Do you provide the raw video footage?
What is “raw footage” exactly?
It is the unedited footage taken directly from the videographer’s camera. It has no color correction, no cuts, no off camera audio, and it’s filled with unused and unneeded footage footage that never makes it into a finalized wedding film.
Many people confuse the term “raw footage” with a digital copy of your wedding film. We gladly deliver our wedding films in a digital format, a digital file that can be stored and played on your computer or mobile devices and can also be used to create your own DVD’s and Blu-Rays.
Unlike the finalized, edited footage that looks and sounds amazing, raw footage can look bland, washed out, sound bad, and frankly seem downright dreary if you don’t know how to shape and mold it into a beautiful, finished film.
In our cinematic style of videography, the events and moments of your wedding day are thoughtfully filmed with the final edited version of your film already in mind. Many times, these seemingly random little 2-3 second clips are shot completely out of chronological order with the intention of placing all the little pieces together later in post production to form a cohesive story of your day.
Without our editing, these scenes and clips, many of which are just 2-3 seconds long, would just appear to be an hodgepodge of random clips that carry very little meaning.
Often times we shoot the same clip 3-4 times 2-3 different ways to make sure we get one good usable clip.
Other times, especially during the ceremony, we may leave the camera rolling as we reposition ourselves for a different angle. This raw footage will look terrible to the novice as in the middle of the clip you may have some footage of nothing but the ground as we walk from one position to another and then refocus for the next shot. Leaving the camera rolling is done on purpose to more easily sync the footage from multiple cameras. The bad footage is edited out in post production.
If you were to see the unedited footage without seeing the final, edited wedding video, you may even be disappointed and think you wasted your money on a wedding videographer that spent so much time on seemingly unimportant footage!
Do you have the equipment to use it?
RAW footage takes up a huge amount of space on your computer’s hard drive. In most cases a flash drive wouldn’t even hold it all. It would require a portable hard drive to provide the raw footage to you.
It takes a powerful computer with good video editing software to work with raw, high definition footage. Most people don’t have that and don’t know how to edit video.
Why we don’t offer the RAW footage
You want to hire us because you’ve seen examples of our wedding films and you love the style, the beauty, and the emotion our films evoke. If you can see yourself in the style of film we create.
We want to provide our clients with a superbly crafted piece of artwork. The art we create is not the footage we shoot. Editing video is an art within itself. Its one of the main things, we think, that sets us apart from the videographer down the street.
Sure, they may can color correct the footage, splice some clips together, and add some music in the background. But can they film and edit and produce a film that tells a story and evokes an emotion deep inside the viewer? That is truly what makes a great piece of art in our humble opinion.
In essence, the reason we don’t provide the raw footage is because we believe that the raw footage is not a true representation of our art work or our brand. Its what we do with that raw footage that makes it truly amazing.
