Hart Videography have been involved with wedding filming and producing wedding films for over 4 years. During that time, technology moved on fast, with card-based video cameras rather than tape-based cameras, and High Definition video becoming the standard.

Hart Videography have also developed a unique style and established a firm foundation in the wedding filming area of videography. Wedding Films by Hart Videography are more of a production than a recording of the event. The best way to film a wedding is to capture the action as it happens, and keep it in that sequence in the final wedding film. With the vast amount of experience that comes from filming weddings over a four year period, Hart Videography has learnt the intricate timings of how a wedding flows throughout the day.

The secret to wedding filming is not simply following the itinerary provided by the bride and groom, but applying knowledge and experience to those timings on the actual day, to ensure the cameraman is in the right place at the right time. This is harder than it sounds as wedding days are typically fluid days, with approximate timings which are planned well in advance, rarely being stuck to.

Wedding films look their best, when they are captured at their best. This may sound obvious, but capturing those photographic moments is key to creating a beautiful looking wedding film. This is where Hart Videography really excels, by using trained cameramen look for photographic opportunities creating a visually stunning wedding films, rather than “just following the bride and groom around” lazily recording everything and leaving the work all to be done in the edit during post production.

Wedding Videography is the term used to describe the planning, filming, editing, and wedding video production. Hart Videography provide their wedding services on DVD in standard definition, and couples can upgrade to high definition Blu-Ray for an additional fee.

The purpose of a wedding videographer is to capture the special moments of your wedding day, as well as capturing all those magical moments, the purpose is to tell the story of your wedding day.

Hart Videography believe that a wedding video should be more than just a “video of your ceremony and the speeches” It should capture the mood and the atmosphere of the whole day, telling the story and setting the scene of your wedding day as if it were a short film. This approach makes a much more emotional video that is personal to you.

Wedding videography is a skill which is learnt over time, much like professional photography. Another parellel which can be drawn to photography, is that wedding videography techniques and styles are also developed over time and often unique to each wedding videographer.

It’s important to understand how weddings flow and communication with the wedding coordinator, photographer and toastmaster is essetial to a smoothly filmed wedding. Wedding videographers should always be thinking one section ahead, planning where they need to be standing, and how they are going to get there in time to capture each key moment as it happens. Hart Videography manage to capture the mood every time.

You will find a good wedding videographer will have thought of every aspect of your wedding already, and as you can see from the services Hart Videography offer, that every aspect has been considered carefully.

Hart Videography present their wedding films in a professional wedding dvd format, complete with motion menu screen and themed chapters which split the wedding day into smaller wedding movies. The most common chapters, or sections, are usually:-

“The Ceremony”
“Just Married”
“Speeches”
“First Dance”
“Highlights”

Each of these wedding movies is filmed and edited in such a way that they make sense as a stand-alone movie, but equally if you watch each wedding movie one after the other, by using the”Play All” button, they flow into one another to make a lovely wedding film which captures the magic or your special day.

Hart Videography wedding DVD’s a created using professional DVD authoring systems and laid out in a simple, yet highly effective format. You can choose to watch just one section of your wedding, or watch the whole day as one single wedding movie. Only the highest quality DVD’s are used, with the industry standard Ritek Purple DYE system, helping to ensure maximum compatibility with set-top DVD players, portable DVD players and computer-based DVD readers.

The processes used by Hart Videography not only in the editing of the wedding movie, but also the creation of the wedding dvd, are customised for a Hybrid workflow which enables Hart Videography to produce standard definition DVD’s, and High definition Blu-Ray Discs, all from the same source of wedding movie. This means that, when you receive your standard definition DVD, you can upgrade to a Blu-Ray disc any time within the next year, for an additional fee. Hart Videography believes in future proofing your magical memories, which is why we work this way. Blu-Ray Disc players are becoming more popular, and this is why we offer this option to upgrade, and the beauty is, couples don't have to make that decision straight away.

