All my clients will attest to me making the following two statements in the lead-up to their wedding.

One, don’t look at me.  Now, I mean this in a nice way.  I refer to the actual wedding day when we are filming.  I tell couples to only look at the camera if I tell them to and instead look at each other or the photographer.  I rarely ask them to look at my camera as my shooting style does not require them gazing into my lens.  Also, it can ruin both photos and video if the groom looks at the photographer and the bride looks at the videographer.

Secondly, I make it clear that I am much more comfortable on ‘my side’ of the camera as opposed to ‘their side’ of the camera.  Couples are often a little daunted by the thought of being the centre of attention.  This leads me to a discussion on pre-wedding shoots.

A pre-wedding shoot is exactly as the name suggests.  It is a shoot that we do with the couple leading up to their wedding.  We take a couple of hours to film a couple in a very relaxed manner, in a surrounding that is familiar to the couple such as a local park or place which hold sentimental significance.  A lot of photographers do exactly the same type of shoot for very similar reasons.

Not only does this pre-wedding shoot allow you to become more relaxed in front of the camera, it also allows you and your videographer to build a better bond with each other.  Given that your wedding videographer is going to spend most of your wedding day with you, it is good to get to know each other prior to the wedding.

During this shoot it is also a great opportunity to discuss how prep and location shoots work which saves time on the wedding day.  Most people say ‘we want our photos to look natural and not staged’.  The pre-wedding shoot is the perfect time to master this natural look and get a better understanding of your videographers shooting style.  We go through a few little Do’s and Don’ts to keep you on track but usually not much direction is needed.

Finally, the pre-wedding shoot allows us to incorporate some of the footage in to the Feature Film we create after the wedding.  We take a section of a speech, back it with a musical score and have some shots of you both on the wedding day but also from the pre-wedding shoot.  The result is normally tears of happiness.

Chris & Lauren decided to do a pre-wedding shoot over at Living Legends in Greenvale on the outskirts of Melbourne.  We spent about 45 minutes on the shoot and it was more than enough time for us to capture some beautiful moments of Chris and Lauren.  Chris and Lauren were told to simply look and talk to each other and ignore the camera.  We were absolutely wrapped with the shoot and have managed to incorporate several shots into their Feature Film which will screen in October.

If you are interested in doing a pre-wedding shoot for your wedding or for details please refer to our Melbourne Wedding Video Packages and our recent wedding films.