Liverpool Wedding Video

Back in April 2018 I was presented with a challenge- film a wedding in Liverpool on December 29th 2018 and edit the film on the same day and show it on a projector in the evening to all the 200+ guests at the wedding. Charlotte and Sam and contacted a number of wedding videographers in Liverpool but could not find any who wanted to accept this challenge. When Charlotte contacted me I must admit my initial reaction was the same, I was not keen at all!

 

The Challenge!

Why was I not keen on this idea? Well filming a wedding is a full on commitment that requires the videographer to be on his metal the whole day- a typical wedding day being around 12 hours in duration, so the idea of finding time during what is a very busy day to actually edit the wedding film trailer (4 minute film) is a BIG ASK! Especially when you consider that a typical wedding film trailer takes me about 4-5 hours to edit. My question was, where will I find 4 hours free during the day??

 

How I did it

What made this challenge possible was that Charlotte & Sam’s wedding ceremony wasn’t till 3pm and this is what made the whole challenge possible. What I did was, a few days before the wedding I went to Liverpool Albert Dock area and filmed what we call in the industry the  ‘establishing shots’  these are shots of the area and significant land marks and icons that would not only establish where this wedding was taking place in Liverpool City Centre but say something about the couple too. For example Charlotte had told me that Sam was a Big Everton Fan and in the wedding video you see a nod to that. Getting these shots ahead of the wedding day really helped because I was able to start the editing process before the wedding- choose some music and lay those clips in the timeline. In the morning I shot some Bride prep footage and by 11am was adding that footage to the timeline, so by the time I left where Charlotte was getting ready I had already about 2 minutes of their wedding film done!

After the ceremony myself and the photographer headed over to the Albert dock to get some couple shots and the light was perfect just turning dusk and so some nice bulb lights on the dock. After filming couple shots I headed back to the Hilton Hotel and got set up for the speeches. Once those had been filmed I then had about 2 hours till the screening was scheduled. Hence I edited like mad to get footage from their ceremony a few hours earlier into the timeline and lo and behold we had a 4 minute plus trailer done- yay!

I wanted to do a quick dummy run by connecting my laptop to the Hilton’s projector and audio system to ensure everything worked well and I am glad I did as I was struggling to get a full screen experience of the film with only part of the screen filled? When you are in a state of anxiety you often find that your brain doesn’t quite work correctly and I was struggling to figure out why this was the case. With some help from the staff and another videographer we thankfully quickly realised that it was my laptop settings that was causing the problem because I use a secondary monitor at home and hence the screen display is divided. Once we adjusted the settings we were in business and it was all systems go! Phew!

 

The Reaction…

There were about 200+ guests waiting outside chomping at the bit to get back into the room to watch this film. I wanted to capture Charlotte & Sam’s reaction to the wedding film hence had them stand in the middle of the dance floor facing the screen while I set up a camera to record their reaction. I will show that clip in my next blog ;)

The reaction of the couple and the guests was great, in fact Charlotte & Sam came and gave me a big hug and said that it was exactly what they were looking for! It had all been worth it! They very kindly gave me a lovely review on ‘Guide for Bride’s’ which you can read here:

“…We used Julian to film our wedding day. We had been really struggling to find a videographer who was able to produce a same day edit. He had never done one before but was happy to take on the challenge. Julian listened to everything we wanted, we had phones calls and email contanct before hand to make sure everything was in place before the big day. We can whole heartily say that Julian went above and beyond to make sure we had a trailer clip ready to play our evening guests. He even had time to help my dad play some clips and pictures during his speech. The end result surpassed all our expectations with the majority of our guests commenting on how breath taking the clip was and they were astonished he put it together in such a short space of time. We would highly reccomend Julian to any one who would like a really personable and professional videographer to film their special day.

Amy Faith the photographer on the day was great and we worked well together as a team. Her pictures are superb and you can see them here: https://amyfaithphotography.com

If you are looking for a Wedding Videographer in Liverpool then get in touch for a quote:

https://julianvoigtweddingfilms.co.uk          Watch their wedding trailer here: