People often ask me if wedding film is needed on their day after they spend copious amounts on photographers. Now, I know what you're thinking, "you run a wedding film company in Berkshire and so, your answer will obviously be something along the lines of, of course you need film, it's actually more important than photography" then offer them some sort of statistic as to how much of the day a photographer doesn't capture.
The thing is, in all honesty, film, IS more important than photography. With how technology is now moving, phones and amateur cameras are able to capture exceptional quality photographs and, if there is anyone in your family who is a photographer by trade or an enthusiast, then logically, if they have the equipment, getting them to photograph large parts of your day would be beneficial to the budget.
Wedding film on the other hand is something entirely different. Film, as a whole, is far more than just pointing and filming. The thing is, a good videographer understands emotion,mood, positioning, lighting. A good videographer understands and is aware of the small moments that you may not be aware of. Perhaps it's a brother you haven't seen in years or a grand parent who's been ill. Perhaps it's a loving embrace between your siblings and parents, something of which you rarely get to see. Perhaps it's a cousin, uncle, friend, best friend who you haven't seen in years. Photography captures moments, however film captures a memory. Hearing voices, seeing those friends/ family members alive and living, smiling, interacting, those are the moments that we look back on and remember.
With how the world currently is, with illnesses left, right and center, war on the horizon, filming those peaceful, untouched moments is so pivotal to your memories of those people.
As an avid historian, I often find myself watching archive films during WW1 and WW2 of those people. Seeing their personalities, their smiles, their laughter, knowing that many of them never made it back home, at least offers me some semblance of who they were, what they sounded like, how they felt before it ended. If you look at photography, with still images, you can see their emotions and some semblance of them as people, however, there is always something missing. Almost, a human element to those images.
Film, especially in my life, is one of the very few things that maintain that human side to who is on the other side of the lens. Whether it's that awkward smile or that slight uncomfortability about being on camera. The way someone enunciates words and how they use their hands to express how they feel. These things are never photographed.
So, if you ask me, "why is film so important to our wedding day" it is the mere fact that those people there on your wedding day, your friends, your family members, the person you are marrying, you all deserve to be preserved inside a film that you can watch, all the way in to your old age and relive those moments, second by second, minute by minute, always attaching yourself to how you looked, felt. How you sounded and how your loved one sounded. Who was there and why were they there.