Brides and Grooms of today come from all different walks of life with various educational backgrounds and specialized fields of expertise. Shopping for their wedding brings about new kinds of pressures, stress and anxiety. Education and experience in these relatively new and alien fields should somewhat be required to hire these services. Photography and videography being technically complicated require better understanding of these media.

When watching a video demo, where can we go wrong?
Some of us get distracted by the contents of a video demo. More than often a video sample becomes a source of ideas relating to banquet facilities, mandap designs and bridal fashions. Or quiet often families use these samples to re-familiarize themselves with the age-old marriage traditions and religious customs. Sometimes people are overly impressed just because the wedding featured in the demo had the same venue as they have chosen, or if they see a wedding that matches their regional and religious backgrounds. If the technical mumbo-jumbo gets them too overwhelmed, then they take the easy route out and just resort to hiring the videographer that their friends recommended. Knowing some basics of videography will help them in deciding on the videographer who can capture the irreplaceable memories of the most important day of their life with the utmost perfection.
As a rule the photo-video pair you hire should be from one studio, while nepotism should be discouraged. Two equal counterparts coming together as a team should be the preferred way to go. If possible the same videographer should film the wedding and provide the editing services to maintain the harmony in the artwork.

Analyzing the Filming Techniques: Video production skills are the most important aspect when considering a videographer. Editing can always be customized to your taste as long as the artistic talent is there.
1. Composition: Ability of framing one beautiful shot after another doesn’t come easy. Too much headroom, or heads getting cut-off can be some of the negative points. An interesting to watch video has an equal blend of long shots, medium shots, close-ups and over the shoulder shots. Certain hand-held movements, tilts and foreground-background manipulations can make video more watchable.
2. Continuity: Pay attention to the way the videographer keeps the flow of events without sudden continuity jerks. Double camera shoot may get quite expensive but it helps give more comprehensive coverage.
3. Consistency in focus: Most professional cameras are not auto-focus and a good videographer should be able to zoom-in and out without loosing focus manually. Even if he does end-up with some out-of-focus moments in his shooting, those should get edited-out later, never ending-up in the final cut.
4. Lighting: Always judge the video by its even-lighting. Multiple lights should be able to minimize shadows and dark areas. Sometimes in a reception video, dark background could be due to the requests to turn off the lights on the dance floor.
5. Backlighting: An outdoor setting, a scenic-view or a lighted window behind the main subjects can cause backlighting problem. The bride and the groom can come out looking darker than their natural skin-tones, even if there is a light colored fabric in the background. Videographers should try to balance with ample frontal lighting and the couples should try to provide favorable conditions to begin with.
6. Color Accuracy: If videographers fail to ‘white balance’ before entering every new lighting situation the colors of the video can be off – blue, green, yellow and magenta tints can be the results of such neglect.
7. Sharpness: Digital technology brings about amazingly sharp results. A layman’s eye can be a very good judge in detecting sharpness differences between various videographers’ works.
8. Sound: Clear sound is delivered by the use of right microphones. Priests’ sound’s audibility is increased and background noise is reduced by the use of lavaliere microphone (tie-mic). Omni-directional microphones go on top of the camera and are great for general-purpose sound pick-up. Videographers should use both simultaneously and record both there input on separate channels and choose later what makes the final cut – the priest’s voice or the relatives singing folk songs in the background.
9. Zooming: A video with a fixed wide-open view can be extremely boring to watch. A good mix of wide-angle shots, medium-shots and close-ups is a must. Zoom speed should not attract too much attention either. Make sure the video that you are watching does not lose focus while zooming in or out
10. Panning: Besides zooming-in and out, panning keeps the video interesting to watch. Panning is moving camera from side to side and top and bottom. These moves should be smooth and in just enough quantity. Too much continuous panning can have a dizzying effect as well.

