This article was written by Zane Hauck of Zane Karl Studios.

It is typical, that in order to be more efficient, many wedding cinematographers use a template when creating their wedding trailer. There is nothing wrong with this approach, but if you are looking for a custom wedding trailer, you may want to keep looking until you find the perfect team.

What is a Template?

This means pre-planning moments at the venue and staging moments in order to capture a scenario with perfect lighting and framing. This is a great concept as it does result in amazing quality footage.

We do stage a few moments and we do have a strategy; but it is not completely based around a template, as we prefer to capture most everything candidly. The template method can decrease the amount of footage the filming team has to review for editing. While this process is beneficial to the vendor, the down side of using a template eliminates the potential of having a customized video completely tailored around the moments that occurred on your special day. Even though we do our best to predict and prepare for everything that will happen that day, the truth is we don’t really know. We don’t really know exactly how each moment will look and what the most flattering shots will be.

We cannot pre-determine that your niece is going to draw in the window fog with the bride’s reflection appearing just underneath her fingertips. And the best thing about it is that we didn’t stage it! It actually happened! These candid shots are the “money shots” to me!

From my experience, we cannot pre-determine the money shots. We can stage a few moments but nothing will compare to real life moments captured and put together artistically in a 3 – 5 minute highlight video.

Many professionals may argue that it is not necessary to have this much footage and it is not practical in postproduction. It is practical if you want to create a highlight trailer specifically around candid moments. Yes, our postproduction process is extensive and we have a lot of work to do after the wedding. This is why there is a team of us to make this operation possible.

After filming an event, we filter through all the footage very thoroughly. We pick out creative shots, the most flattering shots, and CANDID priceless moments. We lay out all the ingredients on the table and put it all together to create the best possible product; the 3 – 5 minute highlight video that is a customized story of your wedding day.

To learn more about our unique approach, visit our website.