This final installment of “Big List of Questions”, the questions you SHOULD ask your wedding videographer before signing the contract, we’ll talk about all those uncomfortable “What If?” questions.
I like to have a plan. Not just A plan….but a Plan B, and usually even a Plan C just in case it’s needed. I do this with everything, not just filming weddings; travel, home remodeling. Everything. My brain gets a bit cluttered with plans sometimes, but having solid plans and options allows me the ability to be flexible when things come up, because I feel like I’ve covered every possible scenario.
With regards to filming weddings, we’ve never even had to pull out our Plan B. But we have it all laid out, just in case it’s ever needed.
What if it rains? Okay, I’m going to be honest, I do not even call this a Plan B. I call it a Saturday, because rain happens. This doesn’t affect us filming your wedding at all, we have rain gear. This affects you way more than it does me, and I’m going to write another blog on that next week (from a bride’s perspective). So in all your worrying about ‘What if it rains on my wedding day?” don’t think that you need a plan for us, because we’re good.
What if you can’t make it? This one is far-fetched for us. First, there are two of us. Unless something serious tragic happened, illness or injury would only affect one of us. We’re also grown ups, and we would have to be really really hurt or ill (like, contagious…we aren’t bringing germs to your wedding) to be unable to work. Should one of us be unable, we are lucky enough to work within a pretty large network of talented individuals, and we make a few phone calls and have someone else lined up, before you even know anything is amiss. Things like massive snowstorms (we grew up here in WV, and have 4WD. If you can have a wedding, we can be there), traffic, etc….these things don’t worry us too much because we get there early.
What if something happens to your camera? Or your computer? I forgot! We did have to go to Plan B on this one! Cameras and computer and all gear…well, they fail sometimes. We plan for them to fail. We have several cameras with us to film your wedding (so if something bad happens to one…we use another), and the minute we’re done, we start backing up the footage we recorded. Then we make a back up of that back up, and we have an off-site back-up. Last fall, right in the middle of our busy shooting and editing season, one of the hard drives died in our back up. This is no big deal, that back up writes across multiple drives, no data is lost. We replace the drive, and wait 2 days for it to rebuild. (The computer can’t edit while rebuilding, so time is lost) Right as I sit down to edit again, ANOTHER drive goes out. When we replace this one, it tells us it will take a week and a half to rebuild. That is WAY too long, so Chris (who also works in IT, and takes care off all the techie stuff so I don’t have to) ran some diagnostics and found that our back up was dying, and killing hard drives as it went. We had to order a new one and replace the information from our working hard drives (our original back ups, which is what we work and edit from) and a few older projects had to be downloaded from our online back up. It took about 3 weeks, and put us one week behind in editing. Because we had a good plan, no data was lost; but it was a stressful experience. It’s kinda dark to think about, but before we travel anywhere, we do a quick check to be sure that our online backup is in good working order…so if our house burns down while we’re out of town, no ones wedding goes with it!
That experience was tedious and not fun for us; but for clients, our Plan B made sure that their wedding films were safe.
What if I don’t like my video? We want you to like your video. So far, we have a pretty good track record of liking videos. We always ask clients to look at our work before booking with us, to make sure that you like our style. Then we ask clients to fill out our questionnaire. It’s lengthy. When you fill it out, you probably wonder “Why do they need to know about my favorite tv show or my hobbies.” The thing is, we really need to know YOU. All of those random little details give us some insight into your personality. Then when we spend your entire wedding day with you, all the dots in our heads start connecting and we see your story come together. At the end of the day after we’ve packed everything up, we get in the car and start talking about your day, the notable points, the awesomeness of it all (in between me whining about my feet hurting and being cold and Chris complaining about burning up and being hungry). We come home and comb through every shot of the whole day, to find the very best ones, the ones with real meaning, and start crafting them together. Before we ever share your film with you; we work to make it a film that WE love, because we think you’ll love it too.
How do I know you’ll show up? Seriously, we’ve been asked this once. At the time, we were a little baffled (it was the rehearsal dinner after all, we were already there!). But he was asking for a very real reason: it happened to someone he knew! We assured him we would be there and went on our way. Then a few weeks ago, I noticed with surprise that a photographer who walked off with a bunch of clients money several years go had rebranded and was doing business again, as if it had never happened. It hurts my heart that this is a thing that clients need to be concerned about, but it is.
Seriously, Google your vendors. The company name and the vendor’s name.
You can trust we’ll show up because that’s what we do. We have years of business to back it up. We’re really happy that all of our clients have left us glowing reviews, and encourage you to read the reviews before you book with anyone. One less than awesome review might not mean anything; but if you read people saying that the vendor stood them up, didn’t deliver, or ran off their their money….well, there’s no red flag bigger than that. Run the other way.
That’s the end of my list; all the questions I could find or think of to ask. Do you have another? Let me know in the comments or send us a message. There are never any stupid questions, and we’re always happy to help.