“Aaron, how much would you charge for a wedding like this?”

“Around like $30K.”

$30K. You heard it here.

My name is Matt Johnson, and I’m in beautiful Austin, Texas to take you on another wedding filmmaking behind the scenes. But this is not my wedding. No, this is a wedding my friends from 31Films are shooting, and if you do not know who they are, they are literally one of the most successful and talented wedding filmmaking companies in the world, in my opinion. So to say I’m excited about this may be a bit of an understatement.

We’re out at the beautiful Commodore Perry Estate, and this is a multi-day wedding. A multi-day extravaganza. Today there’s a micro wedding, tomorrow there’s a party, and then later in the week there’s the actual reception, which is going to be mega and massive. Aaron, Tina and Ryan are all three filming it as a three person crew.

Bride Prep

I found the crew up in the bride’s room. They’ve got the dress out. So I asked Aaron to walk me through what he’s thinking at the start of the day.

“Right now we’re basically going to let our bride just enjoy the day. Her bridesmaids are having snacks, drinks, she hasn’t done makeup yet. We’re not going to get in their faces with cameras. So we’ll break in here, we’ll get all of our details, we’ll shoot paper goods, jewelry, dresses, things like that. We’re not always using a ton of that, but we’ve found that even for social, for whoever designed the stationery or the florist, it’s really great to make little pieces that highlight those. It’s part of their day. Once she gets in the makeup chair, we’ll step in and get a little more in the face. But we’re letting her get acclimated to the day, not rushing in with the production.”

One thing I want you to really notice about the way 31Films works, and this is different from other videographers you may have seen, is that they are very big on being discreet. They don’t want to be in people’s faces. They show up very professional, they give the bride her space with her bridesmaids, and then they come in after people are starting to get ready. You want to be very considerate of the couple and their needs, and you don’t want to interrupt the vibe or the flow of their day.

“Our M.O. is very much like, we’re not obtrusive. We come in and we know what we want, we know what we need, we know how to get it. Kind of like a ninja in that sense. But we’re not a fly on the wall either, we are going to step in. We’re going to make sure the light looks good, we’re going to make sure the scene is set without it feeling fake.”

I sat there and watched Aaron walk around the room and quietly turn off lights. He went over to a lamp, popped it off, and kept walking. Very smooth, very subtle. But that’s kind of what you have to do. That’s a pro move. I do that all the time.

What Separates Average From Elite Wedding Videographers?

This is the question I really wanted Aaron to answer. What separates the run of the mill wedding videographer from the elite?

“The experience. Which doesn’t mean an experience that takes over, necessarily, but it’s all the little details, the little nuances. There are little ways you can service your client by thinking about things they might be interested in, things they might care about, things they might value. So that’s things like the family photos. We may not plug this into any edit, but we know this might be the thing they come back for. And we will have it. It’ll look great. It’ll be a moment with that family member. We recorded it. We didn’t miss it.”

“It’s a series of those things throughout the day. It’s thinking about where they’re going next. Is that room even set up for them? Is it going to be conducive to the experience you want them to have? Are people just standing around with phones staring at them? Are we going to want to make it a little more comfortable? Sometimes stepping back, sometimes stepping in. So it’s being a lot more mindful of the entire day as it’s going, and not just passively capturing, but being very active.”

“Almost, I wouldn’t say think of yourself as a planner, but think about how can I make this experience better for them right now. And that often isn’t what you’re going to do with your camera. Often it’s a way you’re helping guide them. And they remember that. Those are the letters you get from the bride. That moment I was panicking and y’all were there, and y’all made me feel so much more relaxed and at ease. You were there for me. Thank you.”

“So many times that’s the callback. And they love their film. And that’s how you can charge 20 grand, 30 grand, whatever it is. You have people who are paying for you to be an expert. And that doesn’t mean you’re necessarily a tech head around them. It just means no one will have to ask a question about what you’re doing. You’re already predicting their needs and their wants, so you’re already doing it. And half the time they haven’t even noticed.”

There you go. Big bucks wisdom with Aaron.

Ceremony Setup

Tina’s approach to coverage is a bit different, and I asked her about her thought process while she was shooting details.

“I really like to think about textures and really tight, weird perspectives. Working on the flowers, getting the rimming of the tablecloth and stuff. It helps create something different, so everything’s not just mediums. It helps break it up and make you feel a bit more in the moment. That’s what I love to shoot. They love to do the wides, so I’ll let them do that.”

