Planning A Wedding? There’s An App For That
Photo credit: Lee Webb Photography
We’re often asked by couples how the music that we use in our wedding videos. Couples want to know whether they can choose the music that we use in their wedding video – whether it’s the Highlights clip we produce, or the full feature film.
The answer to that is always; yes. Yes, you can choose your own music for your wedding video. We’re open to suggestions and if there’s a song that you really, really want in your wedding video, then we can accommodate that.
A good example is something like a First Dance song that really means a lot to you. We nearly always include the First Dance song in full somewhere in the video (often at the end, depending on the flow), but that’s something that couples often ask us about.
So for this blog post today, I wanted to answer a few of the standard questions we get about music in our wedding videos.
What’s In a Song?
The music in any film or video is massively important. Sound is one of the most misunderstood and undervalued parts of the filmmaking process. Imagine you’re watching a random Youtube video about your favourite hobby: most people will put up with a little slightly “off” video footage (bit blurry, out of focus or grainy), but people will hit the stop button almost instantly if a static whooshing sound is suddenly audible.
The fact is: people don’t (or should I say can’t) put up with bad audio. It’s too grating and uncomfortable to the human ear.
So that’s a slightly extreme example, but it illustrates the point: the sound in videos is important.
Further, the sounds that we choose in our wedding videos really effect the emotive feel of the piece. Can you imagine playing horror music over a wedding ceremony!? It would be ridiculous and would spoil the entire piece.
On the other hand, tranquil piano music during a ceremony makes sense. Or the smooth sound of a beautiful acoustic guitar backed love song. Sound like that sets the mood of the piece appropriately. It sounds emotive in all the right ways.
Types of Music For Weddings
With that say, it’s important to note here that music is highly subjective. One person’s gold is another person’s rubbish. Just look at some of the music that gets into the Top 40 these days!
A lot of videographers, in an effort not to ruffle any feathers, go with bland music that satisfies all ears. This is the safe route, but it often produces boring wedding video music.
What we like to do at Shoot The Piano Player is ask our couples what kind of music they’re into. We include this on our unique Couple’s Questionnaire that we give to all our couple’s when they book with us. It’s a fun PDF that we send our couples and they always report having a good laugh with it. One of the questions asks, “What music do you both listen to?”
Now, if someone answered “death metal,” we’re probably not going to use Cradle of Filth in your wedding video (we haven’t been asked for death metal yet!). The same would be the case if we were asked for “German Lute Dance Pop” (I don’t know if that’s even a genre – it probably is! ;-))
Still it’s good to know what our clients are into and we can certainly tailor their wedding video to have a tone and style that they’re into.
Let’s Get It On
All this is to say that if you ask for Marvin Gaye as the final song in the closing section of your wedding video, then you’re probably going to get it.
As we’ve discussed, sound is an important part of filmmaking, and therefore music plays a part in setting the tone, emotion and impact of a piece. We’ve all watched videos that just don’t add up for some reason. So many times this is down to poor music choices.
Now, for an example of how we use music effectively, have a look at Leann & Mark’s Highlights video below (great use of Van Morrison, I’m sure you’ll agree!):
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