Questions for the wedding editors
 

1. What is the first thing you do after transferring/capturing the footage on the rig? How does the process go for you?

2. How long or many hours does it take to edit a wedding film?

3. How long does it take for you to color correct an entire wedding?

Thanks.

Re: Questions for the wedding editors
 

I would like to know how others does it as well. As for me:

1. Convert, split into folders for prep/ceremony/reception/location shoot, etc
2. 4 hours for highlight, 14 hours for full coverage. I still need to work on my editing speed.
3. On average 10-15 minutes per clip. But this is only using standard 3 way colour corrector.

Re: Questions for the wedding editors
 

Hi Sean,

Your questions don't have nice, neat, simple answers.

1. I usually take a little break after ingesting all the footage. Then I come back and start following my template or plan of action. First I sort the footage into bins in AVID. Work goes faster when it's organized properly.

2. As for how long it takes to edit the film, it depends. What I can say generally, is that it takes much less time now than when I did the first one. First I start on the full documentary. I lay it all out sequentially on the timeline, then cut out all the "not good stuff" that I can.

If you have shot the ceremony with multiple cameras, you really need to learn the multicam feature in your NLE software. Use it the way your NLE is designed to be used. Generate your entire multicam sequence before sending footage to the timeline.

After the documentary is laid out, I start the online short, if the client has ordered one. I start the short by laying the music on the timeline first. Then I mark natural breaks in the music. I fit the scenes to the music.

3. I am very careful setting up my cameras to match each other. I am also a much better shooter than when I started out. Therefore, I spend vastly less time on color correction. Having to spend a lot of time on color correction DEVOURS YOUR PROFITS. It's more effective to just shoot it right to begin with. You don't want to waste time fixing footage. Also, get a good tripod. You don't want to spend time taking out the shakes either.

Learn your camera(s). Really learn your camera. Learn what settings work best in different situations. If you become an expert shooter, your job as an editor becomes much easier. It's hard to turn crap into gold.

Finally, I deliver to the customer in no more than two weeks. I promise within a month. Efficiency in your workflow is the key to profitability. Get the product to the customer while their desire is still hot. Having everything ready and waiting when they return from the honeymoon is ideal.Then they will be enthusiastic and generate referrals, provided you have actually done a good job for them. BTW, Corporate clients don't like to wait a long time either.

Be efficient. Don't waste time. It's a business. Sure, enjoy yourself, but it's a business.

Re: Questions for the wedding editors
 

the biggest slow down i see so far is using twixtor, ir forces me to prerender the preview before watching anything smoothly. (I use sony vegas)

Re: Questions for the wedding editors
 

Then learn to shoot and edit without the need to use slo-mo ;)

Re: Questions for the wedding editors
 

Do you really spend this much time per clip? A wedding has hundreds of clips...it would take many days just to color correct?? What editor are you using?

Re: Questions for the wedding editors
 

I log/transfer, convert, edit the wedding (2-3 hours), sort/edit the highlight video (7-8 hours), edit the reception (4-5 hours). Obviously numbers can vary due to the amount of footage but that's a rough estimate.

I use FCP. I really really don't like FCP X. It's going to take a while to get used to...

Re: Questions for the wedding editors
 

Hi Sean

Obviously capture depends on whether it's tape or card but after transferring the card data what I personally do is import around 30 clips at a time into my editor (Sony Vegas) and then take a quick peek at the thumbnails and allocate clips to events for each camera...ie: 0 - 27 (bridal prep) 27 - 55 (ceremony cutaways and 2nd angle) and so on.

I use the main camera for the main ceremony and main audio and also speeches so that has longer clips but less of them so they are easy to categorize!!!

Editing for me usually involves editing everything on a Monday (I capture and categorize on the Sunday) and then doing the DVD's and packaging on a Tuesday....a standard wedding probably is about 10 hours work for me but I am shooting documentary style and I pay special attention to "shooting for editing" so my edits are quick (this goes back to the old days when we had to edit on two linear VHS recorders so you always shot to make edits easier!!)

I rarely need to colour correct as I'm using identical cameras so most footage is spot on!!!

