Your Documentary Wedding Videography Questions Answered

Some videographers do ask for “couple time” in order to create some posed imagery as part of the filming process. Documentary wedding videographers however typically do not direct any of the action of a wedding day and capture the story candidly as it unfolds.

Personally for us, it is important for our style of filmmaking that our couples stay in the moment at all times and so do not pose or directly interfere with any moments at all on a wedding day.

Drones can offer some truly unique angles on a wedding day and are commonly used by some videographers to showcase a wedding venue from the air to set the scene for the wedding. As with all tools of cinematography though their use is a stylistic choice and not fitting to every style of film. It’s important to note that the use of Drones is highly regulated and for commercial purposes should only be carried out by a qualified operator and subject to aviation restrictions. In some situations drones can also be fairly noisy and distracting and many videographers choose not to use them for these reasons.

Here at York Place we generally don’t use drones principally for stylistic reasons. Our films are based on creating a sense of intimacy and offering to some extent a ‘guest’s perspective’ on the wedding day and so try to frame our imagery around more natural camera positions. Consequently we feel that the use of drones in most cases is likely to be inconsistent with our style of filming and break the intimacy of the wedding videos that we strive to create.

Sound and music are incredibly important parts of virtually any wedding video. It is often the music that sets the tone of the film, the pacing of the action and in some cases even the style of the edit. A well-crafted wedding film will generally use sound and/or music to heighten and lower the emotion or excitement at the appropriate moments in tandem with the visuals and is an essential tool in the film editor’s arsenal. Consequently, whilst some videographers will look for input on the choice of music for a wedding film, many will not for creative reasons.

It is equally important to note that the use of any music is subject to copyright restrictions which, in most cases, will restrict your wedding videographer to the use of pre-cleared royalty free music and mean that many of the more well-known popular tracks may be effectively unobtainable due to the high expense and time consumption involved in licensing popular music.

For us personally we actually see those apparent restrictions as something of a creative opportunity. The music you listen to every day can easily become synonymous with more than one thing – e.g. perhaps the song you played as you got ready for your wedding day might later become the theme of a TV advert and its constant repetition in this new context changes the meaning of the song for you. A well known song is also likely to come with different connotations for different people, e.g. other family members.  In using pre-cleared music created by emerging artists from specialist film websites we can create a soundtrack that is truly unique to your wedding film and to you as a couple and can act as a spark to your memories equally as powerful as the visuals themselves.