While searching for your wedding videographer you will come up with a number of options to consider while trying to choose your perfect wedding video package, you will no doubt be comparing what you get for your money in different wedding video packages, what you need and what you don’t need along with how long your wedding video might be.
One term you may come across while searching wedding videographers is Raw Footage of your wedding video. If you’re not in the wedding video business the term Raw Footage might be confusing so I’ve put together this short guide to try and explain what Raw Footage is and if you might want to consider having Raw Footage for your wedding video.
What Exactly Is Raw Footage?
In its simplest form, “Raw Footage” is EVERYTHING your wedding videographer filmed on your wedding day. Raw Footage will be a copy of every file created when the wedding videographer pressed a record button on their camera.
If you imagine having your wedding filmed and then asking for the memory cards at the end of the day, the raw footage is what you would get.
What's the difference between normal wedding video and Raw footage?
When you hire a wedding videographer you are not only hiring them to film your wedding day.
Your wedding videographer will also edit your wedding video, crafting it into a story of your wedding day, often along with music and additional editing techniques such as colour grading and titles.
Editing a wedding video is a huge part of what you’re paying for when hiring a wedding videographer and it can be a long process which you can read more about in our article which outlines the editing process.
An edited wedding film will be a certain length and easy to watch by just hitting play on the file.
Raw footage requires very little editing if at all and can often simply be handed over to you on a hard drive.
The main difference between a normal edited film and raw wedding video footage is that your footage will not be edited, you will not get the same sense of a story and will often see shots that might not make sense or might be confusing to watch.
As Raw Footage will often be delivered as it was shot on your wedding day, you will also find that you will receive a hard drive with hundreds of small clips in it and you will have to click each video clip to see it.
Do I need my Raw Wedding Footage?
Raw wedding video footage is often now offered as part of wedding videography packages or as additional extra for wedding video packages which you can choose when booking your wedding videographer or even after your wedding video is complete.
There is a great benefit to having your raw footage especially when thinking of wedding video.
While your edited wedding film will look amazing and be a great reminder of your wedding day, it will not include every single shot that the wedding videographer filmed on the day. By having the raw footage you will be able to look through all of the shots and see the things as they happened, you may find shots of people ot parts of your wedding that weren’t included in the final wedding film and as the years go by any footage you can have of special people and times in your life may be worth having.
How can I get my Raw Wedding Footage?
If you think you might want your wedding video raw footage then you should talk to your wedding videographer.
There are different ways you might be able to receive your raw footage, you may be able to get your footage as just a copy of every clip shot on a hard drive or your wedding videographer may offer a service where they will put all of the clips together for you so that you don’t have to play each file individually.
How much does raw footage cost?
We are happy to offer our wedding couples the chance to add raw footage to their wedding video package either before their wedding day or after.
Our Raw Footage Wedding video option includes all of the raw video files shot on the day supplied on a hard drive but we will also include a single video file with all of the clips joined together and a basic colour correction so you do not have to press play on each file.
The current cost of our raw footage wedding video option is £300 which includes the hard drive that will be used to store your raw footage.
I hope this article has been useful, you can see some of our fantastic wedding films on our website or check out some more of our wedding planning articles.
Gareth
