I will be posting our status for each of our weddings beginning now.  Check back often for status updates!

Michelle & Ryan - final delivered

Jamie & Zach - final delivered

Sunny & Josh - final edit

Heather & Jeff - final edit

Wendy & Chad - currently editing   Est. completion within 2-3 weeks.

I spoke with a bride this week that is charging all of her expenses to a credit card that gives frequent-flier miles - I thought it was a neat idea to get a little extra “bonus” this way.  I have an aunt that did this with my cousin’s college tuition, but I never thought about it in conjunction with wedding planning.  Of course, I would only recommend doing this if you have the money to pay the bill when it comes in - I would discourage charging above your budget and starting your new married life in debt.

Hello again - I’m going to write a few tips over the next few days about selecting a videographer - hope to help all of you pick the right videographer for you!

If you’ve read a bridal magazine or a “plan your wedding” book or guide (I’m guessing this is most of you) you have probably encountered a list of questions to ask when you talk to a videographer (as well as questions for photographers, etc.) Thought I’d address some of them. (In writing below, “you” are the bride/groom/person planning wedding and “they” are the videographers you are interviewing, and “we” is me - Miriam at Omaha Wedding Video).
(Note - source of questions - Omaha World Herald Wedding Essentials and “The Knot” website)

The most important question, in my opinion, is what style of wedding video do you want (cinematic, documentary, etc.) and do they produce this type of wedding? If you have your heart set on a dreamy, elegant wedding movie, be sure that you’re not going to get MTV - and vice verca! We produce all types of wedding videos, and take our directions from you as far as style, music, etc.

Does the videographer belong to any national or local associations? Have they won any awards? We have not personally won any awards yet - but submit work for judging twice a year to the 2 international associations to which we belong. We do hope to win an award someday but we don’t just sit around “hoping” - we are actively pursuing this goal by attending workshops by some of the best videographers in the US - the ones that are winning the awards ! We push ourselves with every wedding we do to do the best work ever - every wedding is our best wedding - and someday that plaque will come home with us. We have started a local videographers assocition (our first meeting was in November) to help improve videography in Omaha, to educate videographers and brides about what is possible and how to attain it.

Have you done a wedding at my (church/hotel/venue) before? This question is a kicker, which is why I put it here. Most of the time, our answer to this question is “no”. There are a lot of churches in Omaha - and many venues other than churches !! But that is why I put this in here - do not be discouraged or concerned because we haven’t been there before. We’re professionals, and this is what we do - go where we haven’t been before and do what we do all the time. We talk to the minister/church coordinator/etc., establish where and what we are allowed to do in their church/venue, and that is what we do. If you like a videographer’s work, don’t be overly concerned about this point. The next airplane flight you take - the pilot may never have flown into Denver before, but he knows how to fly an airplane and all airports work basically the same way.

More FAQ coming soon!

What types of cameras, microphones, lights do they use? In our case, HD (High Definition) cameras, high quality wireless microphones (on the groom), and soft lighting that is dimmer-adjustable - no harsh spotlights. We will ask you about your lighting preferences, especially during special moments like your first dance and cake cutting.
What type of editing equipment do they use? At this point, in 2008, I would guess that 99% of videographers use “non-linear editing” systems - fancy words for we do it with software on a computer, in our case, Apple (Mac) computers using Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premier Pro, along with about 10 other software applications that I won’t bore you with here. Feel free to ask as many questions as you want to be sure you understand, but we all do just about the same thing, just with different software. (But if your videographer doesn’t know he is doing non-linear editing, you might want to ask a few more questions!)

An opinion on the above information - while it is important that your videographer use good-quality equipment, it doesn’t need to be cutting-edge, super new, super expensive equipment. It just needs to be good enough to produce a good-quality video. What is, in my opinion, more important is the experience and creativity of the videographer to produce a quality video. I could give “Uncle Fred” my HD cameras and Sennheiser wireless mics and Mac and software, and you’d get a piece of junk more than likely. I could run to Best Buy and spend $1000 on a consumer camera and do a better job than an amatuer with $50,000 in equipment but no knowledge or experience. At the convention I attended in January, a world-class videographer, Jason Mabangua, got a last-minute travel visa to come to the US from the Phillapines to speak at the convention. He has won numerous awards but had never been able to attend (I guess the state department was afraid he’d abandon his awesome videography company and want to live here …) anyway, he showed a wedding that he shot - for real - on his cell phone, just to see if he could. It came out neat - a bit rough, as you’d expect from the low-quality video a cell phone would capture - but still put together with his “eye”, his sense of style - and it was, well, neat - can’t think of a better word right now