It. Here’s a better question if I have a videographer, should I hire. It? Here’s a better question if I have a videographer, should I hire? Hire a good photographer. I’m Jason Monroe. I own and operate highway 61 Films. We’ve been making wedding films in Chicago since 2009. I think a videographer can be just as important, if not more important than a photographer, because it allows for things that photos can’t recreate, such as seeing yourself walk down the aisle, hearing your speeches and toasts from your family members, and bridal party during the reception, hearing your vows again, that’s hugely important. Hearing letter readings from getting ready moments, having all of that wrapped up in a cinematic way. With music, there’s a lot of emotion. Just as like with watching a film, it can kind of help you relive your day in a way that looking through photos can’t do. So I think it’s ultimately even more important than photography in some ways. Hire a good photographer. I’m Jason Monroe. I own and operate highway 61 Films. We’ve been making wedding films in Chicago since 2009. I think a videographer can be just as important, if not more important than a photographer because it allows for things that photos can’t recreate, such as seeing yourself walk down the aisle, hearing your speeches and toasts from your family members, and bridal party during the reception, hearing your vows again, that’s hugely important. Hearing letter readings from getting ready moments, having all of that wrapped up in a cinematic way with music, there’s a lot of emotion. Just as like with watching a film, it can kind of help you relive your day in a way that looking through photos can’t do. So I think it’s ultimately even more important than photography in some ways.

Fine. So I want to tell you all the things you can expect to know throughout the process of booking a wedding videographer. My name is Jason Monroe, and I own highway 61 films in Chicago. We’ve been making wedding videos since 2009. So after a couple initially books with us, we will do what’s called a discovery session. And this is a time we take in person or over zoom, and we generally just get to know a couple. They get to know a little bit about us. We find out about their history, where they met, a little bit about their families, generally all the questions that we would need to know to help inform us and how to make a better edit for their wedding. And then two weeks before the wedding, we would get a schedule of events. And this is kind of a queue sheet on where to be, when and what time. And it helps us also to know throughout the day what kind of approach to take to each moment in each section of the day. So we’re informed all across the board and then after a wedding day is over with the things that are happening leading up to an edit, going online is us letting you kind of know next steps, how long it will take to process and edit each of the videos. And then we’ll also give you an opportunity after it’s online to make any changes, to request any reedits or anything like that. So we always want people to be fully comfortable and very happy with the edits that we end up putting them together for them. It’s only fair for you to be able to give final approval on everything. And then after that next step, we will allow downloads online. And so those videos will always live online at those URLs in Perpetuity. And we’ll also build like a showcase where it will live online and all of the videos, feature, trailer and Toast will live together.

You. Yes, you can pick your music for your wedding film. Although with one big caveat. Hi, I’m Jason Monroe, owner and operator of highway 61 films. We’ve been making wedding films in Chicago since 2009. And when couples ask me this question, I will first off tell them that we do license all the music that is in our films. And there were websites that were created specifically for the purpose of wedding filmmakers and independent filmmakers to easily obtain licensure for music used in their videos. And these websites were created specifically for that purpose. And I’d say there are about six or seven websites that we pull music from. All the music that you hear in our wedding videos was pulled from these websites. Sometimes couples want to be really collaborative with us and are very picky about the music that we use in the films. And we love the collaboration. Although sometimes once couples see kind of what’s involved in that process, they kind of lay low and let us do the heavy lifting and do all of that. But we can send them playlists of songs that we think would work well for their wedding film and then we think would be very good for their edit. And we can send them those playlists and they can kind of pick and choose what they like and what they don’t like. But ultimately, if there’s a song that’s a popular song that everybody knows that they just can’t live without, ultimately we could go through the process of requesting the use of the song from the publisher and then the songwriter. Those are the two people you need it from. But sometimes that can be a long, laborious and even expensive process to go through. But most of the time, they’ll just leave it up to us and we’ll pull from those websites that were created for the specific purpose.

This one’s actually really easy to answer. Hi. I’m Cindy Co, owner of Harbor View Studios. The difference between a cinematic highlight or anything cinematic and anything documentary is that cinematic is out of order and short and documentary is a long film that is a general from beginning to end. So it’s going to be your processional to your recessional. It’s going to be from your the beginning of your first dance to the end of that first dance. It’s going to be those entire moments. And they don’t have music added to it, like supplementary music. It’s whatever original audio was with that event. So it’s just that easy.

It’s. Two part answer, short answer no. Another answer yes, if they’re as good as me with cameras. I’m Jason Monroe, owner of highway 61 films in Chicago. We’ve been making wedding films since 2009. You can have a family member document your day if they’re good with cameras. Like, meaning if they’re professionals. But if they’re not, they’re generally going to not get professional sounding audio. They’re not going to have microphone equipment, small lapel microphones. They’re not going to be able to choose angles that are the most flattering or the best position, maybe during a ceremony or toasts. Sometimes you have to be very strategic about where you are in a room to get good toast, knowing how to not cross anyone’s line of sight, not to be in anyone’s way. And then ultimately, you want friends and family members that you invite to not have to work on the day of your wedding. You want them to be able to enjoy it. There you go.

