We have a lot of couples reach out to us and ask us for more information about an add-on we offer for our video packages. The term “raw footage” is something that gets thrown around quite a bit in the photo/video world. And while our definition of raw footage and others may vary slightly, we wanted to shed some light on what it is and what it looks like as an add-on that we offer.
What is Raw Footage?
Raw footage is a general term referring to all the footage that is captured on the day of a shoot. Raw footage typically consists of unedited photos or videos, straight from the camera without any edits or modifications done to them.
Why Would I Want Raw Footage?
We offer a wide range of wedding videography packages, each consisting of a different amount of final edited videos. We have packages that range from one single 3-5 minute highlight reel video, all the way to packages that contain longer 45 minute videos. As you can probably guess, we record a lot more than 3-5 minutes of video footage for a wedding day. We have some of our couples who only want the highlight reel and then we have some couples who would like to be able to look back at all the content that didn’t make it into their highlight reel. This is why we offer raw video footage as an option. All of the raw footage from the day is provided on a flash drive as separate video files. Once a couple has this footage, they can do whatever they’d like with it.
How Much Footage Do I Actually Get?
This is always a tough question to answer. The amount of raw footage is never fully dependent on the amount of hours we film at a wedding. Being that there are always two of us, big moments like the ceremony and reception will always be captured with two different cameras at the same time. We will typically capture these moments with one zoom camera and one wide camera. Any time there is a big moment throughout the day, we’ll be there with a camera capturing it. There are moments of down time during the day. If there is traveling required, we won’t be filming anything while we drive from one location to the other. We make a video to document our couple’s story, not two wedding videographers and what they’re snacking on from one location to the other.
8 hours of coverage does not equal 8 hours of raw footage. I took a look through footage from the weddings we have captured and tried to get a round-about answer. For us, the average amount of footage we capture is anywhere from 4-6 hours from about an 8 hour day.
Do you Offer Raw Footage for Photography?
We do not offer raw footage for photography. Unlike our videography packages, which has different video lengths to choose from, when we capture photos we provide every photo that is in focus and has everybody’s eyes open. With our photography, you get about 80-90% of the photos we take.
Does Raw Footage Look Different Than Edited Footage?
When we are editing our footage after an event, we do a few enhancements to our video clips. The first thing we do to a video clip is modify the color. When we capture video footage, we record it to make the color look a certain way. Videographers in the industry may refer to it as “log”. We included a video below so you can get a better idea visually on what I mean about this but basically we record our video clips with minimal color and contrast. Color and contrast can always be added to video clips when editing, but it’s much more difficult to remove it afterwards if the camera captures too much of it.