You may be hearing the term “raw footage” and wondering if you need to get it for your wedding. We’re here to help you break down what it is, how to obtain that raw footage, and if you really need it.
What is raw footage?
Raw footage is all the footage from your wedding day — straight from the camera totally unedited.
We’re just going to repeat this for those in the back… raw footage is completely unedited. This means that there are no color correction or stabilization edits. It also means no off-camera audio.
The raw footage is unlike the beautifully edited, finished product. Every time your wedding videographer starts and stops recording, the camera creates a digital file. The raw footage is comprised of hundreds of these files and can be anywhere from 300-600 gigabytes of data.
These raw footage files are meant to be opened with professional video editing software. Typical video software found on common computers is not able to play these files.
How we shoot our wedding videos
We shoot our wedding videos with a cinematic style on multiple cameras. This allows us to capture more footage that helps us tell your love story from angles. We take all that footage and cut it up to pull out the best moments of your big day.
To capture the audio in the best way possible, we have different ways to record the audio from you and your spouse and other speakers from the day. We believe in redundancies, so we capture the audio in a few ways.
One of the ways we record audio is by attaching a lavalier microphone to the groom and officiant. The microphones record the audio and are strong enough also to pick up the bride’s audio.
We’ll also connect to the DJ or band’s audio system as a redundancy. This gives us a direct signal to the microphone.
The last way we capture the audio is through the camera. This option isn’t ideal as the quality isn’t as crisp and clear. Since the camera is far away from the speakers, it will pick up all the background noise, so the microphone’s quality isn’t as great as coming from the microphone.
With the raw footage, you’ll need access to professional video editing software in order to sync the audio files to the video files. As a part of our editing process, we sync the audio and video files and add music to create a wedding film that truly tells the story of your wedding day.
Do I need the raw footage?
That’s a great question. What are your plans for the footage once you get it?
Here are some of the advantages of getting the raw footage:
- It’s a great backup in case something happens to your edited video
- You want to see every single thing that didn’t make it to the final video
Here are some disadvantages of getting the raw footage:
- It’s not as easy as pressing play and watching the whole wedding. The raw footage comprises hundreds of different files from different cameras and microphones. All the recorded video needs to be knitted together and synced with the audio.
- You’ll need professional audio and video editing software to open and edit the files.
Extended Edits
After talking to our couples about the raw footage, we find out that they are really looking for a longer edit of certain moments from their wedding day. Maybe the speeches are an incredibly important part of the day, and you want a longer edit that includes the full speeches. We can definitely do that for you!
Past couples have asked for a separate wedding video that contained only their vows. These things are certain things we can help with.
Of course, our wedding videography team would love to know all this information ahead of time so we can plan for all the right angles to record your big day. However, we do receive these requests after the fact, and we always do our best to accommodate their requests as long as we still have the project files.
We keep these project files for 6 months from the wedding date. After that, the content is purged to create room for more files.
If you are thinking about getting the raw footage or having some more edits done to your wedding video – let’s chat!
