raw edit (add-on)

$500

N

includes

    • Footage that is and is not included in your other films
    • Clips are trimmed to their ‘usable’ portions (top and tailed)
    • In-camera sound
    • Edited into several long clips (by location/event)
    • Organised by camera, in sequential order (as shot)
    • Colour corrected
    • Playback friendly h.264 (.mp4) video files
    • Plenty of laughs, happiness, and tears
    • Online file download delivery

p

length

  • There doesn’t appear to be a connection between hours shooting and expected duration as every wedding is so different.
  • Based on previous weddings with 8-10 hours coverage, the expected length is somewhere between 40-100 minutes.

pricing

  • As this is an add-on it is purely editing-time costs associated with reviewing all footage, topping and tailing, editing together, colour grading, exporting, and uploading to you.

fair

  • I am not looking to make profit off of these edits and am really just looking to be compensated for the time I spend creating it.
  • My main want is to see the footage be fully realised and appreciated (as it would go unseen otherwise) and I hate seeing it go to waste. At the same time, it is not free because it does require time to make it into something watchable.
  • In the past I have issued partial refunds in the event the edit time is less than expected (and likely the film length). If you prefer, I can edit it then invoice you based on the amount of time taken (up to a max of $500).

short description

RAW footage is a controversial topic among videographers and photographers alike. For quite a few reasons other than technical ones.

I usually hear these ones:
“You wouldn’t ask a baker for their ingredients, you pay them to make the cake”
“It’s only half of my creative process”, “I shoot for how I edit”, “You’re paying for the final films/photos” etc.

I understand all of them, but I don’t subscribe. Why can’t you bake the cake for them, and give them all the delicious excess fondant?

There is value in the unused bits. Our films and photos will outlive us, and shots of people who were simply not included in the edited films for various reasons may have more meaning some day. There are also plenty of funny and sometimes rude moments that just don’t suit the films but can be hilarious to watch back, and you are able to relive things in their actual full duration – not a split 2 seconds of that moment as edited.

So I think the main questions to ask are:

 

Why does the couple want RAW footage?

It’s usually either; a) to watch everything that was/wasn’t included. I’m cool with that.
or b) to have it edited by someone else – generally not why you’d hire me…

Why does the videographer not want to provide it?

A whole bunch of reasons outlined in ‘the long explanation’, it’s struggle town for you, and a poor reflection on me.

What can be provided that satisfies both parties’ wants/needs?

“good for me, good for you”
This ‘The Little Things (RAW edit)’ read on…

 

N

what it is

  • Short ‘highlight style’ clips captured from the primary camera
  • Footage that is and is not included in your other films
  • Clips are trimmed to their ‘usable’ portions (top and tailed)
  • In-camera sound
  • Organised by camera, in sequential order (as shot)
  • Colour corrected
  • Playback friendly h.264 (.mp4) video files.
  • Plenty of laughs, happiness, and tears
  • Online file download delivery

 

M

what it is not

  • All clips and audio dumped straight from cameras and sound recorders
  • ~200-300GB of ~500 video and sound files
  • Intended to be edited later
  • A replacement for dedicated ceremony and reception films – those should be edited with audio sync.
  • Full duration events from every angle (eg. your whole ceremony wide shot, your whole ceremony zoom shot etc.)

the long explanation

Why I can’t just dump it all on a hard drive and what I do with the footage. 

RAW FILE TYPES CAN BE COMPLICATED

Camera file types vary from camera to camera, often with quite high bitrates (for higher framerates (for slow motion) and detail). What this means is they are often not playable by the average person, requiring fast storage and specific software.

During editing a ‘render cache’ is created by the editing program, that is a more easily (compressed) readable version of each video file, just to work with it.

This is because the more detail that is captured (whether or not it’s playable) the more flexibility there is with colour grading, and slow motion (shooting at 100 frames per second, converting down to 25fps for slow motion where necessary, computers struggle to play back 100 fps natively). 

DOUBLE UPS

On a standard wedding – shooting for a ‘short film (6-8 mins)’ I will capture around 4-5 hours of footage in 8 hours. Some of this is the same thing, from 2, 3, or 4 angles. As it’s a wedding day, you shoot just in case a lot of the time, because there are no do-overs. A great deal of footage is not necessary, often because it’s a backup of the same thing (in the event of card/camera failure), or because I’ll need to use another angle while your photographer (or guest) is standing in front of another (sometimes for the whole ceremony! love it when they do that! #endrant) so all in all, the necessary and usable footage portion is quite a lot smaller. Part of paying for editing is I’m choosing the best shots to show you from what is available – chances are you’re not missing out on much. 

COLOUR GRADING IS A THING

Everything is shot ‘flat‘ (that is low contrast – very grey) this preserves light and shadows to allow for better colour grading in post-production, in fact, the first thing I do when I load it in for editing is throw a blanket filter over the whole lot.

By editing and colour correcting, the differences between each camera’s colours are less noticeable, and the shots look the way they were intended.

TIDYING UP THE JUNK

May include many takes of the same thing (eg. rings, suits, dresses, flowers, etc.).
Camera testing / light testing shots.
Errors – accidentally not stopping recording, leaving a camera filming the ground, unmanned cameras doing the wrong thing, out of focus stuff.
Being creative will often lead to new ideas being tested, but sometimes not successfully, removes those.
As mentioned above, backup all the things, and people in the way a lot just looks like a blurry head..

 

GENERIC VIDEOGRAPHER CONCERNS

Intellectual property – how you shoot, creative decisions etc. are worth something.
The unfinished undesirable state of actual RAW footage may reflect negatively on the videographer depending on how/where it is used.
Risk of footage/dialogue being taken out of context.
Risk of footage being uncredited or used in an undesirable way by another editor.