The Importance of the Wedding Video

*Video Courtesy of Dream Video Productions

If you are solely planning on hiring a photographer to capture the magical moments of your wedding, you may want to think twice after reading this.

Wedding photography certainly has its perks. A photographer can record a kiss, a hug, or even a smile as a beautiful image forever cemented in time. For this reason, couples feel that pictures are all that is needed to document their perfect day. However, pictures are only stills of a single point in time. They are one-dimensional and lacking any back-story or sound. To truly capture a momentous occasion like a wedding, videography is the key.

In the past, prospective customers frequently looked down upon the wedding videography industry. Particularly with the rise of video in the 1980’s and continuing into the 1990’s many wedding videographers produced poor work and offered even worse customer service. Such videographers contributed to the development of a stigma that was attached to the industry as a whole. Due to the fact that wedding videography, invented in 1980, was such a new industry, there was a lack of quality control and hence sub par work. Those in charge often performed so poorly because they hadn’t yet formulated a proper approach to treat video as well as their customers.

All of this changed in the beginning of the 21^st century. With the start of the 2000’s came in a new wave of wedding videographers, with a different approach to the industry. Today’s videographers no longer see a couples’ wedding day as just another gig, but rather the opportunity to film a family documentary. Videographers of this era recognize that a wedding is the one special day where 200 people from two different families come together, perhaps for the first time, to celebrate the union of their loved ones.  Therefore it is important to the videographer that he or she chronicles the first kiss, the father and daughter dance, and even the surprise guest who travels hundreds of miles to be at their families’ wedding along with all of the other special moments that may occur.

That is why videography should not be ruled out simply because there will be a professional photographer present at the wedding. Photography and videography offer different aspects of documenting an occasion. Videography chronicles the entire story in moments instead of single framed images. When a crowd circles around a groom and his father-in-law as the two exchange jokes and laughter occurs, a photographer can only document the smiles or the crowd. A videographer will make the crowd, the joke and the laugh all visible and audible for the couple’s family to watch on video for years to come. Wouldn’t it be a pleasure for a couple’s children to see their parents’ wedding and be able to relive the moments as if they were actually there?

It is the role of a professional videographer to know just when such moments will occur. A modern experienced videographer is seasoned to anticipate when a spontaneous and exciting moment during a wedding will occur.  He or she knows that it is recounting those moments along with the standard events like vows and dances that will make their customers happiest.  The goal of the videographer is to tell the tale of a special occasion, while offering those other dimensions that photography can’t, like sound, motion, story and spontaneity.

Author: Chris Fig Productions & Samantha Riddell