I also couldn’t help but notice they’re running a Canon 70-200 on a Sony body through an adapter.

“We actually found this in a museum, and we were like, it’s too cute. We’ll just keep it forever. They’ve been workhorses. We probably will be upgrading to Sony someday. Someday. But for now, it’s as good as it gets, as long as the adapter is solid.”

For the ceremony itself they ran a couple of camera positions plus a drone. Aaron was on a gimbal at the back with a telephoto perspective on the bride, following her over the hedges and then going stationary in the center. Tina was up front to the left. Ryan was to the right, and flying the drone.

Then, two minutes before the wedding began, the audio started acting squirrely. See, it happens to everybody. Not just you if you’re new, even to seasoned professionals. The sound board was having issues, and even with everything else turned down it was still causing noise. So they went, okay, forget the sound board, everybody else is miked. And you move on, because that’s all you can do. They have backups. They have multiple options.

Micro Reception Setup

Here’s how they divided and conquered a small reception, in Aaron’s words:

• Ryan on telephoto gimbal. “He’s the sexy swoops, working around the whole space.”
• Aaron on an 85mm handheld. “I’ll be shooting with a lot of foreground. I’ll get behind people and bushes, so I’ve got a little bit of texture in all of my shots. Dirty frame, and I’m looking for a little bit of motion, a little bit of moments.”
• Tina on safety. “She’ll be on a 50 on a tripod. It won’t be locked, it’ll be moving, but it’s the one we can always get to, because we do have a doc edit. If we weren’t doing a doc edit, we’d all be handheld and gimbals just to get a little momentum. But because we’ve got the doc, we always shoot someone on safety.”

For lighting, Ryan had the sun setting right at 7:15, at the same time as the first dances, so he set a light to 4500 Kelvin to go for a little mix. “Honestly, it’s probably not going to be bright enough to really do much, but it’ll be a little something, and then we’ll leave it up later, mainly for speeches.”

The light was an Aputure 60x. So I asked who told them to buy that. “I don’t know. There’s this YouTube guy. His name is Matt.”

How Much 31Films Charges

So I asked Aaron again, on camera, how much he’d charge for a wedding like this one. Around 30K.

For context, this wedding was supposed to happen in Greece. Half of it was going to be an intimate wedding in Greece and then a month later here in Austin with everyone else. But they didn’t want to fly Aaron out to Greece, so, as he tells it, they said hey, for the 31Films crew, we’ll move the whole wedding to Austin and make it easy on you. He was really broken up about it.

“It’s kind of interesting because usually our multi-day weddings are massive events. There’s five days of welcome parties and rehearsals. We’re doing all of these with little pockets of guests. It’s a high budget wedding, but it’s not necessarily over the top. It’s spread out. It’s very tasteful.”

Day Two: The Mega Reception

This time we’re at the Omni Barton Creek Resort in Austin, which is absolutely gorgeous. And I want to give you a bit more context for why this is such a mega wedding.

This is a four day long wedding event. 31Films showed up on Wednesday and filmed the rehearsal dinner. I flew in Thursday for the micro wedding you’ve now seen the behind the scenes of. Friday they had a welcome party for all of the other friends the couple invited, plus a really pretty sunset shoot. And then Saturday is the day of the big reception.

Wedding Film Editing Tips With Ryan

Ryan had been up until 3am, because they are backing up the wedding as they go throughout the day. He was running between events, getting cards from Aaron and Tina, backing up and swapping cards. And he was editing at the same time, because they had two deliverables due during the wedding week.

The first is a same day loop that plays at the reception during cocktail hour, showing guests everything they may have missed at the wedding. About five minutes long, no audio, no story, just amazing footage and moving images. Like a photo slideshow, except the moments actually unfold.

The second is a trailer that encapsulates the whole weekend, delivered the next day.

Two things I noticed immediately about how Ryan works. His timeline is color coded on import, always. And he has bars overlaid on the top and bottom of the program monitor, because they export all of their non-trailer edits at 2:1, so he always knows where to frame everything while he’s cutting.

So what makes a shot stand out enough to go in the loop?

