How much does a Wedding Videographer cost?

There are a couple of reasons why prices can vary so much between different suppliers. Of course, everyone would like to be able to have the best of the best and stay within their budget for a wedding videographer. Making sure your wedding day is captured the way you want it to be is incredibly important, that day only happens that way once. Some factors differentiating wedding videographers prices are:

• Experience
• Artistic Style
• Quality and Quantity

Figuring out why wedding videography prices vary so much can be difficult to determine when you’re faced with trying to book a videographer for your wedding. So without further ado, let’s jump in and take a look at some of the factors that have an effect on pricing.

Experience

We all know what experience is. Even in terms of a wedding videographer. Someone who’s been working in the field for a substantial amount of time. Right? But what does that actually translate to? When you choose an experienced wedding videographer, you know you’re in good, capable hands because they’ve been through it all many times before. An experienced wedding videographer knows exactly how a wedding day works and is ready and able to confidently manage anything that may be out of the ordinary and handle any surprises throughout the day. An experienced wedding videographer is someone you don’t have to think about on your wedding day, and one less thing to worry about is a very valuable sentiment.

Artistic Style

The style of a wedding video. This is what really sets wedding videographers apart from each other and is a big factor when it comes to price. Way back in the olden days of digi-beta and VHS there was really only one kind of wedding video. A very simple and very long video filmed with a huge camera sitting on someone’s shoulder all day long. Very simple. These days however, we’ve gotten a little more dynamic.

Cinematic Wedding Videography

This is the next level of wedding videography. Artistically driven story telling of a wedding day. We call them videos but really they’re wedding films. Creatively filmed, immersive and emotionally engaging. It’s seeing your wedding day again in the best light. To be truthful, there’s a lot of skill involved in being able to produce a proper wedding film that’s aesthetically pleasing. Equipment used is just one piece of the puzzle, give two wedding videographers the same equipment and they’ll produce dramatically different pieces. I won’t speak for anyone else but I film with the end product in mind. I know exactly what to film and how to film it to get the results I want, every one of my wedding films captures the interactions between couples that expresses who they are to each other. It’s a beautiful thing to be able to see the way your better half smiles at you from another perspective. This is a wedding videographers artistic merit and everyone’s is so very different.

Take what you will from the statement above but keep in mind, working this way takes a lot of time. Many hours are spent in post-production after the wedding day to create a beautiful wedding film, much more than is necessary in a traditional wedding video approach.

Quality and Quantity

A phrase we’re used to hearing. When I talk about quality, I’m referring to the artistic style we talked about above but also getting a little more technical. Equipment used to film your wedding video varies from videographer to videographer. Some use professional camcorders, some use DSLR’s typically designed for photography but also offer video capability and some videographers use cameras designed to film… actual films. Equipment cost varies a lot as you can imagine and great results can be had with all of the above. However equipment cost is a factor in how a videographer sets their prices.

Not everyone can distinguish the difference between what camera was used to film a wedding but everyone can see a badly edited film with poor audio and poor composition. Choosing quality is choosing a wedding videographer who has all of the necessary skills to be able produce a quality wedding film. This relates to experience and there is a big difference between someone who has been trained and continues to further their ability and invest that time into their skillset to someone who just bought a camera and decided to have a crack at filming weddings. Needless to say, this is often (but not always) reflected in price.

Most wedding videographers offer varying types of coverage for your wedding day. Options to cover just the ceremony and your reception. Options to cover the whole day from the morning until the first dance. One hour films. Ten minute films. You get the idea. Quantity, the length of your wedding film doesn’t necessarily correlate to the quality of the film you’ll receive.

Wrapping up on wedding video prices

If you’ve made it to the end of this article, you’ve probably realised by now that there are a ton of factors that determine the cost of a wedding videographer from experience to equipment but most importantly, a videographers artistic style.

I hope this rough guide has been helpful in finding out how and why prices can vary so much from videographer to videographer. If you’d like to find out more about our pricing at Luminaire Weddings we’d be happy to send you our pricing brochure and if you have any questions, please feel free to get in touch.

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