While Your Big Wedding Day is only a wedding video company, I have been a wedding photographer in the past. Now I've chosen to focus on cinematography, but my past experience is relevant to everything I do. There are LOTS of photographers and videographers available today to capture your wedding, below are a handful of questions to help you in your search.
1. What kind of experience do you have in capturing weddings?
Sometimes it’s best to get straight to the point. Starting with this question is only natural, and most vendors will be ready and comfortable giving you their honest answer. So proceed with confidence!
The wedding video/photo community is large and depending on your budget you can find yourself speaking to a vast range of people, from professionals to beginners. Pricing is only one way to determine experience and skill. Reviews are also very important to read. Of course, you need to make sure you like your videographer / photographer - that's one of the most important aspects to finding the right person to partner with!
If you have a really small budget (less than $1000), I'd find someone online that's trying to do weddings for free to improve their portfolio - they're going to try extra hard because their #1 priority is improving their portfolio (though you might need to communicate extra with them about posing. You know, help them to help you and everyone wins!) If someone's trying to charge less than $600, I'd say they're likely just starting out, and they might have the wrong mindset by not thinking of their portfolio as their payment. It's an odd concept, but someone eagerly looking to get paid $0 to create a great portfolio piece is likely going to do a better job than someone charging >$600 and having basically no weddings already in their portfolio. After you find that eager creative person willing to get paid $0, it's nice to tip them at the end of the night to encourage them after one of their first long days capturing a wedding!
For mid range budgets ($1500-3500), this is often where you find some of the best talent. I personally know over a dozen of the other wedding film/photo companies between Austin, San Antonio and Dallas, so I might be able to point you in the right direction if you want tips on other companies even if you and I are not a fit. I believe that you want a professional that still genuinely enjoys what they do, is willing to put in all the time required to make you feel comfortable and do a uniquely creative job, is attentive and uplifting.
For high budgets ($4500+), it's very rare to find a videographer or photographer that hasn't begun to view this job as more of a money grab. This mentality often seeps down into the cracks of everything they do for you. I'm not saying they're all like this, but most of the ones I've worked with and met seem to be. While you pay more, you sadly end up getting less most of the time - so make sure to ask really good questions like the ones on this list and don't take high prices plainly to mean they're the best in your area! These are often the corporate-type wedding film/photo companies, running their business like a factory - you never know who you'll actually get as your videographer or photographer, More likely than not, all they want is to book as many weddings as possible, not to stretch themselves creatively with your wedding.
I charge for mid-range budgets as I feel confident in my ability to capture your day with a consistency and quality that has garnered me over 12+ reviews of all 5 stars. Every one of those reviews is very important to me. While I filmed my first wedding video on my own in 2016, my company, 'Your Big Wedding Day', was founded in Jan. of 2022. Between 2016 and 2022 I'd been doing most of my video and editorial work for other big companies between San Antonio and Austin (some of which charge upwards of $10,000 for a single wedding highlight video!!), gaining skills while building other companies portfolio's :( but I'm not really upset about it! It was great experience and some of those people I met are my great friends today!
2. When can we expect to get our final video back to us?
You should be able to expect a timely delivery of your final video. I personally have many friends that have had to wait weeks or months beyond the stated delivery timeframe. I guarantee a 14-day delivery, or you get your money back. I’ve never once failed this agreement. This is possible because I often start your edit the day after the wedding day. It’s best to edit the video when all the footage is still fresh on the brain. This is also a great guide to understanding the experience level of your videographer. Most of the time a late delivery is correlated directly with experience and time management, not in actually being overly busy. OR - regarding the highly expensive companies - they'd given your video to an intern to edit and because they're fairly new to editing, it takes awhile.
3. What style of video do you shoot?
There are many ways I could write about the most common approaches to wedding videography. Whether your videographer is using a gimbal, doing guerrilla filmmaking handheld, or using tripods, will all deliver vastly different results. But I’ve decided to break 'style' down like this:
Traditional Highlight
This is 3-5 minutes long and typically shows footage from three main sections of your day: getting ready, ceremony, and reception. Often starting with getting ready, and moving linearly through the day.
Cinematic Highlight
While you can find drone footage in a traditional highlight, I’d say it’s more of a staple of the cinematic style. Rather than focusing on the linear order of the day’s events, this focuses on all the best shots from your big day. With a focus on the video looking as good as possible, and the story coming through audio of people speaking vows or something else that tells the story verbally as an overdub.
Documentary
Longer form than a highlight video, this is a common style where your videographer simply shows all of the day’s events in the order that they occurred and is edited in a straightforward way. This style will often feature as many of your guests as possible, as well as other vendors and decorations.
Storytelling
This could involve interviewing family members, filming your love story (how you met, your engagement story), and editing that over a Traditional Highlight film.
I have add-ons that make my package more of a Documentary or Storytelling style, but my base package is more Cinematic Highlight than anything.
4. Would you meet with us either via zoom or in person?
It’s a great idea to not only talk with your videographer or photographer before hiring them, but to also see their smiling face! A good video/photo person will appreciate this too, and even mention it before you get the chance to. Once I met with a bride and her mom in person and could soon tell that we weren’t a good fit. It’s worth taking at least some time to feel that out for yourself.
5. Have you ever been to our venue before? Are you willing to go there before our wedding?
This one took me awhile to learn - it’s helpful to understand a venue before the day of the wedding. As the videographer, I feel 2 steps ahead of the day when I not only know the layout of the venue, but also have the itinerary in my pocket. It’s the difference between being 2 steps ahead, or potentially 1 step behind. And on a wedding day, the person with the camera shouldn’t be one step behind anything.
As a conclusion, I have a random, cheesy metaphor for you:
Finding a good videographer is like hiring a ninja. Most of the time they’re out of the way, not disrupting anything or anyone. But they know every step they need to take, as they have taken those steps 100 times before. They are easy going, of course, always able to adapt to what is happening around them. Always positive, uplifting, and friendly, not really having anything to do with ninjas, but it does help!
And of course, a good videographer has the ability to communicate clearly with, and prioritize your photographer.
I wish you the best in your search for a photo/video team! :)
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