“Really trying to find something that has great emotion. Some moment where you literally see tears. Those moments that make the couple and their families relive that day. They see it from their perspective, but it’s kind of nice to see that outside perspective and see what we captured of it. And then they’re like, oh my gosh, that’s amazing.”

“First and foremost, just technical wise, exposure, focus and composition is probably the biggest thing I’m looking at immediately when I’m going through footage. Then usually once I get those, I’ll go through again and find, hey, is there a whip or something I can use? Maybe not so much for this loop, but for trailers or any other rough cutting we’re looking for those little in-between moments. It’s just getting the best stuff and then going through again and again and again. I made a select timeline, and then I made selects of the selects timeline.”

Reception Lighting Setup

Before the big reception, Ryan went to check the lighting situation, and what he does here is genuinely different from how most of us work.

“Usually we’re trying to get with the AV team and just be like, hey, can you preview the first dance lighting for me? So then, do we need a light? That’s going through my head. Or with what they have, can we get away with that? And usually it’s best to not have a light, so you don’t see a stand, everything’s seamless.”

“If you can get with them, you can fine tune it. You can solve flicker problems, you can solve exposure problems. That way the couple is introduced and your exposure isn’t changing right when they walk in because you’re going, wow, this is way brighter than I thought. Communication with any vendor on the day is always going to help you and your team be successful. They’re going to respect you more and you’ll have a good relationship, so they’ll always be willing to help you out instead of competing with one another.”

I do think this is something that separates 31Films from other videographers, and honestly from my own work, where I’m just like, bring a light, set it up, it’ll be easy. 31Films are working at a level where the weddings have lighting technicians and entire lighting teams setting up ambient lighting. So they insert themselves into that and say, hey, can we help modify this so it looks the absolute best for our cameras, and for the guests, and for their experience. And the lighting team says, cool, yeah, great. Everybody works together and you get better lighting because of it.

If you get one thing from this, it’s this: if you’re filming a wedding that has a lighting crew, or a band that has their own lights, talk to them. Take the time.

Gear 31Films Uses

They are an a7S III based team, sticking to the tried and true, with SmallHD monitors. Seven inch on the gimbals, which are DJI Ronins, and five inch on their handheld setups.

But the lens is the interesting part. I asked Aaron what one lens he could shoot an entire wedding on.

“This Contax 50mm. It’s like our bread and butter. Someone says, how do you get it soft, how do you get that image? It’s the Contax, it’s the diffusion, it’s the Sony, a little bit of color magic. And a lens from 1975. That’s all you need.”

A real simple setup with HoldFast straps, and a 70-200 kept handy for portraits when he wants to go telephoto, or worst case scenario, some kind of speech happening, pop it on. And for details, it’s a lot of telephoto gimbal work. “We rarely are doing wide. It’s almost always going to be 50 to 70.”

I think it’s so fascinating to see how different filmmakers do it, because in terms of equipment, 31Films are pretty stripped back. They’re not going super extreme, they don’t have a ton of stuff. Compare that to somebody like Justin Porter, where it’s tons of stuff, and we’ve got gear in this case and that case and a gear truck. I love that there are no rules with wedding filmmaking. There’s no rule saying you have to use a lot of gear or a little bit of gear. You use what works best for you and make some movie magic.

Epic Exit

The loop was a definite success. The couple loved it, the guests stood there watching it. Set that up and play it during the reception and you’re going to get the bookings. People are going to freak out. They’re going to love it.

Then, for the exit, they were shooting streamers, which can absolutely trip you up. So the plan was: Aaron behind the couple, me behind Aaron, Tina at the end of the line, and Ryan finding a side angle.

And that’s a wrap. Just a quick and easy four day wedding. Simple stuff. Except Ryan wasn’t going to sleep, because Ryan was going to edit, and they technically had an after party. I was the only one done. Sorry, Ryan.

The Trailer 31Films Delivered

The full trailer 31Films edited for the couple is at the end of the video above, and it’s worth watching after everything you just read about how it was made. Seeing the four days compressed into a couple of minutes, and then knowing what went into each of those shots, is the whole point of a behind the scenes like this one.

If you’re a wedding filmmaker and you want help booking more weddings, I have a free workshop that shows you how to book your next wedding in 30 days or less. And if you want to go deeper on the craft side, my filmmaking courses and camera guides are here, my color presets are here, and you can see my full list of filmmaking gear here.