How long are your Videos????

[Kwayne Video]

Howdy folks,

Long time broadcast videographer here starting a new direction with weddings and events.  My question is how long are your videos?  and how much space are you using on the DVD's?  My feelings are that less is more, but I have had some couples that wanted everything including the raw footage dubbed down for them to watch.  I don't have much experience in the wedding field and I actually stumbled into it accidently, but anything over an hour to me is too much, what is your experiences?  Are there any sites that have actual wedding video snip-its everything I have come across seems to be showing off the nice montages and intros, I'm more interested in seeing how others are shooting their weddings.  Right now I have 3 cameras and 2 mics, but am only using 1 camera and one mic because of the clients I have in my area, they just do not want to pay for big productions...

[Forever Endeavor]

Hi and welcome!

I am a former Broadcast man myself! Best decision I ever made was getting into weddings!
My videos are generally under an hour (barely) altogether. I encode using the highest quality settings I can and generally have space left (can't remember the exact bitrate settings at the moment). I do a documentary style edit where everything is included in a multicam edit from start to finish. I also include a highlights video in every package for those times when they may not want to sit down for an hour. There are folks out there offering a short form edit lasting about 20 minutes that cuts out all of the boring stuff and is a bit more stylish. I offer that option but my clients usually want to have the entire thing documented. I would personally prefer to do short form edits because I could be a bit more choosy about the footage I included and the final video would look better but I have to do what the clients want.

If you want more info about how I do things, you are welcome to check out my contract here:
Wedding Video Contract

Or my brochure here: Brochure

[HankCastello]

Welcome to the WVDR wedding videographer forums, Kwayne !

..and thanks for tossing us a great question - one that there isn't one perfect answer for.

First off, it depends on the style of wedding video.  There are short form, documentary and journalistic styles and everything in between.

I don't like and generally do not agree with Wikipedia's wedding video style definitions, and I haven't seen a single source that agrees with them, however until an entity either gains sufficiant recognition to define styles or forms a committe to standardize styles, they will be left open to interpretation and redefinition.

Most of us can agree that short form wedding videos generally run from ten to thirty minutes*, and are usually heavily stylized (perhaps what wikipedia meant by cinematic).

Long form wedding videos can basically be broken down into two general types - documentary and journalistic.

Documentary style tends to cover most of the significant portion of the event, keeps a true timeline and offers no stylizing nor glamorizing; cinematic effects; etc.

The Journalistic style takes more liberties with the timeline, and adds more glamorization, stylizing for a romanticized effect.

Long form wedding videos tend to run from forty-five to ninety minutes, depending on the ceremony and the editor.

I like to target my wedding videos (journalistic style) to run fifty to seventy minutes.  Where brides request more or all the video, I offer the raw tapes for $199.  Sometimes they'll ask for ALL the dancing.  I generally include all of the 1st dance, most of the parent dances and only highlights of other dances.  For $199 I offer to dump all the unshown dances onto their own DVD.

Now, as for the number of cameras you're using - here are my thoughts:

You are going to be judged by the quality of your wedding videos, so why hurt yourself (and your clients) by using fewer cameras/mics than you can use?  Find other ways to offer lower-priced plans, then always try to upgrade before (or even after) the wedding shoot.

Notice the plans at www.OKVideoGuy.com ALL offer three cameras and as many mics as it takes, yet pricing begins at $749.    My plans at www.CastelloProductions.com are similar, though higher priced.  While I suppose it is more work to edit three or four video tracks and six or eight audio tracks, my videos would suffer if I didn't use all my gear and if I am judged by my videos, I will then appear to be a lower quality videographer.  

Your videos will dictate the way you will be perceived.  If you want to be seen as a quality videographer, you must produce quality videos.  Make sense?

You also have to be careful how you market yourself.  If you stress low prices, then you may be percieved as a lower quality videographer.  Look at your competition.  What do/can you offer that they do not.  In what niche can you be "King of the Hill"?

