Planning your wedding in Northern Ireland- How to choose your wedding videographer- Supplier Spotlight
When you are planning your wedding, you have hundreds of decisions to make. I have asked some of my wedding supplier friends to share their tops tips to help your planning process. Today, I’m delighted to welcome Sam from Amber Tree Filmhouse to the blog. He’s going to be answering lots of questions about how choose your wedding videographer.
Sam, thanks for joining us! Tell us a bit about yourself and your background.
I’m Sam, the face behind Amber Tree Filmhouse, and I have been filming weddings for well over 5 years now. Ever since I got my first camera at 16 years old (a super cheap pocket video camera) and recorded my first video clip on it I was instantly hooked! I made my mind up there and then that all I ever wanted to do was record moments to look back on and enjoy for years to come! This started out just filming the misadventures my friends and I got up to and then became more refined as I went through college and university learning as much about everything video and photo related as possible! Now almost 12 years later I get to be a part of so many awesome things and record them!
After I graduated university I naturally gravitated towards weddings as they held such special, raw, and more importantly, real moments that I just couldn’t get enough of them. So in November 2014 I officially set up Amber Tree Filmhouse and I haven’t looked back since!
How would you describe your style?
Oh, that’s a tough one! I haven’t really put much thought into it. The closest thing I could try and compare my wedding films to is like a ‘creative documentary’? My main goal while filming is to be unobtrusive and capture real and authentic moments while people don’t realise I’m there. In fact, the best thing my couples can tell me is that they don’t know I’m there! A strange compliment to be sure, but it means that I’m doing my job perfectly!
Afterwards, while I’m editing I do my best to tell the story of my couple’s day and their commitment to each other in the truest way possible. My aim is to create films that tug at the heartstrings of not only the couple and their family, but also anyone else who might be watching!
How to choose your wedding videographer- have you any tips?
Just like photographers there are videographers out there to fit every kind of style and budget! The key piece of advice I can give is to take your time and do your research. Make a list of the videographers’ whose work you absolutely love and resonate with and then take the time to reach out to them and get to know them. Just like your photographer they will be there for most (if not all) of the day so you want to make sure they are someone you can trust and have a joke with! For me, I always try to make a point of meeting up with my couples either in person or via a video call, so we can really get to know each other! In some cases, I have actually ended up really great friends with my couples!!
If someone has booked a photographer, why should they get a videographer as well?
Despite being obviously incredibly biased about this I genuinely do believe that having a videographer there to cover your day is so sooooo important! Video is a totally different medium to just photos and can really put you back into the moment as you can see all of your closest friends and family enjoying themselves 🙂
Not only that, but video also acts as an incredibly powerful way to keep your memories alive almost like an heirloom to pass on to future generations. I often hear a lot of my couples talking about how much they love watching their own parents wedding video, and the technology and way we capture memories has become so much more advanced that there has honestly never been a better time to have your wedding immortalised in video.
How to choose your wedding videographer- How do you work on the wedding day?
My ultimate goal on the day is to cover as many genuine, candid moments of the couple and their guests as humanly possible! That’s why we always work as a team of two. It gives us the flexibility to cover two locations in the morning while the couple get ready, record guests arriving at the ceremony location, and also gives us ability to adapt to any situation that’s thrown at us!
Me and my second shooter will always be unobtrusive so that every smile, laugh and happy tear that we capture is heartfelt and truly genuine.
What type of packages do you offer?
We offer a build it yourself type package where our couples can see the options available and pick and choose what kind of collection they want to assemble. Regardless of the option they choose there will always be myself and a second videographer with coverage from the morning right the way through to the dances. Also, we hold onto all the footage we capture for three years so our couples can come back to us any time within that timeframe to upgrade to different collections 🙂
Our packages start at £1600 so we’re able to work with all kinds of budgets!
How far do you travel for weddings?
Honestly there is nowhere we won’t go for weddings, that’s how much we love them! Over the years we have been incredibly lucky to have been a part of weddings that have brought us to places we could have never imagined. Aside from travelling all over the island of Ireland we have also been a part of weddings in San Francisco, Scotland, Spain and even as far as South Africa!
How do you and a photographer work together?
No matter who the photographer, we try and reach out to them before the wedding, so we can introduce ourselves if we haven’t worked with them before. It means that we’re not complete strangers on the day 🙂
Thanks to our simplistic approach of capturing real moments we usually work around the photographer and help out where we can. We’re all on the same team after all!
We will constantly check in with our photographer to see what their plans are and to see how we can assist to make the couples day go as smoothly as possible. We’re there to see everyone’s dream become a reality 🙂
How long do couples have to wait to see their wedding video?
This will usually depend on the time of year as the Northern Irish summer is usually the most popular time for people to get married (who can blame you? The sun is shining!) our edit times can slow down significantly. It will also depend on the kind of collection our couple has built for themselves and how much editing we have to do to make their films. That said most couples can expect to see their finished wedding films around 8-12 weeks after the big day!
What one piece of advice would you give a couple planning their wedding?
It may sound strange, and maybe even slightly counter intuitive, but the best piece of advice I can give to couples is to be true to your own vision for your wedding. What I mean by this is that every couple is different, and no two weddings are the same. You will know what resonates with you as a couple and what completely turns you off, so if something doesn’t fit your vision then simply throw it away! You don’t have to stick to tradition just for traditions sake. On the other hand, if that’s what you love then absolutely go for it!!
As someone who has attended well over 200 weddings in my almost 6 years of filming weddings professionally there is honestly nothing better than experiencing a wedding where the day is a true reflection of the couple. So, if you have well-meaning friends and family insisting you absolutely must do something then feel free to use me as your excuse to turn them down! Trust me, you’ll have the best day ever if you’re true to yourselves!
That was so helpful and lots of great advice about how to choose your wedding videographer! Thanks so much, Sam!
If you want to find out more about Sam and his lovely work, check him out here:
If you are planning your wedding in Northern Ireland, you might find these blogs helpful:
Ten tips for a relaxed wedding day
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