First things first, I want to congratulate you for wanting to join the wedding creative community! The wedding videographer world can always use great new ideas to freshen up the old tradition. If you are new to wedding & event videography, or even just new to creating videos, then you’ve come to the right place! In this quick write up, we’ve compiled a set of tips to get you started on your journey to becoming a professional wedding videographer, So let’s get started!

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Screengrab from one of our videos

Skill+Vision > Fancy Equipment

“No tricks, gimmicks, special pills, special potions, special equipment. All it takes is desire and will.” -Richard Simmons

When starting out as a wedding videographer the most important thing you can do is hone in on your vision and skill.  Without those your work will not stand out in the competitive environment. This doesn’t mean taking your parents old camcorder and shooting an entire wedding with that, (unless that’s your vision). You’ll want to start out with good quality gear (if possible), so you can start learning on the proper camera and actually use it for weddings in the future.

Here are examples of simple affordable, yet great quality equipment that you may need to start out with;

YouTube — A Learning Tool

Youtube is the perpetual home of most creatives. It’s a great place to look up tutorials on pretty much anything you can think of, and it’s also a wonderful place to find sources of inspiration for your videos. Plenty of wedding videographers put their work online, not only for clients but also to put their portfolio and videos out there for the world to see and give feedback on. So be sure to learn as much as possible and then get out there and shoot some content!

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Screengrab from another wedding video

Vision ✓ Basic Skills✓ Portfolio✓ What’s next?

Great! Now you have some videos and wedding experience under your belt and you’ve created a portfolio of work that is not associated with weddings. What’s next? We suggest trying to assist an established wedding videographer for free. (yes yes we know…but seriously when you’re learning you HAVE to do some work for free. Maybe even just offer to shoot extra footage for a family member (while staying out of the way of the paid videographers of course) so you can learn). Working under someone who has been in the wedding industry for sometime can help you sharpen your skills and can teach you a couple of lessons about the industry itself. Think of this as a mentorship/internship. What you lack in income, you make up in the knowledge that is being gained!

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How to become a wedding videographer

A Tip for Success

Remember, in weddings reliability is a huge factor, if you can’t be trusted, wedding professionals like fellow videographers and vendors will probably go with a lesser known, or entirely different shooter. We only suggest this step if you’re completely serious about learning and joining the wedding videography business. Don’t waste anybody’s time!

Finale

  • After dedicating enough time and mastering the skill to be able to do a solo wedding shoot, you can either work for a wedding videography company, or open your own wedding videography company.

At this point, you’re no longer a rookie and your ready to make the last and final step. As a creative it’s not the easiest to manage your own business since you are so focussed on your craft. Joining a wedding videography company could be a really amazing thing! You’re constantly surrounded by creatives like you and most likely will have a stable amount of weddings to work. Maybe you’ll love the team you work with and never want to leave, or maybe you’ll eventually learn enough with this team to branch out on your own.

If you do end up venturing out on your own, remember to be open to all the opportunities that come your way, and to always keep a good network of vendors and fellow creatives around you! We hope this post will help you on your journey on becoming a wedding videographer!