In this chapter:
What does a wedding videographer do?
Evolution of the wedding video
Styles of wedding videos
What makes wedding videography unique?
It is 2 p.m. You have been at work since eight o’clock this morning, and you have eight hours to go. Your feet hurt from standing in dress shoes, your shoulder hurts from carrying a tripod, and your head hurts because the bride is crying to her mother about last-minute changes to the seating arrangement. You aren’t sure if you should record these stressful moments or retreat to another room. You secretly wish the bride was wearing a microphone, but you’re pretty sure it would be inappropriate to ask her to put one on at this moment. Complicating things for you is the fact that the bride specified that she wanted lots of footage of the groom getting ready, but that appears to consist of him watching TV in his hotel room. Should you tell him to get dressed? Also, the ceremony starts in an hour, and you have yet to be allowed into the chapel to assess lighting; you only have one chance to get the vows, and you have to make sure you’ll be standing in the right place when they happen. And of course, the florist forgot the boutonnieres, and is driving 60 miles round trip to her shop to pick them up—hopefully by show time. Stress levels are higher than anything you’ve ever experienced…since last Saturday’s wedding, that is. You are, in short, having a typical day on the job as a wedding videographer.
The fact is, wedding videography is exhausting—with long hours, heavy gear, high stress— but it is also incredibly rewarding. As a wedding videographer, you will be regularly surrounded by people joyfully celebrating. Besides, wedding videographers thrive in a somewhat stressful environment and know that at least a small portion of the job is to advise, calm, and help the couple through the day’s events. After all, the videographer has probably been “backstage” at more weddings than the bride and groom. Wedding videographers get the satisfaction of knowing that their tools, gear, and creative vision will create a tribute to the couple and their important event. A wedding videographer’s artistry will shape how the bride and groom perceive and remember the day itself.
There is an immense amount of colorful material to work with in building a wedding video: leading characters in love, a supporting cast of friends and family, and a few settings almost guaranteed to be beautiful (albeit often poorly lit and with bad audio). There are also some dramatic moments already built into the script: the vows, the first kiss, the first dance, the cake cutting. Even the most jaded wedding vendor can get teary during these moments.
Our culture is somewhat defined by lifecycle events such as weddings. A wedding videographer gets to see all the humanity and emotion that goes into these milestone occasions. A good videographer treats this privilege respectfully and gratefully, as witness to the very intimate, raw, and emotional moments of their clients’ lives. In the story’s re-telling, the videographer re-lives this honor, and can both edit and enhance those moments to tell the exact story the clients want.
While shooting video of weddings is common practice today, it’s a relatively new phenomenon—with today’s final product differing greatly from its ancestors:
In 1979, the extremely rare wedding video is a few minutes of super 8 film recorded by a determined family member or guest toting his or her hobbyist camera. The exposed film strip has to be sent out to a processor—at no small cost—and, once processed, must be viewed with a super 8 projector, most likely at the home of the same hobbyist shooter. The film itself has a grainy, jagged feel to it, with lots of dirt and vivid colors. It is possible, but very unlikely, that the film has any sound or editing.
In 1989, a wedding video is almost two hours long. It’s shot on a Sony camera attached to a bulky recorder with a cable. An assistant helped carry a huge light throughout the ceremony and reception, but it didn’t do much to improve the poor color saturation and fuzzy shots. Nor did it ingratiate itself to the wedding guests, who danced around the production team or were scared back to the dessert table. Post-production consists of titles being added to the beginning and end and clumsily chopping the part where Aunt Gloria said the wrong name during the toast. Because of generation loss, the audio on the VHS tape that Grandma gets has degraded from the already-poor mono recording from a bad microphone to practically unintelligible noise.
In 1999, a wedding video is about 45 minutes long. It’s shot on a digital video camera with small, attached lights and lavaliere microphones, and is controlled by one videographer, who mingles seamlessly among guests, lowering the camera when it is inappropriate to be shooting. Though nearly five hours of mini DV footage is shot, the final product has only the best bits, cut to music chosen by the couple and delivered on a DVD that can be duplicated inexpensively and without generational loss.
In 2009, a wedding video is an authored DVD with an hour plus full-length version as well as a stylistically cut highlights version. Depending on the couple’s taste and budget, the video can include a time-lapse sequence showing the reception being set up, a series of interviews woven throughout the piece, and effects such as a retro super 8 look on the romantic shots and campy transitions between the groomsmen’s toasts. The wedding guests are so busy shooting their own video clips on their phone cameras, they barely notice the videographer and her streamlined equipment. The final product is posted online, delivered as a DVD, and separately compressed for YouTube and the iPhone.
