cinematic, artistic manner so much that they barely even ask me about the full disc and what's included. All they say is "I saw that video you did for so-and-so- I want that!"

At my most recent client meeting, the bride said to me "All I care about is the ceremony and getting that captured- you can get piss drunk and fall down at the reception for all I care."

[Kyle Root]

I've been filming weddings for about 13 years now and have always done the "long form" documentary style. My final videos have always been around 45 minutes to an hour depending on what all is covered.

The Rehearsal, Rehearsal Dinner, Pre-Ceremony and Reception are typically more of what I'd call highlights, but the Ceremony is always full up real time. In my area, clients always seem to want the whole thing documentary style. I've only had 1 client in all these years specifically ask for a "highlight only" kind of final video.

Normally the Rehearsal and Rehearsal Dinner will be a 5-10 minute segment depending on the happenings, the Pre-Ceremony will be another 5-10 minutes, then the Ceremony is usually 20-30 minutes, and then the Reception is usually 10-20 minutes depending on how much goes on.

Having said all that, I watched Ray Roman's Creative Live training a few weeks ago and that really has made me re-think a lot of things about my approach to this hobby/biz.

[Diana Fisk]

Thanks so much for your responses, it seems like I'm not alone on this one.

I have a couple of quiet months coming up so think I am going to redo a couple of the documentary style cuts to something I would consider more creative and original. Then perhaps I have something to show future couples as a choice.

I have been doing weddings about 50% and concerts/events the other 50%. So far all headaches have come from weddings!!