There are three recurring mistakes I keep seeing wedding filmmakers make over and over whenever they’re editing their videos. So if you’re a wedding filmmaker who wants to improve the quality of your edits, here are those three mistakes, and how to fix them.
Mistake One: Too Many Details, Not Enough People
The first mistake I see is that filmmakers focus way too much on the details of the wedding day instead of the people the wedding is actually about.
If you’re wondering about my qualifications here, I’ve been filming weddings for coming up on almost 15 years, and every month I host a wedding film review livestream where I watch and review wedding films from filmmakers around the world. One consistent mistake I see is filmmakers spending way too much time establishing the location and showing details at the start of the film.
On average, a lot of the wedding films I watch open with a drone shot. Then sunlight filtering through trees. Then an arch decorated with flowers, empty chairs, the couple’s wedding bands. And then finally, after approximately 40 seconds, they show a person.
Weddings are about people, right? I think we can both agree on that. So why are you as an editor taking so long to show a person in the wedding film?
And I get it. I’ve heard all the rebuttals before. The couple paid money for all of these details, and if they paid money for it, it’s going to be filmed. These details show all the meticulous work the bride put into planning her day. Matt, I just got a drone and I really feel like the film needed five aerial shots of the venue to start it off.
I’ve heard all of it. But the fact remains that you have been hired to film two people getting married.
I’m not saying don’t include those details, because I’m sure the couple will appreciate that you did. What I am saying is that you do not need to load up the first 40 seconds of the film in some misguided attempt to make sure you’ve “established” the wedding day, when in reality a lot of those shots get incredibly boring very quickly, which means people are going to want to click away and watch something else.
If you want to edit a wedding film people actually want to watch, you have to make it interesting, and detail shots are not nearly as engaging as shots of people.
So how should you handle the beginning of your film? By all means, still show establishing shots. But only show enough to establish where you are, as the name implies, and then get right into beginning the story, showing people, and above all, keeping things moving.
Mistake Two: Poor Pacing
Which leads very nicely into the second mistake, which is poor pacing.
What do I mean by poor pacing? I don’t mean filming everything in slow motion, which is actually a whole other issue, and we could make a whole other video about that. No, poor pacing here means getting bogged down showing too many moments from one part of the wedding day before finally moving on to the next.
The perfect example is the ceremony, because the ceremony is sadly where most wedding video edits go to die.
Here’s the deal, and I’ve been plenty guilty of this in the past too. It’s very easy whenever you’re editing a wedding video to feel the need to include all of the couple’s vows, just like you may feel guilty if you don’t include a lot of establishing shots because the couple spent a lot of money on the day.
A lot of filmmakers feel guilty if they don’t include every vow the couple said during the ceremony, especially if the couple wrote their own and they’re really good. You almost hit a moment of paralysis when editing the ceremony, because the vows may be three or four minutes long, or longer, and you can’t bring yourself to cut any of them out. Which leads to edits that are eight, ten, fifteen minutes long.
And whenever I watch films like that, I realize half of the wedding video is just vows, where the videographer is cutting between shots of the couple as they each speak, occasionally sprinkling in one or two shots of B-roll because they don’t have enough footage to cut away to.
Editing your films this way is how you kill them, because a good wedding film has good pacing. It shows many of the moments from the day, but none of them overstay their welcome.
You see the venue established, but not with 40 seconds of establishing shots. The couple gets ready, the groom puts on his tuxedo, the bride puts on her dress. Then you get to the ceremony, where they walk down the aisle, hear the message from the officiant, say their vows, exchange rings, light a unity candle, or tie a unity knot, or pour unity sand, or plant a unity tree. I’ve seen it all. They do something, and then they’re pronounced married, and you move on to the reception.
Notice how the pacing keeps moving throughout. I don’t say, hey, slow down and give me four minutes of the groom putting on his tie. You don’t want the edit getting unnecessarily slowed down at any moment.
I’m not going to give you a time limit on how long to show each moment, because I’m not going to edit your wedding films for you, and you don’t need me to. But what I can tell you objectively is that if you get caught up in one moment, like showing too much of the vows, and out of guilt you include all of them because you’re worried the couple will be upset, that’s going to ruin the pacing.
Suddenly, halfway through the edit, you had your audience engaged. They were watching, they were learning the story of the couple, and now they’re losing interest because the film is far too focused on one moment when it really needs to move on.
So above all, don’t be afraid of leaving something out because you’re worried the couple will be upset about it. By all means, if the couple asks you to include a lot of their vows, respect their wishes and include a lot of their vows. But if they haven’t asked and you’re just scared they might be upset, that is not a good enough reason to slow down the pacing of your edit.
I don’t ever want to see you editing out of guilt. The couple hired you to be creative, so be creative, and don’t be afraid.
Mistake Three: Shots That Serve You, Not The Story
The final mistake is including shots that are cool to watch but that aren’t adding anything to the story the film is telling.
