Continuing with the videography picking tips -
(Refresher - “you” is you, the bride/groom/wedding planner, “they” are the videographer you are interviewing, “we” is me - Miriam at Omaha Wedding Video)
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
So go for a good combination of quality equipment and quality experience - and let experience be the deciding factor if you like the demos you see.