This Is The Season To Be Married. Wow! What a Season!
With the wedding season upon us, a flourish of glam and glitter, joy and happiness ensues. It is a time of celebration for the couple and their loved ones. But on the other hand, it is a period of relentless hustle and bustle for wedding videographers in big studio houses. Their schedules are packed to the brim, barely leaving them a moment to catch their breath.
What adds to the hustle of a wedding photographer and videographer is the growing trend among couples to have their wedding memories immortalized not just as videos but as cinematic experiences. As a result, large-scale videography studios face an ever-increasing demand. To cope with the workload, maintain quality and consistency, and ensure the timely completion of projects, these studios have to resort to outsourcing service providers.
Well, although weddings are about two people embarking on a journey of togetherness, the process of capturing these precious moments and transforming them into a video for a wedding photographer and videographer is not always as enchanting as watching the bride walk down the aisle. So, this blog aims to shed light on how large-scale studios navigate through this busy season. Read on.
How a Wedding Photographer and Videographer Function Amidst a Busy Booking Season
Creating mood boards is the most challenging task for large-scale videography studios during the wedding season. As people from the industry, you would already be aware of these visual representations that illustrate what the final wedding video should look like. The necessary skill sets, equipment, software, and timeframe that need to be included in a mood board of wedding videographers can vary greatly depending on the wedding’s style.
Popular Videography Styles
From destination weddings to fine art productions, where moments are captured artistically, the range is wide and diverse. Fine art productions, being one of the most expensive styles, offer the couple an unparalleled aesthetic experience and creative perspective.
Moreover, other popular styles are trending in the modern era, such as vintage videography, traditional videography, and aerial wedding videography. Each of these styles requires an exceptional level of production and post-production skill.
The Volume of Work
It is not the wedding style. The volume of work on their mood boards makes it tough for a wedding photographer and videographer. From initial communication with the couple or the family, selecting the right gears, showcasing the right composition skills to editing the raw videos without compromising on quality, the tasks on the list are never-ending.
The Solution: Outsourcing
What can be the apt solution to maintaining consistent quality and completing the editing process of numerous projects within a timeline, yet saving budget? The answer is ‘ Outsourcing’.
Here are some interesting statistics which will make it clear to cement the idea of outsourcing some of the services, if not all.
According to Knot.com, an online vendor marketplace, wedding videographers spend an average of 9 hours on their feet during the wedding. This indicates you cannot expect the same videographers to do the post-production work, too, no matter how good they are at it.
If you feel you can work with the in-house editors, it won’t work anymore. Mediocrity will harm the business. Interestingly, a reliable report suggests that nearly 400,000 wedding vendors are active in the U.S. presently. This means competition is ever-increasing.
When a high-end client invests a lot of money in their wedding, they expect not just pretty pictures to be taken. They look for authenticity, creativity, and a difference that a studio can provide them. Even if you are a wedding videographer working in a big studio, you are way out of competition, if you can give the clients value additions.
Most Effective Work Hours Need to Be Spent On Post-production Tasks
Resource Intensive Process
In the post-production stage, wedding videographers need high-end gadgets, starting with computers with great storage and efficient image processing capacities. Let’s delve into a simple and interesting calculation here.
For instance, if a large studio processes 200,000 images per year, saving 3 seconds on each image will save one approximately 167 hours a year. This figure matters especially when most wedding videographers have started offering their services remotely or through freelancing. This means, saving even a minute of time and resources used for editing means saving money.
Complexity of Modern Software
The steps in editing have significantly increased from a decade ago with modern software and new aesthetic requirements. If earlier, it was just image selection, editing, formatting, and saving the image files. Today, that is not the case. For example, Adobe Premiere Pro is considered to be the industry standard tool by wedding videographers and editors. It offers multitudinous features to create compelling videos. Its newest edition includes AI-powered features, helping advanced editors embrace the future of video editing.
However, learning these advanced features and getting the hang of it all require quality training. It will cost a lot if bigger studios invest in these for a huge workforce of wedding videographers and editors. If wedding videographers need to get trained in Adobe Premiere Pro on a professional level, it takes 150 hours of formal instructions and independent practice. Obviously, videographers and studios can’t afford to spend 150 hours training their post-production team during busy weddings.
Creative Flexibility
Well, as a large-scale wedding videography studio, even though you have in-house editors with technical skills, there is another disadvantage when it comes to the creative flexibility of wedding videographers and editors. For instance, if an editor was hired for his or her skill in HDR editing, would he or she be able to produce creative output when it comes to aerial photography editing? Chances are a big ‘No’. However, aerial videography is not just about technical proficiency but also demands a high degree of creativity.