There are 6 main stages to wedding video production, these may vary from videographer to videographer, but essentially they are all the same foundation blocks to a quality video for a wedding:-

Planning/Preparation
Filming
Ingestion of Footage
Editing
Processing/Rendering
DVD Authoring

Like the production of many things, planning and preparation is always the best place to start. Wedding video production is no different. In fact, due to weddings being a “live” event, planning becomes one of the most important factors. Hart Videography plan for each wedding by supplying an itinerary form to the bride and groom well in advance of the wedding. This itinerary form requires the couple to list out the key moments of their day and put “approximate” timings to each item. This is the best time for them to identify any other special moments they may have planned. this could be anything from a magician, to a surprise singing waiter at the meal. The key point is that it gets the bride and groom thinking their day through like a videographer, which in turn helps Hart Videography to obtain the best picture of how the day will unfold. Armed with this information, the video for the wedding should be relatively surprise free for the cameraman. Hart Videography also carry out checks on their equipment, memory cards are re-formatted, and batteries are charged the day before any wedding. A spare backup camera is always carried in case of the rare event of equipment failure. It’s important to remember that no videographer can foresee an equipment failure or other circumstances beyond his/her control, but with the right preparation, the effects of such events can be minimised.

The Filming of a video for a wedding is the most important aspect on the day. If the footage has not been filmed, or is too shaky or incorrectly exposed, there’s no opportunity to go back and re-shoot it. The planning stage will have helped make things easier by making sure the videographer is in the right place each time, which then allows for total concentration on the filming of the wedding. All companies have their own approach to filming a wedding and Hart Videography is no different. Using the best tripod and monopods is essential in keeping the camera steady and achieving good and stable shots. Wedding filming has also been covered elsewhere on this page.

The next stage in wedding video production is the ingestion of the footage. This is a straight forward process nowadays, thanks largely to the switch to card-based video camera equipment. We have an automated system which transfers and encodes the recorded footage of the wedding onto the computer and prepares a backup, as well as preparing the footage for editing.

Editing a wedding video production is a major influence in the style of the wedding video. Hart Videography has developed a visual style and method for arranging the footage in a sequence that makes sense to the flow of the actual wedding day. Care and attention is also paid to the appearance, which is where the visual style comes in. There is always a balance between adding effects to enhance the video and being careful not to go over the top with them. Striking this balance is another key requirement in good wedding video production.

Once the editing is finalised, checked, and re-checked, the footage is then processed. This is also known as “Rendering.” What this does, is process and encode each and every frame of the wedding video, conforming it to either DVD standard definition or Blu-Ray high definition. This process can be quite time-consuming, and powerful computers are the only thing required here to speed things along. Once this stage is complete, the wedding videos are ready for DVD creation.

DVD Authoring is often under estimated in it’s complexity. Its important to design and layout a DVD which is easily navigated, but also flows nicely from one section to the next. One could argue that DVD Authoring is the most important stage because if it’s done badly you could end up wrecking a lot of hard work and effort from all the previous stages. Pitfalls to avoid when creating a DVD are mainly compression settings and compatibility considerations. Although DVD are a standard format, they will be played on a infinite array of DVD players, set-top boxes, computers, and games consoles and there is an even wider choice of displays out there. Hart Videography have experience in this area and put it to good use. A combination of compression settings and DVD choice, evolved from years of working in this field pays dividends in creating a video for a wedding that works the way it is intended every time.

Hart Videography provides wedding videos in Essex and wedding videos in Suffolk. We have covered venues such as:-

Layer Marney Towers, Colchester
Pontlands Park, Chelmsford
St. Mary's Church, Great Baddow
The Fennes, Braintree
St. Peter's Church, Bocking, Braintree
Stoke-by-Nayland Golf Club, Colchester
The Essex Golf & Country Club, Earls Colne
Three Rivers Golf Club, Purleigh
St. Mary's Church, Wivenhoe
LIttle Easton Manor, Great Dunmow
Yaxley Hall, Ipswich
Whitton Baptist Church, Ipswich
Smeetham Hall Barn, Sudbury
The White Hart, Great Yeldham
Fort Amhesrt, Chatham, Kent
Christ's College, University of Cambridge
Braxted Park, Great Braxted
Manor Farm Barn, Henley, Ipswich
St. Andrew's Church, Halstead
Le Meridian, Limassol, Cyprus