Recent advances in both camera technology and editing software have likewise advanced bridal couples’ expectations to include an unobtrusive videographer, multiple camera coverage, heavy editing and special effects to create a far more finished and interesting final piece, all at a much lower price. This, in turn, has allowed—even demanded—the growth of the wedding-video industry. Dramatic price drops in semi-professional and consumer video equipment and post-production hardware and software have made wedding videography a line item that can now fit relatively easily into the average American wedding budget.
Almost all weddings include a professional photographer. But historically, as well as being prohibited by cost, having a videographer—not to mention both the photographer’s and the videographer’s respective assistants and equipment—often felt invasive. Having personal moments with an entourage and their bulky gear was understandably intimidating to many couples. But just as camera prices shrank, so too did external lights and camera size—meaning that having a crew of documentarians is significantly less burdensome than it used to be.
Indeed, although it certainly depends on the style of coverage a couple chooses, videography is increasingly a one-person operation on the day of the event. The camera operator carries, sets up, and handles his or her own gear. This is significantly less of a disturbance to the couple, and also less obtrusive to their guests—in turn increasing the popularity of wedding videos among those turned off by the perceived paparazzi effect. That being said, in today’s market, there are good reasons to have two videographers available for certain types of wedding videos. For one, shooting with two cameras allows for editing between view points. So, for example, you might have one camera shooting wide and one shooting close-up for the ceremony or for the first dance, or one camera could be getting the bride while the other covers the groom during the preparations. Of course, using tripods, one camera operator might run two cameras during the ceremony or reception. But camera equipment being so much smaller and lighter means that the presence of two camera operators is significantly less invasive than it used to be.
Because digital storage is relatively inexpensive, it is easy to shoot hours and hours of footage with the intention of using only the best bits. A bride knows that hiring a videographer for eight hours doesn’t mean forcing her friends to sit through an endlessly boring single take or squirming through the embarrassing shots where she screamed about her hair not being perfect. Unlike with film, the cost of obtaining more video footage is low, blank media is inexpensive, and there is less processing required. So once the videographer is on site, getting more footage is easy and cheap—leading to a better final product.
Advances in camera technology have also changed client expectations. Today’s modern couple is inundated with video. Video is expected on news, entertainment, and personal Web sites; it gets carried around in handheld devices; and, most importantly, people expect more and more of their own lives to be documented on video. At the time of this writing, the average age of a bride in America was 25. Digital video was introduced at a consumer and semi-professional level in 1995. When you do the math, you’ll realize that it’s quite likely that a bride has been recorded on digital video by her parents since she was at least 10 years old—and probably longer.
Furthermore, nonlinear editing software, such as Adobe Premiere, allows the videographer to pile on tracks and tracks of video, cutting, slicing, and dissolving with greater ease and less cost than in the past. These advances have changed what a couple can expect out of a wedding video. Instead of an expensive, boring, single-take shot of their vows, a couple can get a stylishly edited piece that reflects their aesthetics using captions, split screens, cutaways, effects, and the music of their choice. Consequently, it is not at all surprising that wedding videography is becoming increasingly popular. Indeed, the Wedding and Event Video Association says that after their wedding, nearly 80 percent of brides regard a professional videographer as one of the top ten services. Yet, only about 20 percent of married couples obtain professional videos of their wedding. There is clearly enormous space for expansion in a marketplace getting more and more accustomed to video for all types of documentation. It is anticipated that this number will continue to increase, so now is a pretty good time to get your gear and skills ready to take advantage of this growing market!
There are numerous ways to tell a wedding story. Listed here are a few wedding-video styles. This list is not fixed; any piece may be a hybrid of some of these styles, or something completely different. However, as a beginner, this list offers you a useful way to consider your final product. If you know what style wedding video you want to create and deliver, you can be sure to budget for the right gear and market yourself correctly.
Documentary: A documentary-style piece provides a straightforward rendition of the wedding event, typically showing the action of the day in chronological order. While any given section, such as the ceremony or the speeches, might be heavily edited, it is unlikely that any section will utilize heavy visual effects or be intercut with other scenes from the day. Even in places where natural audio isn’t used, the music in a journalistic piece will be similar to the music of the actual event.
