Lights, Camera, Action… at Weddings!
Wedding Videography is not just about recording or filming the high-end drama amid wedding ceremonies, there is more to it. Wedding Videography has evolved with time and taken the form of Wedding Cinematography.
The wedding cinematographers, these days, help you live your Bollywood fantasies by conceptualizing and directing a pre-wedding movie starring you, your partner and sometimes your closest family and friends.
The Contrast: Past and Present
Wedding videography has evolved from a documentary style to a whole new arena of candid and video journalistic way. Pranjal Kumar, Business Head at Candid Shutters, Mumbai says, “From being a
monotonous, lifeless and almost mandatory part of an event, wedding cinematography is coming to ‘LIFE’ now. It is getting its colours; emotions and characters. It narrates stories of personal journey, achievements and inspiration. A story line created through clever interviews that emote the character of the bride and the groom and their families, visually stunning moments create a cinema experience with crisp editing and apt sound designing.” Those 3-4 hours of highly dramatic videos roasted through emotional songs, are replaced by crisp 30-45 minutes of wedding films shot to capture the required mood and flavor of the wedding, apt enough to be shared on various social networking sites. “The new trend in wedding cinematography is having a theme-based video, video with a story line, high on emotions, artier and less documentary style. They have a story line, interviews, voice-overs, chic songs, and portray emotions,” says Neelabh
Tiwari, Founder, Shaadigrapher.com, Mumbai.
Starting up: The Pre-Wedding Jive
Imagine your bestie from oversees watching you on her screen as you invite her for your wedding with all that fervour that you used to share while in college. Such obtrusive, planned acts exalt the camaraderie among relations and wrap them with an enduring clasp of contentment and emotional delight. On the docket pre-wedding shoots include several videos of the bride and the groom sharing stories on
how they met, gelled and so forth. Moreover, during a session decked with high level of drama, it becomes an onerous task for a couple to express their chemistry.
Anand Rathi & Abhinav Shah, Co-founders, Knot in Focus, Mumbai say, “The philosophy behind pre-wedding shoots is to set up a cinematic looking frame and allow the couple to interact on their own. Our sincere advise to couples is to get comfortable with the team that they are entrusting to record their special moments.”
Sensing the Flavour
Kumar says, “Ceremonies like mehendi, sangeet, pre-wedding bash, are the fun and entertaining elements of an event. Baraat, doli and wedding ceremonies add visual elements like colors and grandeur. They also form the base for all the emotional outbursts, for example a stunning shot of the girl in a complete bridal makeover is not only visually pleasing but also a once in a lifetime affair, her family has been awaiting to see.”
Concocting Views
Rathi and Sah, say, “We give each of our clients presidential suite treatment. To meet a client’s expectation one has to first understand them thoroughly. We discuss their expectations over and over again, over cofee meetings and online conversations to understand our clients. As a prep work, we do the recce of the locations that we are going to shoot in, we prepare questions that we’ll ask family and friends and brief the crew extensively before we reach the venue.”
Must Do’s
It is necessary for you to let your videographer wander freely on his high imaginations. While he does the recce, a set-up is formed in his mind with regards to the location. “Destination weddings always demand an extra inch as we give a local flavour to the film by capturing various places of interest within the destination. This adds a unique element to film and also enhances the overall presentation,” says the well-known wedding photographer and videographer Prakash Tilokani. Brainstorming on the angles of shooting, which background
location should be in the frame while shooting, kinds of lights to be used, when to focus, defocus and preparing to shoot under unfamiliar environmental conditions – all these make the videographer go down and start from a dot to draw the entire picture.
“For domestic destination weddings, we make sure to visit the location at least once to scout for the best angles and see the lights. Sometimes we hire equipment like cranes and heli-cams, arrangements and permissions for which are secured, well in advance. We, usually, tend to arrive a day prior to the first day of festivities so that our crew can analyse the property and gets adequate rest. For international weddings, we make sure, to go through whatever online information we can find, about the destination. Many a times, when destination wedding’s client’s request for a ‘same day edit’ (a recap of the entire wedding that is shown on the last day at the reception), we hire special editors, who fly to the location so that they can edit while the crew shoots,” say Rathi and Sah. “We use high-end cameras like MKIII, cinema lenses, sliders, track trolleys, stabilizing rigs, Ariel rigs, jimmy jibs and post production tools like Final Cut Pro and Motions etc,” says Tiwari. These equipment are designed to capture best imagery and thus multiply happiness!