I’ve watched wedding films over the years where the film is well edited, the story is progressing nicely, and then all of a sudden it cuts to a shot that feels completely out of place. That shot inevitably looks very cool from a technical perspective, because it was clearly difficult to pull off and the filmmaker put a lot of work into it. But it doesn’t add to the story in any way. It’s just in the film because it shows off what the filmmaker is capable of. It’s almost like bragging to other filmmakers. Like, yeah, you see that cool shot I got?
Here are some examples, and odds are you may be guilty of some of them, because I know that I am.
First, and most egregiously in my opinion, because I see so many filmmakers do it: I’ll be watching a normal looking wedding film and suddenly it cuts to some sort of Rube Goldberg machine the videographer has constructed, where there’s either fire or water, or some ramp system with a camera slider and a macro lens, and all of it is working together to reveal, turn, turn, turn, the couple’s wedding rings.
I don’t know why this happens, but we as videographers see the photographer putting the rings on a flat lay or someplace cool to photograph them and we say, my gosh, I need to do this too, but I need to take it to the next level by adding motion and fire and water.
A true story about a vase of water
Whenever I was filming my first few years of weddings, I was filming this fun wedding for a nice guy I’m not going to name. There came a point during the reception where I spent 20 minutes with him just getting a ring shot.
The couple was dancing. We could have been filming great shots of them together, or we could have taken them out for a night portrait session and it would have looked so cool. Instead I found myself at a table in the back of the reception hall with a large vase of water. Remember, it’s always water. And the couple’s wedding rings.
If you want to go deeper, I’ve also got STOP Making These Pricing Mistakes With Your Wedding Videos.
We were both repeatedly trying to drop both rings into the vase while filming them, with the intent that they’d float gently down and land next to one another at the bottom. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried this, or have any understanding of how the laws of physics work, but this was essentially a game of random chance, which is why it took us 20 minutes to get. And it ended up being all of five seconds in the wedding video.
Sadly that wasn’t the only time I did this either. Remember, we as wedding videographers always want either water or fire in our videos for some reason. I have vivid memories of putting a couple’s rings on a log in a fireplace.
Don’t worry, here’s the footage. Rings on a log, fire in the background, camera slider.
And while it may have been fine to use that shot for a second or two, I spent a long time setting it up and filming it. And then, worse, I kept cutting back to it throughout the film. Four times, I kid you not. Probably 20 seconds of that wedding film was this one ring shot, and it was only a five minute film. That’s a lot of the film to be just that ring shot.
The question to ask yourself
This takes me back to my main point, because it really isn’t about fancy ring shots or crazy drone shots or timelapses. The question I want you to keep in the back of your mind whenever you’re editing is this:
Are you adding this shot to the film because it makes you look cool as a filmmaker, or because it actually enhances the story of the couple?
In my experience, while shots like these look cool and make other wedding videographers go wow, if they’re coming at the expense of telling a better story, either by taking you away from filming better moments that you missed because you were setting up something complicated, or by you randomly inserting them into a film that would be better served showing other moments, then they’re really not worth it. Your time would be better spent chasing the story of the couple, their relationship, and their friends and family all coming together for this big moment of them being married.
So please, if you want to improve your wedding film editing, don’t make these three mistakes, and you’re going to be amazed at how quickly your editing improves, because you’ll be focused on creatively telling the story of the couple on their wedding day.
What If You Had An Expert Editing For You?
Speaking of improving your editing, what if I told you that you could hire an expert editor who already knows how to edit fantastic wedding films, an editor who can copy your style and make their edits look like yours? And most importantly, what if they could edit very quickly and were also extremely affordable?
Sounds like a dream, but it isn’t, because I need to tell you about the sponsor of this one, my friends at Bride&Groom Video. I’ve personally been using them to help edit all of my videos, including this one, and I’ve been incredibly impressed by the speed and quality of their edits.
They offer a two week turnaround where you send them your raw footage through their simple submission website, tell them a bit about the film and which software you want it edited in, because yes, they can edit in Premiere Pro, Final Cut or DaVinci Resolve, and then you’ll have a finished edit back in your inbox 14 days later.
Keep in mind that most of your couples want their films back as soon as possible too, and now you can offer that. You can tell them you’ll get their film edited faster, and they’re going to want to book you because of it.
Plus they’re budget friendly, with a three minute highlight edit for only 415 bucks. So even if you’re a new wedding filmmaker and you aren’t charging thousands upon thousands for edits, they can still work with you.
And because I want to help you save even more, I negotiated a coupon code for you. It’s MATT100, and it gets you $100 off your first purchase of $400 or more.
Lastly, if you want to level up your wedding films and improve the quality of your work, I’ve put together a free guide called Level Up Your Wedding Films. It shows you some of the most important things it took me years to learn as a wedding filmmaker, and it’s totally free.
Thanks so much for reading, and have a great day!