How to tell the couple’s story in the Wedding Film

Why a Story?

In my last post I talked about the importance of having a story driven element in a Wedding Film. I will talk some more about that in this post but essentially talk about how Julian Voigt Wedding Films creates that story element in the wedding video. We have all no doubt sat through boring wedding videos that follow a predictable formula- they look like a wedding video!

How the Wedding Video industry has changed in the past ten years! Good wedding videos have become like a film or documentary with a high production value. This has been achieved in part by the advent of affordable high end video production equipment that is now affordable, when I say “affordable” yes we are still talking thousands of pounds but not ten’s of thousands of pounds as would have been the case ten years ago. So making a cinematic wedding video is a lot more do-able these days. So the buzz word in the wedding videographer community is ‘cinematic’ we all aspire to creating ‘cinematic’ films.

Cinematic…

I looked up the word ‘cinematic’ for a definition on what it actually means and here’s is what I found thanks to Merriam-Webster Dictionary; “….filmed and presented as a motion picture, cinematic fantasies, a cinematic adaptation of a Novel…”

So according to that definition, “cinematic” means “film like” and can include the “adaptation of a Novel…”  OK, filming a wedding isn’t an adaptation of a Novel but… we are trying to tell a story just like a Novel!  So how can that be achieved?

 

Narrative…

A typical wedding video is usually around 20-30 minutes long hence for the videographer there isn’t a great deal of room for developing a story and it is a wedding video after all! Hence we are talking about a ‘story element’ to the film. I have found in my limited experience that a narrative is one of the best ways to get that story element into the wedding film. So what’s a narrative?  Essentially someone telling a story!  It could be the groom talking about how they first met, fell in love, how he proposed!

If you can buy out a little time preferably before the wedding day, but hey it can be done on the wedding day too, grab the groom and set up the camera with him talking about all or some of the above. This then becomes your narrative– the story or sub plot to the wedding film. You can add his narrative audio to other images of events happening during the day, like when the couple are getting portraits done or are grabbing a few precious moments together after the ceremony.  By mixing these images with that audio you instantly have a story!

This takes the wedding video and turns into into a wedding film. Think this way; you want to give people a reason to watch your wedding video! The story is the reason the hook that keep them watching! Yes the couple will watch their wedding video no matter what because it’s their wedding video, but if we think in terms of the wider audience- friends- family people looking at your work on your website and deciding whether to book you or not as their videographer it makes sense to add that ‘story element’ in there.

Even without Audio…

OK, what if the couple don’t want an interview in their film? We can look for other opportunities to build narrative- maybe we can grab an element of one of the speeches as there is usually some story being told by someone during the speeches. Even without narrative audio a selection of well chosen images in themselves can tell a story- we can all think of those movies that started with a scene of the camera looking a photo’s set in a home somewhere and you knew that the people in those photos were going to feature in the film and be part of the story.

Once we train our minds to look for the story then we’ll find it and we will then create truly ‘cinematic wedding films.’

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