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So here it is, our first wedding video blog of 2018! And we wanted to do a quick recap of the year we just waved goodbye to.
Our Busiest Wedding Film Year to Date…
After an amazing start to the year, winning the ’Wedding Film’ category in the South West Wedding Awards for the third year running, we had a strong blogging start in 2017 (6 blogs in three months – a record!). But it’s fair to say we got a little rubbish as soon as the season kicked into overdrive. Last year was our busiest ever season, with 30 weddings between April and October (and one in December, for good measure!).
*FYI – We know there are photographers out there who can do 70-80 a year, so that might not sound a lot. But the pot-production time of video (40 hours+) is much, much longer. (But more on photography later….)*
We really enjoy sitting down and taking the time to really reflect on a specific wedding, or a particular element of wedding video content – but once the edits start to rack up, there’s no time for such indulgent (and SEO friendly) activates!
Wedding Video Full Timer
This was our first season being full time, with my sabbatical from lecturing at Truro College starting in July. It’s been a real learning curve – there’s a lot to love (and hate) about working from home all the time!
We love being at home with the family. Seeing so much more of my son is amazing, and I get to enjoy breakfast with him and my wife most days, before heading upstairs to work. The drawback, with my ‘office’ being the spare room, it’s pretty easy for either one of them to go and get me to help with – (Amongst other things) lunch prep, child wrangling, train track building.
Also, I hate Facebook. And love Facebook. After some bad experiences, I’m terrified of losing work because of a Premiere (our editing software) crash. So autosaves are set every 10 minutes.
Wedding & Corporate Photography
We’ve always enjoyed photography, but last year saw a big increase in our ‘Babalu Stills’ work. We did our first in-house photography & video package, which was great fun. We’re still fairly slow in Lightroom, but my word – it’s nice to edit with some music (or Netlfix) on in the background!
We did a lot more freelance photography in general. For Primary Site (who design school websites) at a number of primary schools in the southwest, as well as the Cornwall School for Social Entrepreneurs awards ceremony and the promotional shots for a community event, Signs & Wonders in Redruth.
South West Wedding Awards 2018
We’d love to start this year by winning the awards again. So many of our couples from last year sent through what they wrote in the comments box, and we won’t lie, we got a little emotional. There are so many other amazing companies in our category though, so we don’t expect it. Our favourite part isn’t even the awards themselves (although it’s always a lovely evening), it’s getting all the comments sent through to us.
So what does the future hold?
- Filming weddings outside the South West. We’ve always been happy to travel, and have produced videos as far away as Shrewsbury. But this year we have 4 weddings outside of the region, our most yet. It’ll be fun seeing all the new locations, and making the most of the audible subscription!
- More photography
- And the biggest question…at some point, we need to decide whether to go back to lecturing when the sabbatical is over. This will determine a lot for the year, whether I choose to do any advertising and how many weddings we will take (the cap has to be at about 20). Although we’re a team in terms of camera operation, I do 90% of the editing…and each wedding takes 40+ hours!
2018, let’s see what you’ve got…
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