Videography

For a long time I didn’t want a videographer. I liked the idea that our wedding would be preserved in the Roots’ glamorous photos of us, and these carefully captured images wouldn’t be competing with jerky, muffled video of me scratching my nose and stumbling over my train… Also, as with photography, I wasn’t crazy about the traditional-style wedding video and the cheap feel of video vs. film’s richer look.

But people always talk about how the whole day was a blur, and they needed the video to go back and see all the stuff they missed. Plus, I worried that I would regret not having friends and family members on tape.

So kind of at the last minute (3 1/2 months; I think most wedding timelines say 9 months to a year or something), I started looking. I’d heard of companies that shoot on Super 8 for a vintage ‘60s look, but they were all pretty expensive and, realistically, the footage looks cool but it’s really jumpy and low-res (great if you’re going for that! Not great if you want to remember every detail…). Film was totally unaffordable. And most of the wedding video samples I saw were either unacceptable – shaky camera work, bad lighting and sound – or just too traditional for me.

Thank goodness for Craigslist! Among the Orlando-area search results I found Star Fruit Productions. The demo on their site caught my eye because it looked like it was shot on film, and the unobtrusive documentary style mixed movie-style cinematography with guest interviews and a great soundtrack (the song transitions are a little jarring on the demo, but the full-length reel sounds great).

Sage at Star Fruit was very accommodating when I wanted to customize one of their standard packages to fit my budget and requirements. We’re having two cameras at the ceremony and one at the reception, and we get 3 DVDs and a copy of all the raw footage on mini-DV so that we can always edit our own version at some point if we want. One bummer is that Disney won’t let Star Fruit grab sound from Disney’s sound system, so the officiant and groom have to wear two microphones – how dumb is that gonna look?

I will be sending Star Fruit a CD or two with all the song selections from our ceremony and suggestions for the reception. And we’re supposed to get our video just a month after the wedding! I can’t wait to show it at our at-home reception.

So videography was the last thing I wanted, and now it’s one of the things I’m most excited about!

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