I would suspect that doing slo-mo is time consuming...I shoot on the stedicam at 720 50P (we are PAL) and then just stretch the video in Vegas!! It's quick and easy and the high frame rate makes for smooth slomos!!

Chris

Re: Questions for the wedding editors
 

My mistake Warren, I meant per edited video clip (ie. the preparation, ceremony, reception, etc) that goes into the DVD. Not per clip from the camera. :)

I've recently been using PluralEyes (yes, where have i been?!), my workflow has been tons faster! What I did was put footages from 3 different cameras that cover parts of the reception/ceremony, let Plural Eyes sync it, cut angles that I dont use, fix the audio, add opening, add closing to the video, colour correct. And voila!

Re: Questions for the wedding editors
 

Wow you guys edit fast... I just spent 30-40 hours editing a 3-minute highlight video, including the basic color correction I could do. Asking a motion graphics editor to help out with the text/names part. But to be fair, a lot of time went into the color correction (that I still can't seem to truly fix, but it's getting closer), even though we used the same cameras with same settings. Haven't even started the long form edit.

Re: Questions for the wedding editors
 

The main reason for making sure that edits are smooth and fast is purely financial!! It's a bit pointless doing a wedding for say $3900 when you have to spend 40 hours alone on just an edit...in my world 40 hours of my time at the edit desk is worth an absolute minimum of $100 per hour so just a 40 hour edit ends up as a loss already ..never mind the fact that you might have been onsite for 10 hours, travelled for 2 hours etc etc.

A local wedding guy here posted a while back on another forum that he spent 2 full days getting a 2 minute clip perfect. How do these people make a profit or are you charging $10K +++++ for a wedding shoot????

We are running a business and for us time is money so my bottom line is, if I want to make a profit (and pay the bills too) I need to finish a job within an economically viable time window!!!

Chris

Re: Questions for the wedding editors
 

It was our first video. We only charged them a few hundred bucks, which actually didn't even fully cover our operating expenses. We still have a long form edit to do for them as well. So you're absolutely right about hourly wages...but we knew our potential future clients were going to judge us on this clip, so we wanted to do what we could to make it as good as possible (still not there). Not to mention many issues occurred during the actual filming, so we were not able to get the shots we hoped.

But really, you think editing is worth $100 an hour? I would be happy to make $15-20, and $30-40 would be spectacular doing this kind of work. We also spent about 100 hours or more planning, practicing with our gear, discussing with clients, etc. but of course, this work will pay off for future clients as well. We also just had the time as this is our main business.

I'm sure we will discover patterns in our edits and what works well for transitions and other scenes, which will speed up our edits. I'm curious though what you perceive as worth $3900? How good would your video be? I would love to get in that pricing point, but most of my clients are probably willing to pay only $500 (or less) up to $1500, but still hope for StillMotion or other similar high-end production quality.

Re: Questions for the wedding editors
 

1. I have a coffee in front of the footage and play a music to match particular wedding.

2. For the whole day wedding it takes about 3-4 evenings to edit.

3. Colour correct with one click.

Re: Questions for the wedding editors
 

1. As soon as I get home I transfer all the footage to the drive folder for the gig. When I'm ready, I spend a couple of hours culling all the footage. That footage gets transcoded and moved to a separate folder that I work from.

2. I just used a timecard app to keep track of a short edit I did (to get some idea on profits), clocked in at 10 hours. I envy the same day edit guys. Need to keep track of the long form next.

3. Once you've got your style/template in place its just copy and paste with minor adjustments on exposure and white balance and sharpness. I'd say I spend 1 to 2 hours out of the ten.

Zhong, as far as I've been able to tell, $100 per hour is about the going rate for editing. For $20 you can work for someone else doing something a lot easier and not have to worry about marketing and booking clients. At $40, I think you would be surprised how much you need to invest in gear and how at that price you are loosing money.

Re: Questions for the wedding editors
 

I guess the problem is no one I'm encountering seems to think paying more than $1-1.5k is worth it for their wedding video. We've invested around $10k in equipment and other costs (insurance, website, DBA, etc.), but we're hoping to break even around 1 or 1.5 yrs in business, then start profiting after that.

