Documentary vs Cinematic Weddings
Now, what do these terms even mean? What is a documentary wedding style and a cinematic wedding style? And why should any of this matter to you? “I just want a nice wedding video I can watch with my family or post online...,” you think. The two styles fall on the opposite ends of wedding video spectrum. Depending on what the video company you decided to hire tends to make, two companies shooting the same exact wedding will produce a completely different final video. Let’s look at some of the different styles.
Cinematic Wedding
A cinematic style means that your wedding film looks like it was made in Hollywood. Beautiful. Very staged. And sadly, it will most likely feel fake. You’ll probably end up feeling a bit like a puppet after a whole day of: “Turn this way! Look that way! Kiss her on her cheek! Stand over there!” However spectacular the final video will come out, you won’t have much fun with your family and friends on the most important day of your lives.
Documentary Wedding
Now, relax and enjoy the day – and forget about the video guys. You won’t even remember they are at your wedding until the moment they will come to say goodbye to you at the end of the day. Documentary filmmakers will let you enjoy all the most important people in your lives, laugh with them, shed emotional tears with them. These filmmakers will not kidnap you away from your family to take zillion staged shots, leaving all your family and friends behind.
When you’ll watch your wedding video shot in documentary style, you’ll see your family and you and your spouse and all of your friends laughing, talking, dancing and drinking that wedding wine together. No fake posing, trying to make the video appear perfect, but empty on heart-warming memories.
River Story Wedding’s Style
Now, what style is it we like to do here at River Story Weddings? We fit somewhere in between the two. We do about 90% documentary style, and then just to add a bit of that Hollywood sparkle – we’ll do about 10% of the cinematic (“Hollywood”) style. But think of it as ‘sliding scale’ – those percentages can always be adjusted to your liking. We want to hear what our customers want! Nothing feels as good as hearing “Oh my god, this is exactly what we wanted!”
We do mostly documentary style, but yes - we’ll pop in here and there to you two away for couple of minutes (“Hey, want to kiss your bride on the top of the vineyard hill while the sun is setting down?”), but we won’t overdo it. We’ll let you and your folks enjoy the day.
Usually only a few days after the wedding, after we’ve worked our magic editing skills on the footage, the video is finished. Your wedding day will always be remembered through the film we’ve all created together: you two love birds, all of those people without whom your wedding day just wouldn’t be the same, and us, your humble cinematographers.
Lesson of the day: Watch video examples before booking a videographer.
When choosing your wedding video company, it is important that you understand beforehand what type of videos they tend to make. If their videos substantially differ from what you want for yourselves, don’t do it. Do you love their videos? Book them before somebody else does! A good videographer will always listen to what you want, and then be thrilled to deliver just that!
Curious to peek through some of our other customers’ wedding videos? Click here to browse our wedding video gallery.
Call us if you feel like we might me a match. We always get a bit of a rush when a new couple calls us!