Today I want to answer one question: what is the perfect length that you should be editing your wedding films?
Now, this is a very controversial topic. You ask any wedding filmmaker and you’re going to get a different answer. Some are going to tell you hey, five to ten minutes, that is plenty long enough to edit a great wedding film and tell a good story. Others are going to tell you no, you need at least 30 minutes. And finally you’re going to have wedding filmmakers who say it needs to be at least an hour long documentary edit, and that if it isn’t as long as a Hollywood movie you are cheating your couples out of their money.
Ah, there are a lot of opinions about wedding film lengths.
So instead of adding one more opinion to the pile, I want to share my story about how I figured out what lengths of wedding films I should be creating.
Documentary Edit
Come back with me now to early 2010, when I filmed my first wedding.
I shot it solo, it was approximately ten hours of filming, and at the end I had a lot of footage to go through. So I did what a lot of beginning filmmakers do. I made what is traditionally called a documentary edit. I sat down and edited everything, from the beginning of the wedding day to the end of the wedding day, and gave the couple pretty much all of it.
Of course, I used some music. I believe it was a Lifehouse song. Oh, it was. Yeah. I did that.
I also gave the couple a full edit of the ceremony, a full edit of their toasts, and I even recorded well wishes from the guests at the reception, so it was easily over an hour of content that I was handing over. And what’s cool is that they ended up loving it, and I was really happy with what I gave them.
Highlight Edit
I kept editing weddings that way, and soon I added on what is traditionally called a highlight edit, which is about five minutes long and is a much stripped down version of the documentary edit.
It’s great for couples to share with their friends and family, because you’ve gotta have really good friends if you’re going to make them watch an hour long wedding film. That’s commitment there. So usually a highlight edit is a much better option.
For two years that is what I offered: a longer documentary edit that was at minimum 45 minutes long, but probably an hour to an hour and a half, and a shorter, approximately five minute highlight film.
Over those first two years of filming weddings, my couples loved the films I was delivering to them. But personally, I was starting to enjoy the editing process less and less. I really didn’t feel like I was pushing myself creatively when I was making those documentary edits, and I was starting to burn out.
Package Options
It was about that time in 2012 that I started to hear about a company out of Houston called 31 Films, and they make some of the best looking wedding films I have ever seen. To this day they are still in my top five wedding filmmakers.
And here is what blew my mind about them. They had a package option that only had a five minute long wedding highlight, and they were charging easily triple what I was charging for my documentary edit, plus my highlight, plus the full ceremony, plus the full toasts, plus the well wishes, plus whatever else I wanted to throw in.
This was a major epiphany for me, and if you haven’t made this realization in your business yet, I hope it helps you.
There are no rules when it comes to wedding filmmaking. There is no council of elder wedding filmmakers out there passing judgment on what sort of wedding films you are allowed to create. There are only two things that matter when you are editing a wedding film.
First: is your couple happy with the wedding film you have created? And second: are you happy creatively with what you have made?
I realized that day in 2012 that my wedding film edits could be whatever I wanted them to be, and that was so liberating. So I stopped offering documentary edits, and I’ve never been happier.
To this day I offer wedding packages that are between five and about 13-ish minutes in length, and I love it.
So, How Long Should Yours Be?
This answer honestly may sound like a cop out, but really, the perfect wedding film length is whatever length of wedding film you feel comfortable creating. Don’t let someone else dictate what makes you happy when you’re editing a wedding film.
I have friends who send out hour long documentary edits, and their couples love their wedding films, and they are so happy with what they’re creating. I have other friends who shoot weddings solo for the most part and don’t even film the full ceremony, they just film little snippets to make an awesome five minute highlight film, and whenever I watch those films I legitimately cry like a baby. I’m not joking. They’re so good. They are happy with what they’re making, their couples are happy with the films they’ve created, and that is all that matters.
But I hear you now saying, Matt, I just started my business, give me some sort of guidance. How long of a wedding film should I be making for my couples?
My recommendation: watch wedding films that other people have created. Don’t just watch mine. Join the How To Film Weddings Facebook group, which I absolutely love by the way, and post on there: hey, I’m just getting into wedding filmmaking, could you please post your favorite wedding film that you’ve made?
Then watch those films and pay attention to their length. If you find yourself gravitating toward longer edits, then hey, maybe you should be offering longer edits. If you find yourself enjoying the shorter edits, make shorter edits.
Like I said, there are no rules. It really comes down to your personal taste, and watching other people’s wedding films is a great way to figure out what your personal taste actually is.
And remember, you are allowed to change your mind. After you film a few weddings you might think, you know, I thought I would like longer edits but I really like shorter ones, like I do. Then make shorter edits. Or you might say, I have these shorter edits but I feel like I could tell a much better story with longer ones. Then start offering longer edits. Whatever makes you happy.
Wedding Film Framework
While we’re on the topic of editing wedding films, I spent a year of my life working on a course that is 38 lessons and over 24 hours of video, called Wedding Film Framework.
It details my entire video editing process for a wedding film in Adobe Premiere Pro, from importing the footage all the way to export. So if you’ve never edited a wedding film before, or even used Premiere Pro, this course will walk you through how to do that. Alternatively, if you’ve been editing wedding films for years and you want a faster, more efficient workflow that above all will keep you from getting creative block and getting stuck while you’re editing, this course is also for you.
Two other things worth your time if this is the part you care about: I later spent a day behind the scenes with 31 Films on a $30,000 wedding video, which is the same company I’m talking about above, and there’s a walkthrough of how I cut a wedding trailer if you want to watch the process rather than read about it.