Video Restrictions

Many times, a church’s restrictive video guidelines are the direct result of abuses by other, non-professional videographers. Your videographer should meet with your church coordinator to discuss any aspect of our production. Additionally, if you have any questions regarding placement of their cameras or the arrangement of your bridal party, they should be available to meet with you at the church to review your plans.

Camera Placement And Your Bridal Party

Excellent wedding movies don’t just happen by accident. It’s very important to include your videographer during all the planning stages of your ceremony. Assuming your videographer can just “work around” bridal party obstructions, poor lighting or severely restricted camera placements will put the final quality of your wedding movie very much at risk. For this reason, we think it's important that your videographer should be available to attend your rehearsal, regardless of how many times they’ve produced a wedding at a particular site. It’s during this time that they should make sure you and/or your church coordinator have allowed for placement of our cameras and equipment. If the cameras are blocked by flowers, a candelabra, the altar table, or even bridal party members, your movie may wind up disappointing you. A good videographer will NOT disrupt the ceremony, in any way, to move any obstructions that are in the way.

If you have planned to assemble the bridal party in a “U” or horseshoe shape that encloses or surrounds you, LET YOUR VIDEOGRAPHER KNOW IMMEDIATELY! Although this type of placement is thought to provide greater intimacy for the couple, it makes it extremely difficult to capture your wedding in a way that will provide you with the emotion that results from close-ups and full camera views during the ceremony. This type of bridal party placement can typically only be shot from the back of the church.

If you plan on using side kneelers for your Best Man and Maid of Honor, ask if those kneelers can be placed in line with yours. Side kneelers that are angled toward you and your spouse may block your videographers front cameras from attaining certain close-ups. Have your videographer review with you, your bridal party, and the officiant during the wedding rehearsal how the filming will go.

Lighting

Guidelines on lighting are fairly simple… If your setting is dark, your movie will be dark. They key to excellent quality movie lighting is bright and balanced. You should ask your coordinator to provide maximum and balanced lighting throughout the ceremony location. You should also avoid any combination of extremely bright and extremely dim lighting. For example, a very brightly lit altar area combined with very low or dark house lighting, produces high contrast images that tend to look hard and flat. Adjusting the lighting up or down during your ceremony may also produce poorly contrasted images. Our company examines your church’s lighting system at the rehearsal, and makes recommendations to the coordinator.  However, we've found that many coordinators have their own policy concerning lighting from which they will not deviate. We suggest you discuss your desire to have your wedding professionally videotaped during the initial meetings with the church personnel to clarify their existing policy.

If you are planning a portion or all of your ceremony to be conducted in candlelight, please understand that video cameras do not record well IN THE DARK, no matter what your videographer tells you. Although extremely rare, your videographer may need to use additional lighting during the ceremony.  A good videographer will make sure their lighting is as unobtrusive as their cameras.

Also, please inform friends and family who may be planning to bring personal video cameras that you have contracted a professional video production company and will appreciate their cooperation in yielding to our cameras and equipment.

Reception Lighting

At your reception, your DJ, band or site coordinator may also want to dim the overall house lights to set a certain mood or atmosphere. Going back to the previous section, remember that dark venues mean dark videos.  If your video is important to you, we recommend you allow your videographer to work with the reception venue to control the lighting level.  A good videographer knows how to strike a balance between mood lighting and proper video lighting.  Some videographers use small, on camera lights as well and only turn them on when necessary to properly illuminate a shot.

Microphones

Videographers today use varying combinations of wireless and hard-wired microphones during the ceremony and the reception. Make sure your videographer is using broadcast quality microphones and they have enough of them to properly cover all the sounds of your ceremony and reception.  For a typical ceremony, you could have more than four separate microphones necesary (one for the groom, one for the officiant, one for the lecturn and one for an instrumental accompanyment).  Please do not try to remove or reposition these microphones by yourself. Most microphones are very small in size, which allows them to be very inconspicuous, but it also makes them very fragile. Trying to remove them on your own may damage them.

The final quality of your wedding movie should be very important to you.  By taking an active role in the production of your wedding movie and learning some of the technology behind the creation of your wedding movie, you are going to be much happier with your final production.