Cinematic: A cinematic-style piece is heavily dramatized to create a certain mood. The dramatization is inherent in the shooting and enhanced through editing, effects, and graphics work. It may include slow, romantic sequences; quick-paced jump cuts to reflect the action and adventure of the day; or a vintage-style section complete with grainy effects and super 8. In any given theme, a cinematic piece will trade some integrity of the actual event storyline for the fun and visual benefit of a carefully compiled, stylized video.
Storytelling: Somewhat similar to a documentary-style video, a storytelling video will use a fairly straightforward approach but will incorporate a lot of interviews and dialogue (not necessarily recorded on the wedding day itself) in order to both build and push the events of the storyline.
Highlights: A highlights video will be very short and generally contains selections of the best shots from each portion of the day. It can be edited to a song—perhaps the music used for the couple’s first dance—or creatively edited to the audio of the ceremony vows or speeches. Often, a couple will choose to order a highlights video as well as a longer one.
Shoot only: Occasionally, a client will request a shoot-only video. In this case, the videographer provides the events captured on video for the bride and groom to either watch unedited or to cut themselves. It that situation, it’s best to get a sense of what the client will be doing with the footage to best determine what types of shots to emphasize: wide angle, close-up details, Dutch angles, pans, and so on. Often, a straightforward, clean approach that encompasses as much of the action as possible is best.
Any one video or videographer’s style may encompass several of the categories listed here. For example, a journalistic piece might have a retro stylized opening and a romantic sequence of shots of the couple. A highlights piece might include a fast-paced, high-energy montage or a dreamy, sepia-toned vintage section with lots of the interview audio more frequently found in a storytelling piece.
It’s a good idea to be flexible enough in your storytelling to appeal to some different tastes, but also to make sure you have a defined style of your own. Potential clients may or may not like your work, but if you are clear about the things you can do (and you do those things well), you will ensure your clients’ happiness.
As further discussed in Chapter 2, “The Business of Weddings,” word of mouth and recommendations are incredibly important in the wedding industry. Therefore, it’s better to not accept some clients if you are unlikely to please them with your work. The clients for whom your style works will reward you with recommendations and future business. That isn’t to say that it’s your way or the highway. Often, you need to meet your clients halfway. A talented and experienced wedding videographer will be able to combine his or her clients’ input and preferences with his or her own technique and vision to deliver a piece the client will love. However, it is important to remember that smiling and nodding yes to a potential client if you don’t have the gear, skills, or interest to cater to his or her preferences is a formula certain to undermine your success.
Although this book mainly discusses wedding videos, it is important to realize that there is a much larger range of commonly purchased products that a savvy and capable wedding videographer can provide. Usually, these products will be in conjunction with the main service that the couple purchases from you: the video of the wedding day itself. Occasionally, however, these additional services may be standalone items. Not only are these additional products an excellent way for you to increase your revenue, but they allow you to get to know the couple better, which in turn, provides more depth, context, and footage for the main video production. Here are some examples of additional services a wedding videographer can provide:
Photo montage: A photo montage is a series of photos set to music. Montages are often shown at the rehearsal dinner and/or the wedding reception, and typically include pictures of the couple before they met and during their courtship. A montage may also include pictures of family and friends and can contribute significantly to the spirit of the event.
Engagement video: An engagement video depicts the “story behind the story.” It may contain footage of the bride and groom explaining how they met and show scenes of them together, which may be shot for the occasion or pulled from existing footage. It can make a very funny piece to interview the couple separately about their courtship and relationship, and craftily edit their stories together, potentially pulling in other footage from family and friends. Like a montage, an engagement video is a warm and welcoming piece of entertainment for guests at the rehearsal dinner or reception, as well as something to enjoy forever.
Same-day edit: If time and/or manpower allow, a same-day edit can be a wonderful addition to the reception to show footage from the morning preparations and ceremony. This involves a very basic edit, usually set to a predetermined song, to enable guests to witness what may be some funny, intimate, touching, and dramatic moments of the day.
Concept video: A concept video is a piece that is created by the videographer and the couple involving footage shot before the wedding itself. The video will tell a story about the couple, but is likely fictionalized, highly stylized, or both. It may be shot in the style of their favorite movie, or a narrative may be built into the story, such as a mystery or news piece. This video is for couples who want to have a fun and creative experience together building the piece, as well as the final product.
