How "cinematic" are your full wedding videos compared to your trailers?
 

I love watching all of your wedding trailers and am often amazed on how well done they are.

However, is the full wedding video you give tot he B&G as creatively done for an hour or is it more or less just a documentary on the day? Like on several trailer, you would have vows overlaying scenic shots and what not. Would you do the same in the full video, or would you play it a little safer on the full video?

Arif -my finished DVD is about 25 -35 minutes and is a blend of documentary and cinematic styles. The balance has shifted more to documentary lately as the feedback I've gotten from clients says they really like to hear more of the natural audio from the day.

Art

80% of my production is documentary style, in that I'm not putting background music into the ceremony. I do use all available camera angles and mis it up to get the best and most watchable production, but it is a live event, and I was hored to record that event. But everything up to and after the ceremony, I put music under, I choose the shots, and I try to keep the pace moving along.

Essentially I put the majority of my creative effort into the introduction & material leading up to the ceremony. That is where I have time to bust out the glidecam, get good b-roll of decorations, etc. After the reception, the tone switches from a "highlight" style highly "edited" production to a bit more formulaic presentation of the evening. Customer still want to see the toasts, the first dances, the cake cutting ,etc etc etc. So I still have to provide those scenes. But what I do is cut their time down considerably (except the toasts, I keep those intact if at all possible). I may only put 1 minute of each first dance on the production because any more than that and it is boring for me to edit, and I'm sure it is for them to watch. :-) I try to break out the glidecam at the first dances as well, so there is some good footage to cut to besides the tripod fixed cam on the side.

Arif,

We break our final DVD's into 5 parts (for the most common package):

Bridal Prep (cinematic montage)
Preceremony (cinematic montage)
Ceremony (basic edit)
Reception (basic edit)
Recap of the Ceremony/Reception (cinematic montage)

I have seen other videographers that do one 20 minute highlight video of the entire day set to several songs. We have offered this to our brides in the past, but the format we currently use seems to be what they want. By "basic edit", I mean that we edit the ceremony between the two cameras and show all of the key moments of the reception, plus lots of dancing, comments and scenery.

HTH!