As a wedding cinematographer it never ceases to amaze me just how many poorly produced wedding videos are out there and how many brides and grooms regrettably purchased them. Not all videographers are created equal and as the consumer you need to educate yourself as to what to look for in a wedding video. In this and following articles we will illustrate what is good and what is bad when you are looking at wedding video demos.

Audio Is One Half Of A Video! Without audio video is nothing more than a sequence of still images displayed at 30 frames per second. Your photographer with modern cameras can capture 9 frames per second, why hire a videographer then if you aren’t going to be able to hear anything. The mp3 below is an example of a poorly done wedding video audio track during the readings. Notice that you can hear the person, but not very clearly. (Due to these clips being from a competitor's video the names have been removed and I am using video only.)


The audio could have been far more intelligable and easy to understand if the videographer had bothered to do his job properly. The following video clip demonstrates just how a reading should sound.

I like making videos sound "you are there" as much as possible so I have mixed back in some of the natural echo of the church while maintaining the clear and understandable words of the reader.

This next audio clip is from the vows of the wedding. This is where your audio should really excel! After all you will want to hear the words you spoke to each other on the altar. In the audio clip below... Well take a listen...

You have noticed that you can hear the priest, poorly but he is audible but at the same time the loudest sound in the clip is the camera shutter click of the photographer, who is evidently standing very close to the video camera. Bad isn’t it? What did the bride and groom say? All I could hear was the click of the photographer’s shutter, I don’t even know what the vows were! Needless to say, but if you are watching a wedding video demo and you can’t hear the bride and groom say their vows, you don’t want to hire that videographer.

Now the following video clip is how the vows section of a wedding video should sound!

You noticed that the priest’s words were clear and audible. The groom’s words were clear and audible and so were the bride's. There is no guessing as to what was said with this video. You can even hear the whispered instructions of the priest. That should be true of anyone who speaks in a wedding video demo!

Check out our final video clip of a toast delivered by the maid of honor at a reception.

No guessing what the maid of honor said during her toast to the bride ad groom on that video clip and that is the way it should be on any wedding video demo that you may view! One thing to note here is that this is on demos, which means the wedding cinematographer knew how to do his job. But on the job mistakes and accidents do happen or people refuse to cooperate. Over 15 years we have had priests refuse to wear a microphone or church rules barring the use of wireless microphones. Grooms have turned their microphones off to whisper something secret to their bride and forget to turn it back on. We had one groom who was so nervous that during the vows he kept scratching at his tux lapel right below our microphone, it sounded nearly like nails on a chalkboard. The priest in our vows clip during the homily spoke so forcefully he was clipping our microphone and I spent a good two days cleaning up his audio the best I could. At receptions we have had DJs and Bands that didn't know their systems and overdrive their speakers thus providing poor audio for the whole event.

Speaking of bad sound form the DJs, recently we worked with one who doesn't know how to produce a lick of good sound and the toasts are always distorted. So since all the toasts were going to take place from a mic on a stand in front of the head table I mounted our mic next to the DJs on the mic stand. Having the best man and maid of honor speak directly into our mic and the DJ's mic would save us from taking a feed from his bad audio. Up stepped the best man for his toast, everything going fine and suddenly the best man pulled the DJ mic free of the stand and started pacing twenty feet away from where our mic was mounted. Oey-Vey, even the best laid plans can go awry in the run and gun situations of a wedding day.

So audi is 50% of the wedding video, so the next time you pick up that demo disc and watch it, you should be looking for clear, intelligible words from everyone who talks; the readers, priest/pastor/rabbi/officiant, cantors, bride and groom, the people giving toasts, the master of ceremonies and the entertainment. If you can't hear them, move on to the next wedding demo, because video is 50% audio!

Good Luck!

Next we will be discussing what makes a good video image.

Brian Peterson is the owner of Allure Films / River City Productions located in South Bend, IN. He is a past WEVA Creative Excellence judge, published writer and has been a speaker at national conventions on video production.