For instance, F. Mike Henriques of Artistic Wedding Films recounts a wedding where drone photography was pivotal in capturing a heart-shaped pattern of flower petals laid down the aisle by the florist, highlighting how this technique can bring out unique décor elements in all their splendor. Here, the wedding videographer has captured beautiful wedding footage according to his creativity, but if the editor can’t still retain the beauty of the capture as pretty as possible through the edits, it’s an utter waste of time.
Wedding Videographers Can Find Solace in Wedding Videography Outsourcing Firms
Outsourcing firms dedicated to post-production tasks for wedding videographers have emerged as game-changers in the industry. They take raw wedding footage and, using top-of-the-line equipment, turn it into a seamless narrative that truly encapsulates the spirit of the wedding day.
Streamlining Post-Production
Let’s consider an example. Wedding videographers may have thousands of clips from a wedding day. They then entrust this footage to an outsourcing firm, which saves the wedding videographers’ significant time by assuming the daunting task of sorting through the footage, selecting the best clips, and weaving them into a cohesive story. This arrangement allows the videographer to concentrate on their core competency – capturing stunning moments on film.
Consistency in Quality
Outsourcing firms have several advantages that can bolster your business. One of them is the consistency they provide in the final product. Their dedicated teams of editors work relentlessly to ensure that each video maintains a consistent style and quality, which is crucial for establishing your brand identity and meeting your client’s expectations.
Quick Turnaround Times
Another advantage of outsourcing firms is their quick turnaround time, an essential factor in the wedding industry. After all, no couple wants to wait months to see their wedding video. An outsourcing firm can deliver a professionally edited video much quicker than a solo videographer, enhancing your client’s satisfaction and your business’s reputation.
Enabling Business Growth
By outsourcing, you also open up possibilities for business growth. You can delegate the time-consuming task of post-production and focus on expanding your business. This could mean taking on more clients, improving your filming techniques, or even diversifying into different types of videography.
Market Statistics and Trends
Though the previous section details the basic benefits of outsourcing wedding videography editing. Let’s see some serious stats in the below section.
With the availability of high-end cameras such as Canon’s EOS R5 and EOS R6 built on the revolutionary EOS R system, near complete darkness focus limit of EV -6, Eye Detection AF and 5 655 selectable AF positions, etc. There will be more wedding photographers and videographers coming into the profession as these high-end gadgets are making the profession easier than before. But here the question is, are there enough editors to match the demand-supply balance? According to a 2024 report, by 2027, the majority of the US workforce will be freelancers. The freelancers are 58 million and counting, which means the top wedding photographers and videographers will all choose to do freelancing or in association with an outsourcing agency as they get paid for the time they spent and not according to a stipulated salary they sign in their offer letter.
Publishing formats for wedding videographers have increased with the advent of social media platforms. From the pre-wedding save-the-date reels to YouTube Shorts of wedding videos, the traditional concept of just making a wedding video album has changed dramatically. So the large videography studios not only see the surge in wedding day videography demand but even for the newer formats. This means resorting to an external resource, even if there is an availability of an in-house team becomes a necessity.
As per the report published by Fortune Business Insights, couples approaching wedding videographers prefer full-coverage packages for their wedding to partial coverage. The best part is people are ready to invest in wedding videography full-coverage packages, even if it is a fortune. An interesting study by The Knot Real Wedding Study says that high-end wedding videographers’ collections can begin at $ 7,500 and even go up to $20,000 on videography alone. But again the demand depends on the level of trust and attention to detail. So, the large-scale photography and videography studios are competing against vendors who are ready to pay $1500 for a similar project. The way to beat the competition is by showcasing a diverse portfolio of previous work, garnering positive customer reviews, and offering excellent customer service.
Furthermore, those studios that provide exclusive, high-end services should also focus on differentiating themselves from lower-priced competitors. This could be through the use of high-quality equipment, offering unique shooting styles, or providing additional services such as drone footage or same-day edits. Ultimately, success in this competitive market depends on the balance of price, quality, and customer satisfaction.
A Look Ahead
As wedding videographers running large-scale studios, you should make it necessary to vet potential editors carefully. While choosing an outsourcing service provider, do not hesitate to ask questions about the experiences, the size of their team, and the specific offerings within their wedding videography packages. It’s important to understand what you’re getting in your package, including the number of revisions allowed and other deliverables. By taking the time to thoroughly interview potential candidates, you can ensure that your wedding videography projects will not only meet your expectations but will also capture your client’s love story in a way that they can cherish for a lifetime.
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