*WEVA says short form wedding videos cannot exceed 50 minutes, but if most of us shoot for 60 minutes for long forms, 50 minutes hardly makes sense for short form wedding videos!

[HankCastello]

I forgot to address your encoding question..

I try to keep the wedding video on a single DVD.  If we cover a rehearsal dinner or spa visit, etc. we may offer a two-DVD set (we use cases that hold two DVDs in those instances).

I will lower quality settings a bit, if I must, to get up to ninety minutes onto a single DVD.  In Premier Pro, you can usually fit over 70 minutes if you use a 2-pass VBR setting.  Just under 70 minutes and a 1-pass CBR will work and is generally more compatible with players.

If I slide the quality setting from '5' to '3.5', it allows much more video onto a DVD without noticably lowering quality, in most cases.

[Kwayne Video]

Great it sounds like I'm in the ball park with time,  To touch on your pricing note, I am in a small town where $300 for a 2 camera shoot is ridiculous to some, I am trying to do these but it seems that I'm putting a lot of work into these with little gain right now.  I really need to get a good contract together and actually plan out what I'm doing.  Like I said I stumbled into the wedding video thing and I like the fact that I can create these and not have to work under the standards of a broadcast facility.  I'll read on through all the forum messages, but any advice on contracts would be greatly appreciated.

[Forever Endeavor]

I run into the pricing dilemma alot. Most people in my area do not spend enough on weddings to afford me. However, with there being so many weddings out there, there should be plenty to go around. I advertise across my entire state and in other states as well (Just got back from a wedding in San Jose over the weekend). I charge travel fees for out of state but as long as they pay for that I will go anywhere.

You may need to make some decisions about what market you want to aim for. You may not want to offer "high end" weddings in an area where nobody will hire you for that. On the other hand, you need to make enough on each gig to be worth the work you put into it so you may need to spend less time on each wedding and not be as fancy. It's a delicate balancing act but if you can find your niche you can be very successful at whatever you do.

[HankCastello]

Adam's right - you need to expand geographically.

You can't be in a smaller or more economically-depressed town than I am.  Our "town", Longtown, OK - isn't even on most maps!  But we cover the whole state of Oklahoma (OKVideoGuy.com).  We do not charge travel fees within the state.  Most clients would consider travel fees as paying for something they are not getting a benefit for, so we pack them into our regular rates.  Same thing for CastelloProductions.com - we'll travel coast-to-coast for no travel fees, but our regular fees make it worthwhile for us.

If you're selling refrigerators, you need to have a market area that covers more than Anartica!  If people in your area won't pay what you need to earn, then you have to expand your market area.

We shoot a lot of weddings that are three hours away from us. That means gas (30mpg in our Ford Focus station wagon) and motel ($35 - $50 per night thru hotwire, etc.).  But for a $1000 - $1500 fee, a hundred dollars of extra expense isn't prohibitive.  Same thing for a wedding three days away - $3500-$5000 is enough difference to toss in an extra camera or two and spend more planning time, editing time, etc. to do an "all-out" wedding video.  By expanding our market to the entire continental US, we can reach those who are willing to pay our fee.  We're planning on buying an RV and doing more of these weddings.

[Forever Endeavor]

Speaking of the RV Hank, I just bought an old camper trailer (like from 1958). It's the teardrop style that's now popular again. It needs to be cleaned up but I got it for $200 and it's in exceptional shape physically. It will be perfect for travel weddings. I would love to get it painted along with the mini van to advertise but that's expensive.

[Kwayne Video]

You guys are absolutely right, I just have not gotten to that point yet.  I have a full time day job and do this on the weekends for now.  So I guess concentrating on doing the small town thing right is my best bet right now, until I can get some kind of rep built up.  Besides I could use an upgrade on my equipment before I feel like I can match the quality of your work, buts its coming,  and besides every weekend there is someone getting married, and I seem to be the only one within a 100 or more miles even considering shooting video, my task now is to convince all those weddings they need a video....

