Here are five different wedding videography styles to help you find the one that’s right for you.
Documentary
Of the 5 main different styles of wedding videography, this is the most real. A videographer who uses this style will capture your big day as it happens, without staging or choreographing events. This footage is then edited together and possibly intertwined with some interviews or readings from the couple or their family. If you want your wedding video to look like a Hollywood blockbuster, the Documentary style is possibly not for you.
Traditional
Much like traditional wedding photography, traditional videography focuses much more on the big, planned moments during the big day. The ceremony, toasts, and reception will be heavily covered using a style that is very easy to understand. Styles of wedding videography such as this are slightly less fashionable these days, but there is certainly a place for them, as they will remain forever timeless.
Cinematic
Expect your big day to be best enjoyed on the big screen with this wedding videography style. Sweeping wide shots, drone-work, and dramatic slow-motion moments combine to create the Cinematic look, which is often put together with some documentary/storytelling elements. If you’re a couple not bothered about a beginning, middle, and an end. If you’re more concerned about capturing the beauty of your big day, then this is one of the best styles of wedding videography for you.
Short-Form Wedding Videography
This type of videography is either supplied as a bonus to a longer-form video or as its own separate entity. Either way, this heavily edited highlight reel will often blend many different styles of wedding videography to create a short 2-5 minute video that encapsulates the nuptials. The short-form video is perfect for sharing on social media, or for popping on your wedding website.
Storytelling
As we mentioned in the intro, videographers will often blend different types of wedding videography to create a style. And Storytelling is a good example of this, as it will often combine whichever style the couple desires, with a heavy narrative. This type of film focuses less on the aesthetics of the day, and more on how these two got here today (relationship-wise). How they met, the proposal etc. This will usually be in the form of a narration over the top of the video.
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7 Types of Video Production to Elevate Your Business
Brand/Company Video.Brand and company videos explain the nature of your company and what your brand stands for. ...
The video industry is ripe with hard-working creatives and big thinkers, people who have the ability to turn ideas into captivating and inspirational visuals.
But the one thing video people can't seem to do is agree on what to call themselves.
Does language define our perception of reality? Do the words we use limit our understanding of possibilities? And can what we call ourselves actually transform the kinds of people we become?
Most importantly, does our self-described job title help or hinder our ability to get work?
Come along as we explore the many different identities we throw around in the videography world, and whether our assumptions and interpretations have any truth to them.
CHOOSING YOUR VIDEO PRODUCTION SERVICES
If you've seen our infographic and article on Video Production Services, you'll know that the general public has an intensely difficult time hiring video producers. It's because there are hundreds of different types of videos, but not an easy cataloging system to describe what kind of video is called by what name.
And so, clients are intimidated and confused whenever they contact a videographer for the first time, because they can't easily say what kind of video they want, in a way that a filmmaker would understand right away. Instead, the first conversation often steers towards discussion of budget and video duration, to describe what the client wants, rather than the video content and style.
That article is intended to be helpful for both video creators and marketing clients, and we're glad to see it's been spread throughout the production industry, including on the ProductionHub blog.
But in researching video types and all the different ways we describe them, we also discovered that there are many misconceptions within the videography industry itself. And it stems from a deep belief in our professional identities being tied to the words we choose for ourselves, and the words the public chooses to call us.
VIDEOGRAPHY VS. CINEMATOGRAPHY VS. FILMMAKING
At its core, the argument between videography and film making or cinematography comes down to our own perceptions, despite what the public assumes to be true.
Filmmakers tend to believe they are creative, producers of art, standard bearers for quality and craftmanship.
To a filmmaker, a videographer is someone who stands at the back of a room, turns on a camera, and documents a boring event.
To be a filmmaker, however, is to exist on a higher plane in the echelon of video makers. Incidentally, it has nothing to do with using film anymore, since the vast majority of filmmakers use digital cameras.
But when a client is searching for someone to hire for a video project, they don't make the same assumptions.
In fact, "videographer" is one of the most common search engine keywords that marketing professionals use when looking for a vendor.
So to a filmmaker who wants to market themselves as a creator of high end video content, he or she could be losing out on lots of potential work, simply because they don't want to describe themselves as a videographer.
If you’re one of the people who can immediately identify the objects in the images seen here, the answer to this question is easy. But with the way the language has evolved to discuss audiovisual materials, it actually isn’t obvious for a good chunk of the population. I learned this lesson well when, after giving a detailed presentation about film preservation to a group of intelligent graduate students, the first person to raise her hand asked the question. The presentation covered the history of film technology, deterioration issues in different types of film bases, ways to mitigate deterioration, and preservation strategies. Not once, despite an abundance of images, did I give a precise physical description of the format itself. It just didn’t occur to me that something so basic needed to be explained.
The confusion, I believe, comes in the ubiquitous use of the verb “to film.” It doesn’t matter if one uses a smart phone and posts a video to one’s Facebook page or Paul Thomas Anderson shoots a commercial production like The Master on 70mm film, the action is described in the same way: it was “filmed”. The issue is further complicated when one considers that the products we see in movie theaters are generally referred to as “films”, even though a good chunk of Hollywood output (including blockbuster films like Avatar and The Hobbit) originates on high-resolution video cameras. Further, except for art houses and repertory theaters, it’s very unlikely that an actual reel of film is screened in a theater anymore. This summer, when you go to the multiplex and buy your ticket to the comic book adaptation of the week, you will be paying to see a digital projection of a file called a DCP.
