What is a Wedding Documentary?
If you’ve recently gotten engaged (congratulations!), or have been planning your wedding for some time now you have probably researched wedding photographers and videographers extensively. How you capture a wedding is just as important as the day itself. When it comes to wedding videos there are so many different styles out there to choose from.
Which leads us to today’s topic - what is a wedding documentary? Wedding documentaries are a unique way to capture not just your wedding day, but your story as a whole. Typically, a videographer utilizes video clips, audio from speeches and interviews, and varied cinematography effects in order to establish a narrative throughout the film.
However, just explaining the process of making a wedding documentary is not enough to convey how special these types of films are. Fortunately, we have a videographer here to explain!
The following will include direct quotations from a Q&A with Andrea Furedy, all direct quotes will be denoted by quotation marks.
How do you define a wedding documentary?
“In the wedding videography business, there aren't really titles for what a different kinds of films are called. I started calling mine wedding documentaries and saying that MINIMIST is a wedding documentary company to differentiate in some capacity. Let me give you some background on why that was important.”
“Before launching MINIMIST, I had worked for about seven different wedding videography companies. As a wedding video editor, you are tasked with making a heartfelt and touching film about this couple that you've never met, that fits the narrative arc of the company you were working for. And it was so clear to me every single edit I did that the videographers who were there didn't know these people's names before that day, and shot every couple as though they were the same people.”
“For example, I can't tell you how many shots I have seen where a glidecam operator has shoved a camera between two people's faces and as they back up and move away, they're shouting, "Kiss, kiss, kiss." And oftentimes, I would see the bride side-eyeing the videographer because she's being shouted at, and that doesn't make for a compelling film. I also strongly believe that unless someone is a professional model or actor, shouting directions or giving a lot of directions (for video) in general leads to action that looks inauthentic in front of the camera. I had worked for enough companies that fit this sort of style that you shoot everybody the same. There's a style of the company and it does not take into consideration the style of the couple or who these people are. I started MINIMIST because there were so many opportunities in an edit that seemed much more interesting.”
“It was always much more interesting to me to figure out who these folx are, how do they show love and what kind of film would actually be most important to them? I've had a couple of films where there is swearing in the film because that's who these people were. They were funny folx that might swear with a mic in their hand in front of all their friends and family and everybody would laugh and that's just who they are. And I want to honor that. I don't want to make that couple fit my company's narrative. I should be changing my style slightly to accommodate for who they are as people. And with that in mind, I started MINIMIST. And it never fails that every time I finish a MINIMIST edit, I think to myself, wow, this is nothing like anything else I've done, every time. Every time there is something about it that I'm like, this is wildly different than the ones that came before it, and that's because this couple is wildly different than the ones who came before in my company.”
“And that's where I really wanted to lay some groundwork for the fact that MINIMIST is doing something different. The thing that I am doing and the reason I call it wedding documentaries is that my couples tend to be vulnerable and give me a piece of themselves. I am let in into their inner circle and there is something about that that I always feel like it is an honor to be allowed in so close to people on one of the most important days of their life. They are bearing everything in front of me. I get to really see who they are.”
Is there a formula for making a wedding documentary?
“That's hard because the main objective is to figure people out but, people are complex. So there isn't really a formula to figure people out. With each couple, I have to first learn who they are. This means for some of them, it is having a handful of phone calls or Zoom meetings or in-person coffees or following them on Facebook to kind of see, what do they post about most often? It's tricky because it's very hard to have a formula on something that requires trying to understand who people are, but trying to understand who people are is step one for me in any new couple.”
“Once I know who my couple is, the next piece of it is usually what makes this story unique. Everybody has a slightly different angle to what makes their relationship unique. If I can find the interesting angle to something, I can then pitch side sessions or additional coverage that might help capture that piece best. I had a couple once where the groom was a hot air balloon pilot and they had met while both working at a hot air balloon company. I went out to Arizona and I went up with him in a hot air balloon and captured b-roll of him doing his job so that as they were talking in their couple's interview about meeting at the hot air balloon company, we could show those moments simultaneously.”
Why might someone prefer a wedding documentary over another style of film?
To start with a story from an old couple’s interview, in an interview with the bride’s parents a sweet surprise is discovered while shooting the initial footage for their film. “I'm interviewing the dad, who was a very emotionally sensitive individual, the sweetest man with a soft heart. And he tells me that, when grandma passed away, they found this trunk in her attic or something and her bouquet from her wedding, 70 years earlier, whatever, so long ago was dried up in there. And it was all this one flower called a cockscomb.”
“Apparently when grandma got married, she was young and her soon-to-be husband pulled over on the side of the road and pulled all these cockscombs before they went to the justice of the peace to get married. She kept it in this trunk and they found it after she passed away and they'd been growing it. For every girl in the family that got married after that, they had grandma's actual seeds from her own bouquet grown into their own cockscombs to include in their bouquets. Then he shows me where they're growing them in their backyard. So I got b-roll of the actual cockscombs that they were growing. And there are just little moments like that that are so unique and interesting and special to this particular story that I wouldn't have known unless I was really present in the interview to figure out who they actually are. And not just have my list of five questions that I'm going to ask and move on, but like ask in a way that is open to discovery and open to being surprised and following that thread wherever it goes.”
“I think that the simplest approach is really, do you want to tell a story that is bigger than one day? And that's true of someone who even wants to have me out just for the wedding day. Even for those couples, I do everything in my power to tell the bigger story. It is not just about these two people getting married on this day, but this is who these people are. And this is the day that they got to share that with their friends and family. If you want to tell a story that is bigger than one day, wedding documentaries are definitely for you and MINIMIST is definitely your company.”