Bridal video: A bridal video is a piece highlighting the bride in her wedding dress, ready for the event. It may be shot before or on the day of the wedding and it is used to capture her beauty on the day. This video is most often an addon service that makes a wonderful gift for the groom, parents, and grandparents.
More information about these services is provided in Chapter 11, “Add-On Business Ideas.”
Wedding videography differs from other types of filmmaking and involves a distinct set of challenges and rewards. Challenges include the following:
Typically, the wedding videographer plays every role in the production and post-production cycle: shooter, sound engineer, grip, editor, audio mixer, colorist, and motion graphic artist. Each one of these jobs is a specialty that can require years of experience on its own before any level of expertise is reached. Indeed, in a Hollywood setting, sound engineers and graphic artists are rarely if ever in the same room together because their skills are so refined and specialized. Nevertheless, the wedding videographer must possess the full range of skills.
The wedding videographer must coordinate the expectations of the couple with the realities of the shooting day. Having put excessive hours and dollars into planning their event, it is only natural that the couple wants everything to be perfect. That translates to wanting a gorgeously produced video that looks like a staged film with choreographed shots, mood lighting, and a storyline. The fact is, although couples may want a feature film, the video must be shot documentary style: single-take shooting in loud settings, under uncontrollable light, with rapid scene changes—and no chance to redo shots. (The couple will not recite their vows twice or have a second first kiss!) With only one chance to capture most of the day’s events, the videographer must constantly anticipate the next piece of action while calculating optimal light and angles for the current shots. He or she must constantly pay attention to sound quality and background noise, and must have the ideas and capacity to quickly stage shots in unfamiliar locations on the fly. Finally, to give a professional and feature-film look to poor-quality shots, a videographer must be well versed in editing and effects techniques.
There are very few changes to the storyline in a wedding video: Boy meets girl, they fall in love, they commit to each other for life, they throw a party. A big creative exercise in wedding videography is cooking up new recipes with similar ingredients. As you’ll find in Chapter 2, there are ways to approach your work that will help you think about each couple—and their event—with a fresh perspective and fresh eyes. It is important to get to know your clients, which helps you give each couple the creativity they deserve for the event they are building.
All that being said, wedding videography also offers immense rewards:
Savvy and talented wedding videographers can do very well financially.
A good videographer can command his or her own schedule, achieving both independence and time for other endeavors.
Wedding work is, by definition, seasonal work, which leaves winter for other pursuits.
There is endless room for creativity in videography; the newer and fresher the video style, the more in demand a videographer will be.
Although the greater meaning of weddings can occasionally be lost due to stress and nerves, ultimately, weddings are celebrations of life and love. They are, for the most part, an uplifting and joyful work setting.
Wedding videography can be quite glamorous at moments; videographers constantly find themselves in chic hotels, eating gorgeously catered food and surrounded by beautifully coiffed and fabulously dressed wedding participants. And it’s not unheard of for high-end wedding videographers to get flown to exotic vacation destinations to shoot weddings for their clients or to go to conventions in Las Vegas, Orlando, and other locations.
As rewarding as being a wedding videographer can be, it would be misleading to call wedding videography a luxurious or glamorous job, even for the best-known and highest-paid vendors. It is long and tiring work. A shoot day can easily last 12 hours (before travel time), which feels even longer while wearing dress shoes. Wedding videography requires constant attention, physical labor, technical skills, and the ability to charm, comfort, and coax your subjects. Most importantly, wedding videographers must be able to think quickly and under pressure.
Those skills are just for the wedding shoot itself! A whole different skill set is involved in post-production, running a business, and gaining clientele. So before you trade in all your chips for the high energy, exciting, and often very lucrative wedding world, make sure you have a clear understanding of just how much work is involved. Here’s a glimpse of the work involved on the days leading up to, during, and after a wedding.
The day before the event, it is imperative that everything is in place to have the smoothest wedding possible. As further detailed in Chapter 2, you will have done quite a bit of work before you even show up at the bridal dressing room to start shooting. At this point, you have had at least one—maybe several—meetings, signed a contract, and have a clear understanding of the couple’s expectations for the final product both in terms of style and delivery format. Perhaps you have even put together a photo-montage video for their rehearsal dinner. And hopefully, you have communicated with some of the other vendors involved and have a written timeline of tomorrow’s events.
