Tamarack Wedding Videos Styles of Shooting.

Styles of "Shooting"

I am a Cinemaniac... I love old (30's 40's 50's) movies. I love the meticulous design elements like beautifully crafted camera & lighting work and most of all, the directors. The old movies, like most crafts back then seem to have had a workmanship that is sadly lacking in "hollywood" (notice the small h) movies of today. Yea yea I know... the special effects are great nowadays... but ... that's another story.

If you have shopped around for a videographer you have probably come across the term "shooting style" a lot. Every wedding video production house has a particular & unique style of filming/editing.
It is important that you to know what the different styles are defined as so you "speak the language" when shopping around.

Our favorite style is called "Cinematic". "Hollywood" movies are cinematic. Artsy is one term used to describe this style. This is our default style for just about everything that we film, the highlights reel, the reception and in part the ceremony. We can film in a creatively conservative, romantic way or we can get MTV edgy if you want. It uses classical cinematic camera techniques like dolly shots (smoothly moving the camera while filming) canted, creative camera angles, time re-mapping (slow motion, time compression or expansion), B&W segments, impressionistic pictures, creative audio styles and fancy technical editing... all cut to special music with little or no event audio. It can capture the emotions of the day better than any other style... hands down, no comparison to any other shooting style.

We also occasionally use the "Documentary" style. It looks like a well done TV evening news piece. No fancy editing, not too many radical angles, not too many creative frills. It offers what has been described as a "cleaner, somewhat colder" look & feel than cinematic style.

There is one other style.
"Cinema Verité, a documentary style made popular in the early '60's by (if you will) avant garde film makers (think French Nouveau directors like Jean Renoir & Francois Truffaut) and again in MTV style music videos of the 80's & 90's. It literally means "film truth". It goes out of it's way to look real. Keep in mind that I am not talking about today's spate of TV reality shows. It uses shaky hand held shots, minimal editing & intentionally breaking the "Hollywood" editing & viewfinder compositional rules. It offers a raw, up close & personal feeling to the finished product. Although on the surface it would seem very easy to shoot in this style. If done correctly it takes as much energy & planning as the "cinematic" style.

There seems to be yet another style developing presently. I don't even know if it has a name. It seems to be a combination of the other three styles but caters to the viewer with Advanced A.D.D. It uses a much higher EPM (edit per minute) rate than previous styles & uses music with a faster, more intense beat. Its images & colors zip across your cerebral cortex at light speed. We will continue to monitor this trend to see if it has a place in wedding videos.

We wind up using a bit of all of the first three styles in various combinations for our wedding videos.

Feel free to talk to me about your ideas on the shooting/editing styles that you might want us to use in your wedding video.
Roy M
Chief Videographer, Tamarack Video Productions

Jules & Jim
by François Truffaut