I mean, when people are paying their photographers $500-1.5k, and they view video as less important, they definitely won't be willing to pay $3900.

How much are you charging for your videos and how do you get them to pay it?

Re: Questions for the wedding editors
 

Wow Zhong, 30-40 hours for a highlight video is overkill mate. If you spent too much time on color correction, then you are not shooting right in first place. Your footage out of camera, should need minimal color correction if done right.

Anyway, most clients do not really pay much attention to the color correction, motion graphics etc. Sure it's a bonus.. but the storytelling & coverage is what attracts them best.

I agree with others. At $15-$20/hours, minus all the investment.. might as well work for a fast food restaurant :) To see how much a video is worth, try looking at prices of competitors in yout area. That will surely help.

Re: Questions for the wedding editors
 

I'm in the fast turn-around camp. If it was taking me 30-40 hours to edit a full wedding, never mind a 3 minute highlights, I'd be looking for a new occupation.
To spend that time doing a 3 minute highlight make no commercial sense, unless you are in the very, very top echelons of the business.

I can understand from a personal satisfaction point of view but to do it to attract customers if you know that you'll not be able to deliver that to them at an affordable price seems a bit misguided.

To have spent that amount of time I assume that you mean you were following the current vogue for colour grading rather than colour correcting. If you are taking 30-40 hours to colour correct I'd suggest you spend that time finding out how to set-up your camera correctly.

Re: Questions for the wedding editors
 

Like I mentioned, it was our first video and expect the edit times to come down as we develop our flow and system. We learned a lot of things that took a lot of time to figure out - things like what sorts of shots generally make good transitions, how to move from one scene to the next without it feeling like a random montage of shots, etc.

As far as color grading/correction, what's the difference? We shot with the Technicolor Cinestyle profile matched on all three cameras and did our best to keep our Kelvin color temps roughly the same within the scene. All three cams actually matched well (expected, since we had nearly identical settings and cameras) before the color grading/correction.

The problem was when the S-curve (LUT) was applied...for whatever reason, 5 of our shots at the hair salon just refused to match properly to the other clips at the hair salon. We spent tens of hours on these 5 clips alone and it's still not right. They matched each other fine if viewed as pure Technicolor Cinestyle, but as soon as the the S-curve was applied, these 5 clips no longer matched. The rest of our hair salon footage was easy to work with.

This wasn't even about personal satisfication. To be honest, we weren't that impressed with our final video, mainly because the song the clients chose was a horrible song that created a strange, upbeat, whimsical, corny vibe. It was very hard to find places to naturally sneak live audio in as well because this song was very flat, non-stop singing. It also had just a few seconds of instrumental lead-in in the beginning, not long enough to throw any sort of live audio into. These sorts of issues all added tremendously to our edit time as we kept experimenting with what would work best with the song. In the end, I really believe it's the song that ruined this edit the most. That said, for our very first video, I think we did decently. I'm proud of it as a first video...but as a portfolio worthy piece? Probably not.

Re: Questions for the wedding editors
 

Also, you are right about the color correction - for 95%+ of our clips, it only took a few minutes each. But it was those 5 shots that for whatever reason weren't matching that added 10-15 hours to our edit (and it still doesn't really match). We played with those 5 clips for so long, we wanted to scream at each other.

I don't know why not. Identical cameras, identical settings, identical picture profile (Technicolor Cinestyle), nearly identical K white balance temperatures in the same scene...

Also, if you feel $15-20/hr is too little, then how much are you charging? Let's say you have a 2-man crew as I do, so profits are split in half. Our operating costs are around $500 per wedding (not including the 10k of equipment we purchased) for rentals, insurance, gasoline, DVD cases, discs, etc. Let's also assume it takes 40 hours of work per person per wedding.

If we charge $2,500 - $500 operating costs, that leaves $2,000 profit, or $1,000 per person. That's $25/hr...not much more than the $15-20 I was mentioning. But the thing is, $2,500 is pretty crazy...I'm seeing tons of local wedding videographers do it for around $1,000-1,600 in the Los Angeles area, and they have much more experience than us.