Should you have a friend or family member who’s really good with a camera film your wedding? My knee jerk answer to that is God, no, and not for the reason why you think. Hi, I’m Cindy. I am co owner of Harborview Studios. I own Harborview Studios with my husband Sean. We come across this often, often, and here’s what I usually say. If video is important to you, if it’s in your top eight, those memories are really important to you. Have a professional do it. If you can afford it. If you’re going to go into debt, like wild amount of debt, whatever is good is fine. But really what it is is when your friend or family does your video, they aren’t a professional, so they are also an attendee. When you are an attendee, you’re doing half jobs, so you’re half an attendee and you’re half the documentarian. So you get excited. You want to dance, you want to drink, and you forget to do things like hit mute, hit the audio, hit record, hit play. And a lot of moments that you didn’t think were significant, things that you didn’t think you’d be like, fine, it’s fine. And then when it turns out you didn’t get it, then you’re pissed and it’s gone. It’s done, it’s over. And then it’s not just that whoopsie, you don’t have it. If that happens with somebody you’ve paid and don’t have a relationship with, listen, you’ve legal options. They’re going to probably refund you. You’re going to have all sorts of different options when this happens with a friend or family member, oh, that makes relationships dicey. And is that really what you want? No, I highly suggest please don’t.

It depends. I’m Jason Monroe, owner and operator of highway 61 films in Chicago. We’ve been making wedding films since 2009. So raw footage is something that some couples want, some couples don’t want. Generally, it comes down to whether or not you want all the extra footage that didn’t get edited into your film. In it does include footage that did get edited into your film, but the stuff that you won’t see if you don’t get the raw footage is extra shots of details during getting ready, extra shots of the bridesmaids and groomsmen during getting ready, or shots that really didn’t work out for the photo tour. Like, they’re almost good enough to make it into the final edit, but maybe a photographer got in the way, or maybe a cyclist rode by, like on a photo tour or something. So some of the things we would just cut out because we feel like they wouldn’t help inform or support the narrative and help moving the story along the way. We would categorize the raw footage is by the camera that shot it and to what part of the day that it was from, whether that be getting ready ceremony, photo tour, or reception. So do you want your raw footage? If you do want to watch two to three extra hours of footage that is sometimes slow motion, sometimes real time, sometimes with and without audio, then it is for you. Some people like to sit down on their anniversary with a bucket of popcorn and watch through all of it, or scrub through some of it sometimes, or just relive some of the moments of the footage that didn’t make it into the final edit.

Do you need raw footage? Yes and no. Hi, I’m Cindy from Harborview Studios. I co own Harborview Studios with my husband, Sean. Yes and no. A lot of times, people just misunderstand what raw video is. Raw raw files are literally just that. They’re just the raw files that come out of our cameras. A lot. People mistake them for what’s often termed as documentary films, which are the full edits of a particular event. So your full speeches, your full ceremony, and what raw footage is, is it’s thousands of files that come out now. They’re usually uncolored. They’re not synced to audio. It really depends on how your videographer is recording them. But most professional videographers, everything’s going to be separate because that’s the best way for us to retain all of the data. It’s a weird way to explain it, but in any case, that’s what raw files are, and they come to you on a hard drive. I always tell our couples, one of the things that you’re going to find in raw footage is just like a lot of the goofy stuff, the stuff that didn’t come out perfect. And if you are that person who is okay with things not being perfect, raw video could be great. You can find some really unexpected gems because we’re not going to know everything that’s completely significant to you. And there are some moments that are just going to be completely endearing. I like to tell a story about how my husband used to film all of these family events and just random, dumb moments. And just his mom going out of frame like this, being like, oh, cheerios. It just looks like she’s going to go and eat the cheerios off the floor. Ends up being our favorite thing. Completely dumb, insignificant moment. Would anybody think of it? But it’s our favorite thing in the world.

It, I have a cynical answer and then more of a straightforward answer. So I will answer this in two parts. Is there a difference? It’s tricky and then kind of not tricky to answer. I’m Jason Monroe. I own highway 61 films. We’ve been making wedding videos in Chicago for over ten years. So videographer and cinematographer, they both relate to capturing moving images, but they differ in the perspective a person brings to the process of filmmaking. So my cynical answer would be that a cinematographer is generally someone who works on larger projects, Hollywood productions, and often those types of people would look down upon wedding videographers, wedding cinematographers, because they think that’s something that just anybody can do. So I don’t call myself a cinematographer personally, but I don’t turn down that distinction either, if someone refers to me that way. People who don’t do wedding videos would generally just call us all videographers. But here’s the thing. I think the real answer is also no, there is no difference in the level of wedding videos. I think the term is interchangeable. I don’t have a preference. You can call yourself a cinematographer, a videographer think they are both the same, but all wedding video companies get this are cinematographers and videographers simultaneously. So I really don’t pay a whole lot of attention to those words.