The conflation of the terms film and video was once a pet peeve of mine, but when that graduate student raised her hand and forced me to reconsider it, I had to admit that it’s normal for language to evolve. What we must do moving forward is make it clear to our audience what we mean when we say that in the Motion Picture Preservation Lab we preserve film.
In the simplest terms, I am referring to the difference between two types of physical objects: a reel of film and a videotape. It gets slightly more complicated when you throw files into the mix, but I can assure you that if you do not have an object in your hand, you do not have a film.
1) A film reel, more precisely, a projection print, with a close-up of the individual frames at right. This is what the Motion Picture Lab works on.
2) A video cassette, more specifically, a betacam transfer. Preserving these is the business of the Audio-Video Lab, which, hopefully, you now understand is different than the Motion Picture Lab.
If that wasn’t enough to clear it up, here it goes: If you shot it on your smart phone, that’s a video. If you inserted it into your VCR in 1994, it’s a video. If you used a projector, which is in its most basic form is a machine that moves a strip of plastic past a light source at 24 frames per second, then, yes, you do indeed have a film in your hands.
We in the Motion Picture Preservation Lab take care of those pieces of plastic, and copy them to newer, more stable pieces of plastic if necessary for preservation purposes. We also work to make the content more easily accessible, usually by digitizing the films, which creates a video file that can be uploaded to ARC or any one of the National Archives’ social media platforms. The film is what we started with, the video is what you are able to see on whatever type of screen you may be using.
The most basic difference between the physical object of film and the physical object of a video is whether it is light-readable or you need a machine to see what’s on it. If you unwind a bit of a reel of film and hold it to a light source, you’ll see individual images (called frames). On the sides are perforations, or sprocket holes, that are there so that a projector can pull the film through and create moving images out of a succession of still pictures—kind of like a flip book you might have had as a child.
If you pull out a length of video from the cassette you have in a box somewhere in your basement, not only will you have possibly ruined your video (good luck not mangling that thing when you try to wind it back into the cassette), you won’t be able to see anything except a brown strip of plastic. The video tape requires a machine in order to view it, because the visual information is an electronic signal that is recorded magnetically to a piece of tape. At the National Archives, videos are preserved across the hall from us, in the Audio-Video Preservation Lab.
So, there you have it. I have necessarily simplified this issue beyond a full technical explanation, but hopefully you will now have a better understanding of what we’re talking about when you read our future posts!
A filmmaker is someone who tells a story with moving images and words. There are some who would say that a filmmaker is someone who uses actual film, but this is no longer true because more and more Hollywood films are recorded without the use of actual film. A filmmaker uses the art of storytelling with words and visuals to create emotion. A videographer is a person who shows up with a camera and shoots an event straight on. Anyone can make a video. You have probably seen parents at their child’s recitals with their iPads and handycams making videos. They are capturing reality as it is happening. Don’t get me wrong! There is nothing wrong with this. Here’s where the difference comes in: a filmmaker creates a hyper-reality version of reality. To better explain it we have created this video of a basketball game. The first scene is a video. It is shot exactly like what you would see if you were standing there. The next
scene is the way a filmmaker would tell this story.
What is the difference between videography and filmmaking
A filmmaker is someone who tells a story with moving images and words. There are some who would say that a filmmaker is someone who uses actual film, but this is no longer true because more and more Hollywood films are recorded without the use of actual film. A filmmaker uses the art of storytelling with words and visuals to create emotion. A videographer is a person who shows up with a camera and shoots an event straight on. Anyone can make a video. You have probably seen parents at their child’s recitals with their iPads and handycams making videos. They are capturing reality as it is happening. Don’t get me wrong! There is nothing wrong with this. Here’s where the difference comes in: a filmmaker creates a hyper-reality version of reality. To better explain it we have created this video of a basketball game. The first scene is a video. It is shot exactly like what you would see if you were standing there. The next scene is the way a filmmaker would tell this story.
Which example would you rather watch?
When the CEO of your company says, “Let’s create a new video,” look for a filmmaker to tell that story and use the power of storytelling with visuals and words combined to reach your goals. If content is king filmmaking is the most powerful way to create content people will want to watch.
Videography Vs Cinematography: The Differences Between the Two Services
The audiences nowadays are becoming more demanding and are highly media-savvy. Capturing their attention, retaining their interest, moving them with emotions, and selling your brand is not an easy task anymore.
Hence, you need to be clear on what you wish to achieve when you hire a media production professional. Some of the questions that you need to ask yourself are:
How do you wish to have your event captured? Is it in documentary/reporting style or with additional effects like background music, cinematography, etc.?
Do you want it to be informative, or entertaining, or loaded to the brim with emotions?
What is your budget? In terms of props and production value, you will usually get only what you pay for.
Having a clear idea about these primary points will give you more clarity on whether to go for videography vs. cinematography.
Conclusion
While the basic premise of capturing an event is the same between videography and cinematography, there is a fine line that sets the two apart.
While cinematography is more about the art and science of making a movie, videography is primarily about recording an event. The former is more creative and intertwined with the art of storytelling, the latter is about capturing and recording the proceedings with material constraints and limited resources.
When it comes to choosing between videography vs. cinematography, if your objective is brand building or marketing, then it makes more sense to hire a cinematographer than a videographer.
If you are still unsure, you should check out some of the services offered by Lido Live TV, one of the most popular media production companies in the US. They will make sure that every special occasion and event in your life is exquisitely captured and recorded by experienced professionals.