I often get the feeling that the only thing that most people consider when deciding on a wedding video or wedding videographer is,  “how much of the day can I have filmed for how much?”, and the cheapest price often wins.  I go to great lengths to explain that there is more to choosing your wedding videographer than simply price.

My experience throughout life has been that you get what you pay for. If something is far cheaper than the going rate, it is often inferior and it isn’t until you have paid for it that you find out why. OK, if it’s a cheap bit of clothing you can bite the bullet and buy something else. However, if it’s a wedding video the day has gone and it can’t be done again.

An example of this came recently when we decided to but a barbecue. We went out with a a budget of £70 – £90 and started looking. We were met with an array of prices from £35 to over a grand! On first glance they all looked about the same; all bright and shiny and, well barbecues. So we went away and looked a bit closer at what we were getting for the money. When you start to look closer you see that some had enamel surfaces instead of paint / chrome. Others were better designed for proper cooking. Other had adjustable temperatures, hotplates, temperature gauges and just looked and felt more robust.

There were some that , in my opinion, were grossly overpriced for something that was only going to be used for a few weeks of the year – the intention was obviously simply to try and impress people!

After spending several hours on the internet I became something of an expert on garden barbecues and we returned to the garden centre and posed a few relevant questions to the staff. Long story short we eventually paid £170 for the barbecue – nearly double what we initially intended to pay. Why?  Because the cheaper ones would have been false economy. After the first season the would have probably started to rust. I suspect that we would have ended up with food  burnt on the outside and undercooked on the inside (sound familiar?) and had a job and a half getting the thing going and then cleaning up afterward.

Just had our first barbecue. Took 10 minutes to get it hot and going and 10 minutes to clean up afterward. The food was delicious; cooked throughout, just the right amount of 1grilling1 on the outside and with a real ‘barbecue’ flavour rather than a burnt charcoal flavour.

Was it worth the extra? You bet.

Now we have been choosing carpets – but that is a different story, but did we go for the cheapest quote?

One thing that has surprised me is the slow take up of the high definition Blu-ray formula. Over the last couple of years we have spent quite a bit of dosh on upgrading our cameras and editing suites to cope with this new and exciting format. Since then we are being asked for maybe 2-3 Blu-ray versions of wedding videos each year!

I suspect that many people still don’t really understand what is all about. The image quality of high definition footage filmed on a high-quality, broadcast quality is absolutely stunning. Even now, after two years I am still amazed at what we see when we start to edit.  The detail and sharpness of the picture quality is incredible.

Let me explain. we film in HD and then do all our editing in HD. So all the way through the edit we are watching the footage on a large HD monitor. At the end of the edit we are left with a stunning production all in glorious high-definition. However, the next logical step is to burn it to a high definition Blu-ray disc, thus maintaining all the picture quality we have created.

However, unless the client has a Blu-ray DVD player they can’t play the disc. Many people seem to think that a standard DVD player is HD compatible if they have a HD ready TV. It isn’t. A standard DVD playier will only play standard definition DVDs.

Let me clarify this. Standard definition has a picture resolution of 720 pixels wide by 576 pixel high – a measly 400, 000 pixels or 0.5 mega pixels. Compare this to the 8 mega pixels that are common in most stills cameras now days!

In contrast high definition rates vary between 1 and 2 mega pixels! So the picture quality of high definition Blu-ray is up to 4 times greater than standard definition DVDs. Does this make much difference? You bet it does.

So, having finished filming and editing in high definition, we than have to downsize the finished wedding video to standard size, which means quite a loss of detail and picture sharpness as we ‘throw away’ at least 50% of the pixels.

With Blu-ray DVD players now costing around £100 and most Play Station games consules able to play Blu-ray discs, I really don’t understand why everyone doesn’t want their wedding video in stunning Blu-ray.

Love to hear your thoughts on this.

The final tally is in.  Over the last twelve months we have spent over £8,000 on new equipment. None of this was to replace worn out stuff; but simply to upgrade existing equipment and improve the service we offer to our clients. Among the equipment was new editing suite with super large storage capacity and power, higher quality microphones and audio recording devices, better lighting and loads of other stuff.

With Adobe bringing out the new Production Suite version 5 this year, we may find ourselves upgrading yet again to keep at the front of things and ensure that we are offering our clients the very best in modern vido production.  So, what has all this got to do with the price of bread?

Simply this. Producing high-quality videos and films is an expensive business. We need to continually invest in new equipment to keep up with the latest advanced in technology; advancing which year on year see an improvement in the quality of the products that we offer our clients.

This is the reason that we simply can’t compete with all  the fly-by-night companies offering wedding videos at ridiculously cheap prices. As we try to explain to people, with nearly everything in life you get what you pay for and if something is priced at a price well below what the established companies are charging, there is usually a very good reason. Can a company charging £400 – £500 a wedding video afford to invest in top-quality equipment costing thousands of £ss? Commonsense says no, otherwise they would end up working for nothing! So commonsense also dictates that the are not working to the same high quality as those who are charging the right prices.

Just a thought to bear in mind when choosing your wedding videographer. It is a once in a lifetime event. Do you really want to take a chance on a second rate video because the price seemed cheap?