Taking the Initiative: Capturing the pre-planned and perfectly organized festivities on the digital medium should not be a major task for any videographer. What sets the better ones apart is how much initiative they take to do the extras.
1. Establishing Shots: Professional videographers start out presenting the landscaping and the interior decor of the banquet hall or the temple followed by some long beautiful zoom-ins, zoom-outs and pans of all the mandap decorations, buffets, Viennese-tables, reception decorations, cake and table-settings in full grandeur.
2. Love Story: A dream wedding video should start out with a tastefully filmed music video of the bride and the groom romancing each other on the grounds of banquet facilities, the beautiful interiors or an outdoor location. Just remember, it’s granted that you will appreciate something like that in the sample, but you will only be able to recreate that for yourself if you make time and provide the location.
3. Table Shots: Table shots don’t happen unless the photographer and the videographer initiate them. These help you put each and every one of your guests in your memory bank. Politely requested, half of the guests on a table, stand behind the other half, and boom - you have a table shot. This saves you lots of time over stage group-shots and they look a lot more civil over eating shots.
4. Interviews: Key guests and close relatives are asked to give their blessings to the couple and wish them luck. It’s either done during dinner at their tables or outside in the lobby. This helps create a surprise element for the couple as well.

1. Introduction:
a) Blessing of the Lord: A wedding being a religious ceremony should start out with the name of the lord, may it be Lord Ganesh, Allah, Christ or Guru Nanak Dev or any other Deity, Guru or the Guiding Light of your beliefs. Presence of religious photos and prayers to the Master soothes one’s soul and blesses the couple’s union.
b) Title Graphics: Tasteful choices in color, type size and font style are important. If you don’t like what you see in the sample, just ask the videographer to make changes according to your taste.
c) Baby Pictures: A nostalgic collection of pictures of the Bride and Groom, spanning from birth to the wedding day, makes for a very romantic and interesting treat for everyone’s eyes.
d) Summary: A masterpiece wedding video always has an intro that grabs your attention, brings a smile to your face, takes you on a brief journey of the entire day’s events through a few minutes summary.
e) Music Video: A five minute love story, shot tastefully, depicting the bride and groom romancing each other. Notice fast takes, tilts, dramatic zooms and panning. Some mix of black and white imagery adds to the intrigue.

2. Special Effects: Most of the modern brides don’t like too many special effects, especially nothing that sticks out too much, like multiple images, fancy borders, fireworks, hearts etc. Mainly smooth, tastefully executed, transitional effects appeal to today’s brides. Fade-ins, fade-outs, mixes, dissolves and plain wipes to name few. Then again to each its own. If you don’t see what you like just ask if they can do it that way.

3. Music Dubbing: The videographer you pick should use a tie-mic on the priest to retain his original sound and to block out any background noise. Light soundtracks of shehnai could be overlapped in the background, and priests mantras could be intertwined with matching wedding songs. Now, this works for Hindu weddings, interpretations of the same idea for other religions should be available for your viewing. In the reception, usually deejay’s music is retained in its original form. The couple can give a list of their favorite songs to put during the cocktail hour and the dinner portions.

4. Full Editing vs. Spot Editing: Ask the videographer that you are considering as to how he does it. Some videographers have a pre-decided notion of what they want to retain in the final version and shoot just that on the wedding day, which requires minimal or no editing. Others shoot everything that happens on the day and as a result, extensive post-production work is required. You should pick the latter style even though that might cost slightly more.

5. Inter-titles: Printed titles that appear within the main body of a film to convey ceremony or event change. This is a great idea and if you don’t see that in the sample, most videographers will be able to oblige you if requested.

If you are fully confident of your videographer’s filming talents, and as long as he has the state-of-the-art non-linear (computerized) editing equipment and an artistic flair, you can always customize the editing portion according to you taste. Some videographers may not mind having you sit with them, through a preview session, in their studio. Some may charge a little extra hourly rate for customized editing.

And also remember, your video is just as interesting to watch, as the amount of fun you had on that day. Your video is nothing but a record of what your priest, deejay, make-up artist and the decorator put together. So, keep in mind, among all service categories, no matter whomever you hire, there performance is going to effect your end product - your photography and videography.