So really, what is left to do? Well, a lot, actually. A more thorough discussion and checklist can be found in Chapter 6, “Pre-Production,” but the basics of pre-production include the following:
Detailed driving (or other transportation) directions to and between every location you are supposed to be
A gear bag full of charged batteries and enough blank media
A list of shots you need to obtain
A list of contact information so you know who to find should things go wrong
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Although every wedding has some of the same components, each one is as different as the brides and grooms involved. With your expert guidance, your clients should have outlined exactly where you need to be and which shots are most important to them. (See Chapter 6 for more information about this.) Did they specify that they wanted footage of Aunt Edna? Their first dance? The vows? The bride removing her garter belt? Make sure you have that list easily accessible so you don’t miss anything. Furthermore, by this point, you should know what style video they want—as well as the styles at which you excel—so when you arrive at the first location, you should already be assessing the scene to create shots that will open the piece in the style you are looking to create. Finally, make sure you have some understanding of the setup and potential restrictions in the location(s) at which you will be shooting.
Speaking of that first location: What is it? Depending on how long you were hired to shoot and what your previously delineated responsibilities are (see Chapter 2), you may be participating in the wedding events from morning until the wee hours. Lots of brides want coverage of getting ready: the hairstyling, the make-up application, and the all-important moment when the dress is zipped up, which officially turns your client into a bride. This is a great time to capture details—her shoes waiting in the box, make-up all over the counter, close-ups of her hair and jewelry. It is likely that you will also have some responsibility to shoot the groom getting ready; this is often an opportunity to stage fun shots if time and moods allow. If the bride and groom will see each other before the ceremony, stage the meeting yourself (or in conjunction with the photographer) to best capture the moment he first sees her in white. Other shots that might occur before the ceremony even begins are shots of the bride with her bridesmaids and the groom with his groomsmen as well as family shots. See Chapter 5, “The Basics of Wedding Shooting” for lists of pre-ceremony shot ideas.
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It is likely that by the time you reach the location of the ceremony, you will have been shooting for at least three or four hours, lugged your equipment to several locations, and made light adjustments based on the changes from morning to midday sun. Indeed, you might have already re-applied deodorant or sunscreen a few times. You hopefully have a good sense of the couple by now and may even have figured out who in the bridal party will be most likely to help you out during the day.
You should arrive at the ceremony location before the bride and groom to scope out the best angles. If you haven’t already, use this time to talk to the officiant or the venue manager to discuss any shooting restrictions and coordinate with the photographer about his or her plan for the ceremony. It is likely that he or she will be moving a lot more than you are, and you want to make sure to keep the photographer out of your shot. This is also when you can gather some detail shots of the bouquets, the programs, and the guests arriving and place lavaliere microphones on the appropriate parties before standing by for the ceremony itself. There are lots more instructions, tips, and ideas for how to best shoot the ceremony in Chapter 7, “The Big Day.”
The ceremony begins. Thankfully, you get good audio of the vows, some close-ups of the ring exchange, and a well-framed shot of the first kiss. The photographer walks into your shot of the candle-lighting ceremony, but that should be pretty easy to fix in post-production, so you are feeling good. You can’t relax when the ceremony is over, though. Typically, the ceremony moves right into a picture session. Although it’s traditionally the photographer’s job to call the order of events here, you can’t afford to tune out. If the photographer can’t handle the crowd, you must step up. Furthermore, you must collect all these shots and then collect your gear to escort the couple to the reception venue.
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Cocktails begin as you and the photographer shoot some romantic scenes with the couple. All of you rush to the cocktail hour so the bride and groom can have a glass of champagne and finally greet their guests. You furiously shoot the patio scenes of them mingling with drinks and hors d’oeuvres. With a few minutes to spare, you rush into the reception room to get some shots of the room and table settings before the guests come in. Guests filter in from the cocktail patio, and you capture them finding their seats and opening the party favor next to their place card. Having secured an audio feed from the band leader, and at his signal, you carefully place yourself and wait to shoot the couple’s big entrance.
The bandleader announces the bride and groom’s entrance. Despite your earlier location scouting, guests interfere with your shot and you don’t regain focus on the couple until the welcome speech is halfway over. You will have to do something about that in post-production. That one won’t be as easy as the ceremony glitch, and you grit your teeth to think of some shots you could get that might reasonably cover the error. (See Chapter 7, “The Big Day,” and Chapter 8, “Basic Editing,” for ideas.) Then, blissfully, dinner. You get a short break and a hot meal, but you must be on your toes again immediately after—there are speeches, the first dance, the father-daughter dance, open dancing, the bouquet toss, the removal of the garter, and the cake-cutting before your night is over. Put new media in the camera and get ready.
