Why I never count the minutes

Sooner or later, in every first call, someone asks how long the wedding film is. I understand the question. Everybody has sat through a wedding video that would not end, and nobody wants that for their own. But I never answer with a number, and I would like to explain why.

The wrong question

I do not think in minutes. The right question is not how long the film lasts, but whether whoever watches it reaches the end. A film that holds you for a quarter of an hour feels short; one that loses you after three minutes feels endless. The length is a consequence of the day, of how much happened and how much of it deserves to be told, not a promise written in a contract.

So I do not set a minimum or a maximum, and I never will. When I sit down to edit I do not know yet how long your film will be, and that is the honest position. What I know is that it will have a rhythm: it rises and falls, if it makes you cry it will make you laugh a moment later, if it runs it will slow down to let you look. When that rhythm is right, nobody looks at the clock.

What I actually care about: the sound

If you ask me what matters most in a wedding film, it is not the frames, although I care about those. It is the sound. The film gives you back the voices, what you said to each other, the music of that evening, the murmur around you. It is the part that really brings you back inside the day when you watch it ten years from now, with the children asleep and the house quiet.

That is why vows and speeches are recorded with their own microphones, and why, when they are long, I keep them in full and deliver them separately. And it is why I will ask you, after the wedding, for the texts you wrote: they become the subtitles, so that whoever did not understand that day can follow everything, and live it again.

You do not have to do anything

The other thing I want to say is about you, and it is simple. The story comes from who is in it, and to get it you do not have to do anything. There is no right way to stand in front of me and I will never ask you to be a certain way. Some couples laugh all day, some are quiet, some cry at the first word; the film follows, it does not ask. You just have to be yourselves. I will take care of the rest.

The edit, by hand

Everything I have said happens in the editing room, which is the part of my work nobody sees. I watch every clip from every camera, from the first to the last, and that is where I learn who you are: how you look at each other, who your people are, what the day sounded like. Then I choose the music, after having seen you, because it comes from the footage and not from a playlist. Then I cut, by hand, every single cut.

It takes time, and I take it. It would be a pity not to have anything to watch again, of a day like that.