How long is your edited footage?

[Joe Allen Rosenberger]

Hey Pat....I exclusively do "short form" edits for weddings. My average length regardless of ceremony type, speeches, etc. run around 30 to 40 minutes max.

I've never had an hour of speeches....damn thats long!!! But anyway.....for almost all speeches, what I do is cut them way down....just grap bites that are generally most compelling, funny, sweet....whatever you call it. What I always do however is make DVD Menu options for "full or extended toasts/speeches".....full/extended forst dance/dads dance.....full length uncut ceremony(which sometimes needs a seperate disk of its own".

SO, in the 30 ish minutes "main play" short form DVD's I produce, I always include menu items that are important parts of the day that I feel I must include.....but I do not do anything but A/B cam straight cuts for these menu items.

I have always done it this way.....client's love it, the vids stay very interesting from start to finsih.....and part because of the "short form editing".....trimming out lots of not as compelling moments.

EVen with a catholic ceremony that may run over 1 hour....I am able to trim it down to about 12 minutes or so.....lots of time compression.

Anyway, this is how I do it......and I wouldn't produce them any other way, atleast in length. It works well.

I understand what you're saying though.....my client's know exactly how I produce and it is one of the reasons they like our finsihed vids.

After you add the menu items I include....sure the overall length grows in time.....just not as "main play" which is the "heart and soul" of the DVD.

Cheers- Joe

Originally Posted by Patrick Moreau

I don't believe I said I thought there were too long. I think it would be great to have the events happen in a shorter time period, which would therefore require less filming. I would be curious to know how you cut down an hour of speech so that those and the rest of the video fit into 45 minutes?

[Joe Allen Rosenberger]

Pat...I think I do it similarly to the way Don edits the speeches.....keeping about 30secs to a minute max....atleast in most cases. Sometimes it's more challenging to do this way because an entire speech may be really weak in content.....but I usually can make it happen(shortened that is).

As for "cutting" out someone's speech....I doubt I would ever do this, no matter how bad it bay have been. I can just see the client calling me after watching.....and then saying, can you add the speech of Joe Blow....then this just adds more work to my already busy schedule....not to mention, the client would be right with their request.....it should have been in the vid to begin with.

Hope this explains a little better.

Originally Posted by Patrick Moreau

My intial post was actually half joking but thanks for such a detailed response Don.

I offer the speeches as a separate chapter, and do not cut those down at all. I do like yor approach, but I think in the end it is more time spent editing, and I think I could spend that time better on a different part of the video.

I usually shoot the preps with on camera, ceremony with four to five, and main reception events with two. Thatg is usually about one tape each for the bride and groom's preps, five for the ceremony, one for details of the church/reception and photo-session, and then 6 (3x2) for the reception which would include the speeches, dances, intros, and guests dancing- which would total 14. That would be our upper limit, the average would be much closer to 8.

I'm now curious to hear how Joe and Don put together the speeches though. If somebody has a pretty boring speech do you cut them out completely? Do you generally just put in the highlights of the speech and then fade out then another speech and so on?

[Jason Robinson]

Originally Posted by Joe Allen Rosenberger

As for "cutting" out someone's speech....I doubt I would ever do this, no matter how bad it bay have been. I can just see the client calling me after watching.....and then saying, can you add the speech of Joe Blow....then this just adds more work to my already busy schedule....not to mention, the client would be right with their request.....it should have been in the vid to begin with.

Hope this explains a little better.

Agreed. I never cut speeches even if the footage is bad because it is darkened reception lighting, etc.

My recent DVD (burned and mailed yesterday actually) had lots of extras on the DVD. Probably 20 more minutes of footage. Things like uncut dancing footage, uncut first dance / mother & son / father & daughter, and the sandstorm that blew in and destroyed the reception.... Fun stuff.

The final edit was 37 minutes of 5.1 "surround" -ish plus 20 minutes of stereo un-edited footage.

jason