[HankCastello]

I've redone a few travel trailers in my day.  Redoing the roof seams & sealing them is no problem, but while you have the seams apart, inspect the corner framing pieces.  These are often rotten, especially down where they meet the flooring, and must be entirely replaced, making restoration a much bigger project.

Also, insulation from that era, may have been made with asbestos.  In this case, you should remove all panelling and replace all insulation.

As for the advertising, remember that thieves can often read also.  Marking your rig as belonging to a videographer tells thieves that it is worth their while.

Even if insurance will eventually replace some of your gear, the couple of the wedding you were about to shoot will be left high and dry and may consider judicial reparations against you.

[Forever Endeavor]

Thats a good point. I'll have to check out the trailer and see what I'm looking at.

[HankCastello]

Most people in my area do not spend enough on weddings to afford me.

Are you sure about that?  You can find out EXACTLY what brides are paying for their weddings in YOUR area, AND what they pay for photographers and videographers at -

http://www.theweddingreport.com/wmdb/?brand=wvdr

You will probably be quite surprised to see just how small a percentage brides are spending on wedding videography!

By the way, sign up with them through the link above and instead of us getting a commission - YOU get a discount!

[HankCastello]

As a follow-up, please check out this page -

http://newsok.com/article/3077399

? Photographer. Cost: $2,300.
? Videographer. Cost $1,400

Now who do we have to blame for that???

Shameless plug:  Not only will certification help you get higher fees, but our current plan is to spend at least half our income to advertise and promote higher-class wedding videography.  (the rest is for operational and website).

There is absolutely no justification, nor reason for a truly professional wedding videographer to earn less than his photographer counter part.  In fact, these percentages should be flipped around, with the videographer earning nearly twice what the photographers do.   Our hope is that all you better wedding videographers out there will join us and help make this come about.  Together, we can do it!

[On a Roll]

I don't know. I don't have trouble selling my $1300 at all, and I sell several of our $2000, and even our $3200 packages in the course of a year. In 2007, I actually sold more of our $2000 packages than I have for our basic $800 package.

Brides can be convinced in the value of video, but it often comes down to us doing it one-on-one with them.

[HankCastello]

In splitting off the posts about doing photography, I inadvertently removed Kevin's excellent post, which I'm restoring here -

POSTED BY Kevin -

My finished wedding videos typically run about 90 minutes for events with shorter ceremonies, and I may go to separate discs for the ceremony and reception if the ceremony is a long one. Most of my customers seem to like getting lots of footage, and some will even ask for what I leave out even though I already give them most of the stuff worth seeing. In my higher-end packages I include a "highlights" summary of about 5-10 minutes which summarizes the main video and includes more special effects and music, for those times when the customer doesn't want to watch the longer documentary version.

I also had a bad experience with my own wedding video where I didn't realize our videographer was planning to do a 'short form' edit and didn't even capture decent documentary footage of our ceremony, which I know because I bought the master tapes from him. I would have been happier if he'd just stuck a camera on a tripod and pushed 'record' instead of constantly moving from one spot to another to get the angles he wanted for the short-form approach. (And this was how both manned cameras were used!) So whatever you do make sure your customers understand it and are happy with that.

As far as number of cameras is concerned, I would never shoot a wedding ceremony with just one camera unless everything else broke at the last second and there wasn't a camera store nearby to go buy an emergency backup cam. Not only can I not get all the shots I want with one camera, but I wouldn't risk losing an important moment because of a camera or tape failure or someone blocking the shot. So I always use at least two cameras at the ceremony and sometimes three, with 1-2 cameras running at the reception depending on the circumstances. (By the end of the evening I'm usually down to one camera for the dancing footage.)

As far as videographer versus photographer pricing for weddings is concerned, that's a result of the priority couples put on each - which is partly a result of photography having been established longer as a useful service, and partly other factors including competition between videographers. If you really want to level the playing field, start offering combined photo/video services at a price slightly less than doing each separately, and then allocate your time and resources so videography gets the attention it deserves. Nothing we can do is going to change the relative pricing for photography and videography in the near future, and the best way to get paid more is to do really outstanding work (and add photography so you can collect that money too).