I'm not sure how you would get away with charging $3,900 for a video, especially when photographers are paid $1,000-2,000. Would love tips on how to find clients willing to pay such a high rate! I imagine if clients are paying nearly $4,000, they will want StillMotion or similar quality, which we clearly don't have the skill to do yet.

Re: Questions for the wedding editors
 

10-15 hours (two day work) to attempt correction of 5 non-essential clips, and you say we, how many of you were working on them?. Whilst I can only admire your dedication to your craft I think you'll need to work out a much faster work flow and methodology if you want to make a profit with weddings.

I think that some people are tempted into this market by the claims of people achieving multi thousand dollar (or pound) commissions. Whilst I'm not in a position to dispute that those sort of prices are obtainable I can only say from long experience that those sort of prices are only obtained regularly by a very few people.

This is not the only industry that has it's share of up-talkers; more colloquially BS.

Re: Questions for the wedding editors
 

They were integral clips...we had hundreds to choose from, but these five were part of the ones selected that had the right angle, framing, and emotion. If they were non-essential, we wouldn't have spent 10-15 hours trying to color correct them. This isn't so much a dedication to the craft as it is an issue that needs to be solved. You wouldn't present a finished product in which five shots very obviously don't match and stand out like a sore thumb, would you?

What I think is being completely ignoring is the fact that this is our first video. Although we've edited other projects before (amateur level), this is our first wedding video. It is also the first time we've done any color correction. You don't learn a software and its tools in 1 hour, do you? You don't learn the right flow to edit a new type of project in 1 hour, right? Of course we don't hope to spend 30-40 hours on a highlight video in the future, but it was necessary for now as we are learning what works and what doesn't.

I was just impressed that some of you are able to pound out highlight videos in 3-5 hours of editing only.

Re: Questions for the wedding editors
 

The simple way to make more money is definitely by cutting down your editing time. Assuming total profit $2000... If you cut down your total editing time to say 10 hours (which is possible) and wedding day 28 hours (14 x 2 for two people) and packaging 1 hour, you are already making $50 per hour.

If you can live with $25/hour, your can pretty much half the fee down to $1500.

I'm also still working on myself to cut down the edit time. My slower workflow were largely affected by my shooting workflow. The better my team shoot, the quicker I'll edit.

Re: Questions for the wedding editors
 

Thats a good point, if you shoot all amazing footage then editing is so easy, grab good shots and good shots work with a lot of things, bad shots u really gotta work to find a good spot for them.

Re: Questions for the wedding editors
 

Hi Sean

Some of us "old" guys started off before computers were an unknown factor and we used to linear edit which is transferring either from the camera onto a tape machine in realtime (or two machines) It lacked the precision of NLE editing so we had to "shoot for editing"! In other words you needed to shoot your footage so there was minimal editing since editing was such an enormous pain in the butt!! (Many times I had the urge to toss the VCR out the window..trust me!!!)

By planning your shoot just a little bit more carefully you will find that editing speeds up dramatically!!! Just plan each shot so you shoot the beginning and the end of the shot cleanly and instead of shooting and swinging away or walking to the next shot ..compose them carefully and make sure you have a clean start and finish and smooth camera movements in-between...with a bit of practice you will find that with a tiny bit of forethought you will even have clips that hardly even need any editing.

Even on an NLE you can have "waste footage" that's easy to edit. At weddings I go from table to table before any events happen just to give the bride "coverage" of who was there... I do this in one clip BUT by doing a slow pan around the table and then pointing the cam at the floor and walking to the next table and doing the same, I give myself visual cues where to cut each table start and end....the raw footage looks awful ...table pan...video of the carpet...table pan etc etc BUT it's very easy to edit as I know I need to cut as soon as the footage moves down!!! Ok it sounds silly but it's fast!!!!

Shoot to edit rather than shoot randomly and your edits will speed up a lot!!

Chris

Re: Questions for the wedding editors
 

Spot on Chris. One of the things I've been learning since I started is; when you're on single camera, shoot as if you're editing in camera. When you're on a multi-angled cameras, shoot as if you're doing live coverage. How I wish I learnt all this when I first started.