Table 1.1 shows a sample schedule for a wedding shoot.
TABLE 1.1 SAMPLE SCHEDULE FOR A WEDDING SHOOT
The couple has given you their music requests and you get to work editing their wedding video. Your contract gives you four months, but because you are just starting the season, you want to get this one done quickly. There will be a post-production backlog soon enough. Luckily, you got almost all the footage you needed. However, as well as missing part of the couple’s introduction at the reception, the audio is terrible at the reception and lots of the dancing shots are poorly lit.
After consulting the order form that the couple signed, you start piecing together a rough cut of their video. They requested a documentary-style video, so you are paying close attention to the audio as you go, collecting funny comments made by members of the wedding party to use throughout the piece. You err on the side of too long; more editing will be done as you refine the rough cut.
You eventually get the final piece down to about an hour, following the couple’s instructions to leave the speeches and the vows intact. You use all the music they provided for you and add a few songs from your library that match their taste for the dancing sections. You add some effects to clean up the look of the dancing footage—though not many, given the style of video they chose. You design some graphic titles that employ the fonts and style of their wedding invitations and other collateral from the event. From your finished video, you cut a much shorter highlights piece that you upload to your Web site and compress for the bride to put on her iPhone. You put some DVDs in the mail, back up your hard drive, and archive the wedding video appropriately. Now all there is to do is start packing your gear bag for the wedding tomorrow!
Wedding videography is both hard work and very exciting. Before you move forward, make sure you have an understanding of the following things:
The field of wedding videography is growing and changing rapidly. Dive in and don’t stop swimming!
Look at and play with lots of video styles. There are tons out there and more to be defined.
Think about the schedule tradeoffs involved in wedding videography—the fact that it’s weekend and seasonal work—in terms of how they will affect your own lifestyle.
Wedding videography is much faster-paced than other fields of filmmaking. Get ready for run-and-gun shooting and fast turnover of editing.
Prepare yourself for joyful, grateful clients. It’s very rewarding!
Now that you have a thorough overview of the many facets of a wedding videographer’s job, it’s time to look at each piece in greater detail. Before we can get to the exciting parts of the shoot and the edit, though, it’s important to establish your business within the wedding industry. The next chapter provides some guidelines for thinking about your business from an organizational perspective.
Wedding videography can be joyful, exhausting, dramatic, dull, frustrating, exhilarating, and painful—all on the same day. Indeed, it is a very unusual field of work insofar as the tasks and skills required are quite diverse—which, frankly, most videographers regard as a huge benefit to this line of work.
As you consider launching into a new career, spend a few minutes determining whether this is a reasonable fit for your personality, lifestyle, and career interests by considering your answers to the following questions. You need not answer yes to every question to succeed as a wedding videographer; no doubt, some parts of such a diverse job will be a more natural fit than others. This list of questions, as well as what you learned in this chapter, should help you assess your potential strengths as a wedding videographer and what aspects of the job you might find particularly challenging. This analysis will help with your business planning, enabling you to best market to your strong points and budget resources (financial and emotional) for your weaker ones.
Do you enjoy different types of people? Can you get along with people you may not like?
Can you smile in the face of frustration?
Can you remain calm in a panic?
Do you have a can-do, service-oriented attitude?
Consider: Often, for wedding vendors, the customer must be right. This can be especially frustrating for those technicians and artists who possess great expertise but must defer to a client for business reasons.
Is problem solving a fun challenge?
Are you willing to work weekends and nights?
What kind of impact will seasonal work have on your lifestyle?
Consider: If wedding videography is your primary income, you will have several months of the year with very few—if any—bookings. On the flip side, if wedding videography is your second job, you will have several months of the year without a moment to yourself.
Can you take on tiring physical work, as required by the production portion of the job?
Can you work long hours into the night, as both the production and post-production portions of the job require?
Do you enjoy tinkering with gear, hardware, and technical things?
Are you a good storyteller?
Do you have an eye for detail?
Are you motivated and disciplined enough to work for yourself?
Are technology trends interesting to you?
Are you responsible with time schedules, dates, and calendar commitments?
Do you enjoy networking and socializing and being alone?
Consider: A wedding videographer’s job is to a) actively sell himself or herself through marketing and networking; b) meet, mingle with, and shoot near strangers; c) spend protracted amounts of time alone in front of a computer. A strange combination indeed!
