Perceptions of Wedding Videography

     Most people are very traditional about weddings. There's nothing more ancient than marriage - it goes back to Adam & Eve - so people tend to fall back to their oldest traditions when the big day comes. They do whatever their parents did. Most of your parents did not get videography. 1) because wedding videos looked fuzzy & cheezy in the last century 2) a better film/video cost a mint  3) weddings are sacred ceremonies and video has a reputation for being just an entertainment medium.

     But that was then.  What about now? Wedding videography can look fabulous! There are filmmakers everywhere who love creating beautiful movies so they're not going to over-charge you for the privilege. Video is the best way to record a memory and people are finding that out. Video is the best way to validate and respect a special moment because it means you want to remember it. Yet there are still many who aren't up to speed on the importance of family event videography. I've asked many busy photographers how often they see videographers at weddings and they usually tell me, "1 in 10 weddings has a videographer." What is the reason for this disparity? I can think of at least two dark + dirty reasons for this (please don't hate me for saying it).

     Reason #1: Many wedding photographers hold videography in contempt. They don't understand it and they therefore talk it down to every customer they meet. The most obvious way they talk it down is by offering it on the side. Nothing says "cheap" more vividly than offering to throw it in. That's like saying, "I'll chauffeur you to the airport for $2000 and for an extra $500, I'll fly the plane." The second way to show contempt is by being unable to articulate the difference between photography and videography. This leaves the client with a poor impression of videography too - like it's some other-worldly enigma. The third method of contempt is to infer that videography will break your budget. They don't want you dividing your budget between photo & video - they want it all. (Here's the X-files secret: you can get decent photography with plain digital images for just $100/hr).

     Reason #2: Many (male) video enthusiasts are calling themselves videographers and presenting themselves to the public as such when they shouldn't. They took a few classes at community college and bought the latest camera. Now they feel ready because, after all, it's just a wedding video. Or worse - they're actually photography enthusiasts who do video "as a sideline". Their work is average-at-best but their ego is limitless and they talk like used car salesmen. (how horrible I am to say such things!) They say things like, "That's the fair market value" and "I know it's an easy thing to film (funeral/speech) but I gotta keep up with the industry standard fee." That's a full barrel of hogwash. How's a bride or a grieving widow supposed to sort through all this flotsam of pretentious snobbery to find a competent filmmaker who will capture her precious memory in a dignified way?

How is Wedding Videography Characterized on Television?

There are also serious perception problems related to the portrayal of event videography in mainstream entertainment. Whenever a wedding is depicted on a TV show or in a movie - there is never a videographer unless the videographer is committing a crime or facilitating some obnoxious comedy. Picture Perfect with Jennifer Aniston is the only movie I know of that featured a wedding videographer in a positive way (she falls in love with him). When John Watson got married on Sherlock, they didn't have a videographer there either...and the photographer turned out to be the murderer (surprise, surprise). Liar, Liar had a wedding episode where a team of 4 wedding videographers committed a crime at a wedding. There's a British movie called The Wedding Video in which the videographer is an obnoxious amateur. All the other famous wedding movies have no videographer at all and barely even a photographer.

If you watch those bride shows on television, you don't see videographers there either because the TV film crew for the show is itself the video coverage for that wedding. The show producers do give the featured couple a copy of the raw footage but it's not the same by any means. I edited the raw footage from a Hot Hawaiian Wedding not long ago and most of the ceremony was missing because they didn't need it for the show. I think the couple might have liked having that, don't you?

So you see, Hollywood never includes us as a normal natural part of a wedding experience. Hollywood doesn't do genuine realism ....not even on their reality shows! I once worked alongside a reality TV crew who was making a show about the wedding planner and they were pretty dismissive towards me. As entertainers, they did not appreciate my goal of capturing memories for the couple. Unlike me, they measure worth in dollars, not relationships. (Lets just say I'm more of a Frank Capra than a Harry Cohn!)

So, the mischaracterization of event videography in media has lead the public to believe that I'm 1) criminally inclined 2) obnoxious  3) irrelevant. Honestly, if I could sue Hollywood I almost would but it's a 99-headed snake with a nature that doesn't change ...and besides it wouldn't be very nice.