We take great care to make your video special. It starts with shooting on high-quality digital mastering videotape--the kind you can't find in the local discount store. It's more expensive, but it makes a difference. And we never reuse tape. Every tape we use to shoot your wedding is fresh out of the box. Again, it's an extra expense for us, but we think the results are worth the cost.

And speaking of tape...we shoot a lot of it. A typical wedding with two cameras may have as much as 8-10 hours of total footage! We're finding that many of our completed programs have a running time of four hours.

Who's going to watch all that? Well, that's the beauty of DVD. You can select a particular chapter, or easily skip to the next one. It's like flipping a page in a wedding album, and you'll appreciate all that footage for years to come.

Our cameras are state-of-the-art 3-chip digital video cameras. But unlike some of the cameras of yesteryear, they're not so large as to be intrusive. They don't overwhelm your guests, so it won't look like the local TV crew descended on your wedding ceremony and reception!

And those cameras go on a tripod. No more "shaky-cam". When you watch your ceremony, you won't get seasick from sloppy camera work.

And you'll hear your vows on the tape or DVD more clearly than you can possibly imagine. That's because we use a special recording device (cleverly tucked in the Groom's jacket pocket) to record your vows, then we edit it with the video so you'll hear every word. Some videographers use wireless microphones, but we've found them to be unreliable and prone to interference. With our system, there's simply no chance of that. When you view our demo, we know you'll come away impressed with the sound quality you get.

Of course, some of the best moments of your wedding day come at the reception. We strive to capture those moments that, as a busy bride and groom, you never see. We bring along special lighting to ensure that every moment is captured crisp and clear. We have a nightvision camera to capture video even in outdoor darkness. And we can set up an "interview area" for your guests to record a special message to you both. When you view your final video or DVD, you'll be amazed at all you missed! But we won't miss a beat.

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Other Considerations

The short answer is "no", you can't use copyrighted music. The following text is from a website called "greatdv.com", and it explains the issue better than we can:

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The plain, no-frills, unvarnished answer is NO, not without paying a license fee. And for those hit songs you want to use, the license fee will be absolutely staggering. Most people are very vague about this issue, even many professionals. Legally, you cannot use anyone else's copyrighted material of any sort without permission from the copyright holder. This is true all the time, but is even more true for any usage where money changes hands. In some cases, especially with lesser-known musicians, you may get permission just for the asking. Most of the time, you have to pay a license fee, which can range from a tiny amount per copy to an astronomical figure...

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That's not the answer many people want to hear, but if you've been told otherwise, you've been misled.

There are, of course, exceptions. If we're taping your event, and the DJ is playing "your" song as you're dancing, it's no problem. We're there to cover the event, and we don't have to replace the music with something else. The problem comes in when we're asked to synchronize a piece of copyrighted music to, say, a photo montage, or a highlight video.

We do have a comprehensive library of music that we're licensed to use. It's all instrumental, and it's all legal. We use this music for photo montages, as background during appropriate places in the video (i.e., titles, transitions, or as background music during our coverage of the after-ceremony photo shoots).

If a customer is absolutely insistent on using a particular piece of music, we will ask them to sign a release indicating that they have secured permission from the rightful owner to reproduce part or all of the music.

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The Final Product

With that in mind, we duplicate on high-quality VHS tape, or DVD-R discs chosen especially for compatibility and long archival life. We ship your final product in dust-free cases for long-term storage, and we maintain your master tapes for at least one year after your ceremony date in a humidity-controlled environment, so if you ever need more copies, we can easily provide them.