How to edit a wedding highlight video
This blog post is going to be a nuts and bolts breakdown of how I get from 90 gig of raw footage to a glorious love story fairy tale highlight of a wedding day. So get ready for some really dry media management paragraphs...
First of I'll open a finder window (Mac user reporting in) with all the footage and I'll sort it into the following folders:
01 Bride Prep
02 Groom Prep (if applicable)
03 Pre Ceremony
04 Ceremony
05 Photos
06 Pre Meal
07 Speeches
08 Evening
09 Timelapses
I save everything into the same folder on my external hard drive (Seagate 4tb) which clones itself daily to an identical hard drive using Carbon Copy Cloner. Tangent: when I fill one up I just replace the drive and it's clone with new drives. I put the old ones somewhere safe just in case.
I'll then open up Premiere, create a new project and import all the folders I just created. Coffee break. I usually shoot all in 50fps (1920x1080) so I'll have to create a timeline that's 25fps. Then comes the fun bit, I will lay out all the best shots chronologically in the timeline. I'll go through the folders in the project panel, double click on them, they then appear in the program window where I'll 'In and Out' the clip and drag it down onto the timeline. As I drop them down I'll add lumertri colour and bring the white balance and exposure to neutral if they need it. I also add warp stabilizer if the shot needs it, usually my settings for that are 10% 'smoothness' with smooth motion.
Once all the best shots are laid out I go in search for my music. I usually use 3 songs; The first one is a non-cheesy (actually very rare) romantic song with nice lyrics, the second song is an uplifting instrumental for the ceremony, the third song is a folky party song.
I'll then move the clips and music around a bit to sync them up to each other. The next step ius showing the video to my wife Hannah. She has a great perspective as a former bride, and a great understanding of feel and music. I make the changes she suggests (after a brief time of ego driven-protest) and send the video to the client.
This is what I tell the bride for the drafting process: We recommend you watch it a few times (5-10 times) over a couple of days, maybe show it to your friends and family, then if you’d like some changes made, send your feedback and changes in one comprehensive email. We make those changes and send you the draft back.
The changes I usually get are things like "can you please take out the shot of my uncle at 3:10, nobody likes him" etc.
To finish this post, here's my golden rule for wedding videos:
Understanding what a bride wants to see, is everything when making wedding videos.
Figure out what this means to you, edit with it in mind and everything will be fine. Good luck!
First of I'll open a finder window (Mac user reporting in) with all the footage and I'll sort it into the following folders:
01 Bride Prep
02 Groom Prep (if applicable)
03 Pre Ceremony
04 Ceremony
05 Photos
06 Pre Meal
07 Speeches
08 Evening
09 Timelapses
I save everything into the same folder on my external hard drive (Seagate 4tb) which clones itself daily to an identical hard drive using Carbon Copy Cloner. Tangent: when I fill one up I just replace the drive and it's clone with new drives. I put the old ones somewhere safe just in case.
I'll then open up Premiere, create a new project and import all the folders I just created. Coffee break. I usually shoot all in 50fps (1920x1080) so I'll have to create a timeline that's 25fps. Then comes the fun bit, I will lay out all the best shots chronologically in the timeline. I'll go through the folders in the project panel, double click on them, they then appear in the program window where I'll 'In and Out' the clip and drag it down onto the timeline. As I drop them down I'll add lumertri colour and bring the white balance and exposure to neutral if they need it. I also add warp stabilizer if the shot needs it, usually my settings for that are 10% 'smoothness' with smooth motion.
Once all the best shots are laid out I go in search for my music. I usually use 3 songs; The first one is a non-cheesy (actually very rare) romantic song with nice lyrics, the second song is an uplifting instrumental for the ceremony, the third song is a folky party song.
I'll then move the clips and music around a bit to sync them up to each other. The next step ius showing the video to my wife Hannah. She has a great perspective as a former bride, and a great understanding of feel and music. I make the changes she suggests (after a brief time of ego driven-protest) and send the video to the client.
This is what I tell the bride for the drafting process: We recommend you watch it a few times (5-10 times) over a couple of days, maybe show it to your friends and family, then if you’d like some changes made, send your feedback and changes in one comprehensive email. We make those changes and send you the draft back.
The changes I usually get are things like "can you please take out the shot of my uncle at 3:10, nobody likes him" etc.
To finish this post, here's my golden rule for wedding videos:
Understanding what a bride wants to see, is everything when making wedding videos.
Figure out what this means to you, edit with it in mind and everything will be fine. Good luck!