What is a Same Day Highlights (SDH)? A couple common names for it are Wedding Day Edits or Same Day Edits. They all refer to creating a short montage that focuses on the morning preparatory stages of a wedding and normally leads all the way to the end of the ceremony. The purpose is to surprise guests (and sometimes the bride and groom) with a quick recap of the events earlier in the day. This is also a great way to showcase your work to numerous people at once and can bring something unique to those inquiring about your services.

I do a Same Day Highlights for about 90% of my weddings. It’s been part of my business for the past few years now and is an integral part of bringing me more clients. Hopefully this guide will help those interested in doing these and give them an understanding of what it takes. I know I had no real direction in the beginning, but I knew I wanted to one day offer this since it tends to be a rare feature of most videographers in my area.

Same Day Highlights can be very stressful and it’s not for everybody. However, the rewards can be great. One of the first weddings I did an SDH for, was for a friend and they had no clue I was going to do this. It was my first trial run and if I were not able to do it within the time I had, no one would be disappointed.

To make a long story short, I was able to finish it and the bride and groom were very absolutely grateful. When I saw this couple and their guests teary-eyed, it became a reaction that I wanted to achieve again and I knew then that this was something worth doing for me. Since then, I’ve had 5 good referrals from this couple and two of them have flown me out to San Francisco just to film their wedding. That’s more than I ever thought would happen as a result and probably one of the best-case scenarios.

For those willing to try the SDH, I've come up with some steps to hopefully ease some of the worry. Right now, I use Final Cut Pro on a Macbook Pro but I’m pretty sure this guide can pertain to whatever editing system you use.

I highly recommend a fast laptop with lots of hard drive space and maximum RAM possible. This will definitely help in rendering times. Have a good mouse/trackball that you can carry with you. It will be easier than using the small controls on the laptop. Buy a good pair of headphones. I like to use the noise canceling ones since I usually find a place to edit in or near the reception area. Also, make sure you bring your laptop power cord! No one wants to run out of juice before they finish their edit.

Things you should do before you start:

1. Prepare your titles or any text you need ahead of time and place these items in your browser so you can grab them when needed. These and many other minor things can always be done earlier. Having them prepared gives you fewer things to think about during your edit.

2. YOU choose the music, if at all possible. I normally use an instrumental, which can be from 2 to 3 min long. You'd be surprised how much you can put in that length. By choosing the song you get some control and you can find something that plays up to your strengths. If you let the couple choose a song, that’s fine, but have them give you several choices. They might give you something that just doesn’t work or sound appropriate, which may make it difficult and that’s what you want to avoid. Be adamant that it shouldn't be longer than 4min or at least close to it. I personally calculate about 1 hour needed per 1 min of the song. So a 3 min song you'd need at least 3 hours to work on it. That includes, setting up, finding the footage in your tapes, editing, filtering, rendering, and transfer back to tape. If you can get 4 or 5 hrs to work on a 3 min song, by all means do it. The more the merrier.

3. Listen to the music carefully and place it in your timeline with markers. This part is a little bit of mental preparation. I like to play the song a number of times to find the dramatic points and envision what it might look like. I then set music on the timeline and set temporary markers with names of what kind of shots I'd like to use (bride getting hair done, bride putting on dress, groom buttoning his coat, etc.). Also, remember to lock the audio into place so it doesn’t move. You may not get the exact shot for these markers but it gives you a general idea of what you'd like to place in those precise moments of the song.

4. Film most of the shots you need yourself and know what general area of the tape it is in. I started off bringing a notepad and I would write down the timecode for a certain shot I would need. Filming the shots you need yourself also helps in locating them. I kind of remember the general area of where I need to go in my tapes nowadays but do whatever you can to get to the footage you need as quickly as possible. It is also important to import only short segments (30secs or so), otherwise you may end up with too much to sort through and you're hard drive could get full quickly.

5. Have a reliable 2nd cameraman (or 3rd, or 4th… ) This is essential in order to properly work on a SDH. I’ve done it once by myself and that will be the last time I do it that way. There’s no way you can be in 2 places at once and you don’t want to go back and forth editing and filming. That will just take longer and you may miss filming something important. My advice is to build up your cameraman base in the early stages of your business, if you haven’t already. You want people you can trust that will be able to handle things while you edit. It’s good to start a list and to begin seasoning them in how you approach your weddings. This will definitely help you in the long run, not just for when you do an SDH but when your weddings base starts getting larger.

6. EDIT AS FAST AS POSSIBLE! Make sure you delete the audio from the clips you place on the timeline if you are not using them. You don’t want to waste time rendering audio you’re not going to use anyway. When I'm done editing, I find it best to render the entire thing in Final Cut Pro, connect my camera so FCP recognizes it, press record on the camera and play the entire SDH from beginning to end as it records to tape.

SHOW TIME!

Then connect your camera to your projector and you're ready to show your masterpiece! Use an S-Video cable if you can and link the audio from your camera to the DJ’s/Band’s equipment (make sure you get permission ahead of time). Hopefully you'll get the result you're looking for. Just remember you can't be perfect with the conditions you are in but you'll find you'll get better the more you do them. The big thing is preparation.

Looking back now, the SDH’s I’ve done have evolved and gotten smoother. By no means am I perfect at this and there’s always room to improve. It really took a lot practice and some trial and error to find what works best for me. I think the best thing to keep in mind is that you’re only capable of doing so much in the amount of time you have. I’m upfront with my clients about this in the beginning and let them know what is a good amount of time for me to produce the SDH. If this is truly an option they want, they will conform to your needs by giving you more time or choosing a shorter song.

Your First Trial Run of a Same Day Highlights:

My advice is to start out small with a 2-3min instrumental song, make sure you have good people to film while you are editing, and most importantly, make sure the time from the end of the ceremony to the when they want you to show the SDH is enough for you to work on it. I would even suggest doing it for free for a wedding couple that's not expecting it, as a trial run. So if you don't get it done, there are no problems.

Another option you could do is put a small SDH at the end of the last song of a photo montage. I’ve done it where I show photos of the couple together to about the middle of the song and then I go into the highlights. It can work out really well, especially if time is short for you to edit.
Here’s a sample of what I’m referring to:
http://vesamples.blogspot.com

Always have a backup of the entire photo montage ready though, if you can’t get the SDH done.

For other Full version SDH samples:

http://visualessence.blogspot.com/2007/11/same-day-highlights-mike-melodee.html
http://visualessence.blogspot.com/2007/11/sdh-serjun-laurel.html

I hope this guide helps or at least points you all in the right direction on how to achieve these Same Day Highlights successfully.

-Ryan Marty
Visual Essence Videography

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Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved.