Why Hiring a Professional Wedding Videographer is Important

With the average cost of a typical New Zealand wedding is around $30,000, weddings are expensive. Unfortunately for most brides in New Zealand, wedding planning is always a compromise between the wants vs the needs vs the dreaded wedding budget. Cutting down on the wedding budget is a common task, and the absolute must items are always the most expensive items on the list. Professional wedding photography is among the top three items when it comes to wedding planning, which includes wedding venues and wedding dresses.

This is why a number of brides still opt to skip having a professional wedding videographer on their wedding day. Some find it unnecessary because they already have a professional photographer on their big day and having another professional will be too much. And some brides find it too expensive and may take a chunk of their wedding budget just to have one.

But, what brides don’t understand is, having a professional videographer plays a vital role in a wedding. Having your wedding filmed by a professional ensures that from morning till the last wedding guest leaves; they have it captured – in a way where when you want to relive it, it is exactly how you saw it. Wedding videography is not a complimentary service to photography. It is an entirely way to visually remember all the precious memories of your day. This is why having a professional videographer is important.

Need more convincing? Here’s why hiring a New Zealand professional wedding videographer is important.

Their creativity and artistic visions for wedding videography

Just like wedding photography, you don’t hire a New Zealand professional wedding videographer just to be there to document the day. Your friends with cell phones can easily do that. With the likes of the latest iPhone device, one can capture 4K at 60 frames per second for beautiful slow-motion videos. During the ceremony and reception, a guest could simply record all the speeches from where they are sitting.

So why professional wedding videographers? Their creativity.

They are storytellers, they are visual artists. They come with an unbiased view and a passion and desire to create something beautiful for you. While they do get paid, it is their love for weddings and the opportunity to create unique wedding videos for each of the wedding clients that get them out of bed every day.

Everything they do on the day, and every video clip that they record, will be for specific purposes, to match their vision as to how your final wedding video will be. They will be selective, purposeful, and yet still seem to be everywhere at the same time.

While they do have their own style, they will always thrive to be better and improve, keep pace with technology and wedding trend, and the ultimate desire to have happy clients that will spread the words about their products and services. And it is this passion that will get you excited about wedding videography and will make you love your wedding video every time you view it with your loved one.

The expertise and professionalism of the wedding videographer

Nowadays, there are a lot of cheaper alternatives to getting a video service to capture your event. From using an iPhone to hiring a film student, getting your friend or your family it can surely save you lots and lots of money. However, you are not guaranteed that your wedding film will end up into something you hope of and more. We have seen and heard stories and moments where the guests forgot to turn on the camera, or the camera went dead after a few minutes. Another typical story would be the camera has sensor dust so the final videos would have dots everywhere, making it a very distracting and unsatisfying viewing of such an important day.

When you hire a professional wedding videographer, you can get professionalism – guaranteed! They know exactly what to prepare, what to do, and what to expect in every event because they have done this numerous times. You won’t worry about batteries getting drained, insufficient memory cards, and bad lighting. With professional wedding videographer, you are in good hands.

The use of professional gear = professional quality

If you have been to a wedding that has both wedding photographers and videographers, you would immediately notice just how much more gear the videographer would carry. This is because videography does require quite a lot more specialized equipment to allow the videographer to capture what they need to produce something beautiful for the wedding clients.

The most important two elements in any videos are Clear and Stable. When it comes to clear, we are talking about clear images and clear sound. While the likes of mobile phones can easily capture 4K and 6K and 8K, they don’t handle low light very well. It is also cumbersome to manually adjust the settings to cope with difficult lighting conditions, or to create atmospheric clips. Don’t get us wrong, if you are experienced enough and use the phone enough time, we are sure this can be done quite quickly. But at the end of the day, there is a flexibility that one would have with professional camera gear that one does not have with mobile phones.

The ability to change the lens to get unique looks and feels is also important. The sensor in the cameras allows much better flexibility to grade colours in the final video, to enhance mood and atmosphere.

With sounds, there is nothing worst than watching a beautiful wedding video with horrible sounds where you cannot hear anything clearly and just simply ruin the joy and the mood of it all. Using a professional-grade lav and PA system and recording mixer would allow the videographers to capture clear and clean sound quality that can be further enhanced in post-production. You will also find that the professional videographer vendors would often want to have several sources of sound recording as backups. For example, during the ceremony, they might have lavalier microphone on the celebrate, the groom, possibly the bride, as well as a recording from the PA system. This way, they have multiple sound sources, just in case if there are any complications or troubles. For professional wedding videographers, the sound is as important as the video clips.

Stability is about the non-shakiness of the video clips. High-end video cameras have a built-in stabilizer, as well as a professional-grade video lens. The use of camera stabilizers and gimbals, monopod, quick release system, all help the videographers to be nimble and mobile, and yet able to capture cinematic motions in wedding clips. It is certainly amazing how technology has helped to redefine the wedding videography industry, where 10 years ago, this was simply not possible.

Captured movements and sounds

Yes, still photos deliver an image of a moment in time. It can be very dramatic and beautifully captured. But then again wedding videos capture both movements and sounds. Imagine if you can hear how your groom gasps the moment he saw you walking down the aisle or how your dad cried during your dance. There are so many special moments you can relive just by watching your wedding video where the sound can enhance the moments and the memories a thousand folds. This is why we believe that wedding videography is not complimentary to photography. It is an entirely different way to relive your wedding day altogether.

Setting the mood – all over again

Just like wedding photography, post-production plays an important part in the look and feel of the final product. For videography, editing is even more important. As you can imagine, with photos and images, they are individual items that are independent of the next image. However, for your wedding video, each clip affects the next one, in terms of look, feel, transition, and flow of the storyline. From a wedding day, there would be several video clips capture. The combination of clips to form the final wedding video is simply endless. On top of that, you have spoken audio, as well as music overlay. editing is a job that can really make or break a video. This is why at the Oscar Awards, there is a category for film editing, as this is a form of art in itself.

The wedding videographer’s ultimate goal is to give you the same feeling that you had on your wedding day, each and every time you watch your wedding video. The clips would be carefully selected to create a narrative, where the story unfolds and flows effortlessly with the music. The colour grading is employed to enhance the atmosphere, and the music selection is to boost the emotional impact by a thousand folds and some. There is a saying among wedding videographers around the world, 10% is to capture and edit the video, and 90% of the time is spent on finding the music.

Having the eye to everything

It is a known fact that a wedding just goes by quickly. And because of that, you won’t be able to see everything that is happening. Your wedding video will let you see how your bridal party walked down the aisle especially your groom, or how your mom shed a tear while you dress up with your bridesmaids in the hotel room. There are so many moments happening simultaneously during your wedding and you won’t be able to see it. But a videographer can capture these beautiful moments on film and you will be able to watch it as if you were also there.

You can easily share it

Professional wedding videographers have websites and social media accounts where they upload their wedding videos. With this, it will allow you to share your wedding film to your friends and family who weren’t able to attend your wedding day.

All images by Picture Perfect Photography

Peace of mind

With so many things going on on your big day, it is nice to know that important moments, whether big or small, will be captured beautifully with the help of your professional videographer. There is a sigh of relief knowing that you can preserve one of the most important days of your life. And with the right videographer, you can expect to see a specialized video of how you envisioned your wedding day to be.

Remember, just because someone owns a high-quality camera means you can ask for their help to film your wedding, more so, a professional. Don’t be afraid to ask around. Ask for recommendations. Do some research in your area. Like TZ Wedding Films, you’re confident that they are reliable and they can create a beautiful retrospective of your big day which you and your husband can enjoy for years to come.