Wedding Video Editing | Bringing your wedding video to life!

Wedding video editing is taking the raw footage from a wedding video and putting it into some kind of logical format using slicing, transitions and titles to enhance the video' s appeal.

You may or may not know that not all video editors are created equally.  Undoubtedly the best video editors in the country work in Hollywood making feature films and huge salaries.  However, a great wedding video editor may not really need Hollywood experience to create a wonderful finished video for you.  Just like a great photographer need not have worked for National Geographic to be considered an expert.

How to get a great wedding video

Your wedding video editing starts long before post-production efforts of the editor.  Since I shoot and edit all of my own videos, I can "see" the finished video in my mind as I get the shots. 

I know the desired outcome before I get to the wedding video editing and post production work.  My goals are to create a cinemagraphic video that accurately portrays the feelings, emotions, sights and sounds of your wedding day and my editing process goes right along with those goals.

The wedding video editing process

Wedding video editing works like this:  I start by bringing back the raw footage from your wedding and importing it into my computer systems for editing.  That transfer takes 4-6 hours depending on the amount of footage that I took.

After the import editing software to take the footage that is on my computer and do a rough cut.  This is the time where I go through the footage and cut out the parts that do not add something to the finished film.  I call it a rough cut because I don't do the fine trimming of clips or transitions at this time.  I also don't do any title work on the video either at this time.  This process usually takes about 5-6 hours.

After the rough cut, I will take the first couple of songs that you gave me for your video and add them to the footage.  This way, I know about how much time I will have for some of the beginning sequences of the video and I will start trimming clips to fit the songs.  I don't just fit the times, but I also like to find the spots in the songs that make an impact and match the video to those parts.  The opening sequences will be 4-10 minutes on your video, but will take me about 4-5 hours to edit properly.

Now that the opening sequences are done, I will move into the ceremony.  During the ceremony, I will edit the two cameras (if applicable) together and synchronize the voices from the wireless microphones that I use.  Since there are a total of 2-4 microphones used at your wedding, it takes a while to get the perfect match of sight and sound.  This process takes about 3-4 hours.

After the ceremony, my focus is on the introduction of the reception sequence and moving the audience (people watching the video) to the reception.  This process is similar to the process for creating the opening sequence, but usually only involves one song rather than two and takes 2-4 hours.

The final steps in the wedding video editing process are editing the reception, the departure and the credits on the video.  Definitely the most time consuming part of the editing process, the reception will be cut and trimmed to capture the best moments from the celebration.  My goal for this portion is to find a way to capture the experience of what it was like to be there.  Watching people dance could be boring if not edited well and I have seen hundreds of videos that were boring.  During the reception, the editing process is so key to creating something alive or something you would never watch again.

Credits and ending sequences can take a couple of hours to produce but really end the film well.  As I create your video for you, please let me know if you have any more questions about the wedding video editing process.