How long are your films
 

Hello all

I was just wondering what the average time is for your weddings films are, i know its been asked in the past but times change. I used to do them about 1 hour and a half but now ive cut it right down to 30mins. Are anyone else's this short. Im not trying to raise a debate and im sure its been discussed here before ( i looked but could not find)

Just short answers on how long ( ish )especially all the 7d shooters

kind regards

Luke

30 minutes? I try to cram as much footage into 2 dvds as possible. Yes, that means they get 3-4 hours of footage including highlights and extras. I know that people will argue that watching 4 hours of footage is boring, but I think about years ahead when many couples are willing to watch everything. If they want see their wedding highlighed, its there. They also have the option to skip to each important part of the wedding. I wish I had that much of my wedding captured.

Sure the small, but awesome, edits look good now. Do the clients get the raw footage to view later? I give them that and do long edits. I've thought about doing smaller videos but most of the wedding moments I capture seems priceless. It looks great to just show all the best shots but it leaves out so many great moments. No doubt my music video type highlights are the best part of the dvds. Brides and grooms keep saying they watch them over and over. I ran into a groom recently and he said his wife watches the dvds everyday.

Thats my thoughts on it.

Durations have certainly extended with the introduction of dual-layer DVDs, Blu-Ray with intelligent chaptering enabling the client to watch any section they please, but 3-4 hours is longer than War & Peace!

Markets are different and even within the same market there are wide variations but most of our programmes are 1.15 to 1.45 depending on the number of extras like bands, fireworks, Chinese lanterns etc they want included.

Depends on the event and what the customer wants. In the rural area where I work, that mostly means a documentary style video of the wedding and the formal parts of the reception with the final (single disk) DVD running somewhere between 1 hr and 1½ hours.

Hi Luke

If I do a full wedding then is almost always spills onto 2 DVD's. For me, I'm giving the client memories so things like the ceremony and speeches must be kept intact. I certainly couldn't cram a wedding into 30 minutes. Also by giving the bride a 30 minute DVD I would feel like I was creating her by withholding memories that she might need to show her grandchildren!! We naturally have the wedding broken into clips with a comprehensive menu so they never have to watch more than say, 20 minutes in one sitting (normally the ceremony) but have a choice what to watch without getting bored!! I do a lot of "budget" weddings (from just the Ceremony arrival up to the First Dance) and those are almost always a pretty much full DVD (around 80 minutes)

Chris

We offer our clients what we call cinematic features as well as documentary edits. Our features are 15-20 minutes long and are short form presentations of the wedding day. Our documentary edits are real-time edits of major events of the day (ceremony, special dances, toasts, etc.) We're shooting with 7D's.

All of our couples receive a cinematic feature and we offer the documentary edits as an add-on. Most people choose the documentary edits but not all do. Some of our couples really just fall in love with the short form and that's all they want.

What he said, however we lay our highlight on the end. We shoot documentary, or as I like to call it, we shoot how the day unfolds and cut it to fit. As for your answer, our total DVDs can be between 3 and 5 hours depending on how long we are there.

Travis, you don't use video cameras?

We switched from XHA1's to 7D's about 5-6 months ago.

Nice, I bet you'd laugh at the amount of equipment I show up with. You can probably put your stuff in a back pack. Very Nice Travis.

I should have added to my initial response that we encode the video/audio at or about 8000kB/s. It seems pointless to do everything else to the best quality standard possible with our cameras etc and then to throw some of it away simply to squeeze a few more minutes on to the DVD. We have dual layer technology, let's use it.

Bear in mind we're producing a product we hope will be enjoyed maybe 20 years from now on replay equipment that will no doubt be even better than today's.

Like Travis, I switched from XHA1 to 7Ds but I find I use even more equipment now. The XHA1 had 1 lens, now I have 7 or 8.

I shoot with a 5D MK2 and a 7D and I editing down to a long and a short version but both are clips themselves.. the short is a 5 minuite highlight with music of client's choice. I also include a approximate 45 minute with full ceremony and extended reception clips and produce both a DVD of that as well as the mp4 HD version of it and the short.

Part of our reason for switching to the 7D was to reduce our equipment load and make destination weddings easier. I don't know that we have less gear (as in numbers of parts), but our gear does take up less space now. Of course, we've stuck with a limited number of lenses too; just the essentials.

Nope, that's my photographer wife. She literally has all of her gear (except an off-camera flash setup) in a single (fairly heavy) backpack. It makes me jealous.

I've actually got 2 Pelican cases, 2 tripod cases, and a large 'golf bag transport' case. I keep trying to find ways to pare it down more but I'm at the limit now I think for how we shoot.