Re: Questions for the wedding editors
 

I definitely have a lot to learn and improve but I am happy with my progress, from wedding 1 to 2 now to 3 my quality jumped tremendously. Its funny back at the first 2 i did everyone loved and i thought they were shot and edited well, now that i stepped up the quality with more cameras gears etc i see myself now compared to you pros and its funny how once you felt like u were on top of the world and now you just see so much to improve. I think I gotta work a lot with working with the bride and groom and creating artistic shots with just them and their smile.

i have a buddy in san diego i travelled to help and learn from and its amazing what he can do. Definitely a great guy. Check out his work: AQUA VIVUS PRODUCTIONS - BLOG



Hey chris do you have a vimeo account?

Re: Questions for the wedding editors
 

+1 to Sean's advice. Find an assistant that knows what shots to get, and having two people makes editing much easier.

The advice I was given when I started out was, do it for free, or do it at market rate. Otherwise, with everyone undercutting the market to figure out their workflow and get portfolio material, you experience what you are running into where none of the brides are willing to pay market rate.

Re: Questions for the wedding editors
 

Hi Zhong

My mate in California has some inspiring articles on his blog and mostly common sense stuff that's worth the read.

Take a quick read of Earl's blog back in 2009 regarding this very subject...I also found that I had to adopt this way of thinking otherwise I would simply become unprofitable!!!

EC Come, EC Go: At What Price Video Excellence?

PS: Sean I have a vimeo account but it's empty!!! I mostly host bridal stuff on YouTube and then keep the link non-public and embed in the bride's webpage I create for them.

Chris

Re: Questions for the wedding editors
 

I also envy all the fast cutters....

I'm getting a bit faster but still...complaining a lot about how much time i'm spending diting.

- For a Highlight...wow... just finding the right song can be fast or painfully slow...I feel the song can make or break a video...i never repeat a song in a HL so if I haven't found new ones I have to sit an search...that can be fast or very slow.

- also..how I'm i going to edit it? i don't always know...and I try to find new ways to look at it and find the right way for the couple and the type of wedd they had...waiting for muse...time..time..research..

- HL has to be great to me..is what more people will get to see..is also my business card...so..i need it to be great....

- some HL..12 hrs..others 8hrs..others 4hrs... don't think any shorter than that.

-or a full wedd...a bit easear maybe... a week of work..maybe 2 ... I know...i need to work faster..I'm already getting overwhelmed.

Re: Questions for the wedding editors
 

I agree with the post EC Come, EC Go, that there is a happy balance that should be achieved. However, only 8 hours to edit a wedding sounds crazy to me, I'd love to see a link to one of these 8 hour edits to see what the quality is.

Re: Questions for the wedding editors
 

Hi Chris

What does "8 hours" have to do with quality??? If a wedding is shot with 6 cameras, nothing synced, and the colour balance is way off then it will take a huge amount of work to make "watchable" ..BUT even after 40 hours of editing the quality might still be terrible!!!

You can easily have a single or dual cam shoot with nicely composed shots, minimum waste footage and colour balance almost perfect which any editor could neatly wrap up in less than 8 hours. (Obviously rendering and DVD authoring takes longer) but whether an edit takes 4 hours or 40 hours, quality doesn't even come into the mix... out of focus and badly exposed footage can maybe be attempted in an edit but it will still be low quality!!

Chris

Re: Questions for the wedding editors
 

Hi Chris,

I guess you're right, quality is the wrong word, the video can be of high quality but boring. I guess I'd love to see an example of a wedding that took 8 hours to edit and isn't just a bunch of cross dissolves and is something that the couple will actually want to pull out and be proud to show to their friends and family. It's my personal taste, but I find that brides I work with do notice motion graphics and time spent color grading the video. I charge enough to make it worth my while and they are willing to pay the extra money to have a video that they will cherish.

Re: Questions for the wedding editors
 

I guess it depends on what type of video you are producing. If you are producing something complicated like highlights, then obviously you will need to spend more time. But if it's documentary style, then it is easier to edit given that your footages are of good quality.

And surely it depends on how good you get. I've seen some amazing SDEs done in 2 hours that is far better than what I could produce in 4 hours or even more.