CloudHerd Blog

Someone once said to me “it must be so good to only work weekends”. Without thinking, I replied “yeah, imagine a two day work week” and laughed. This was followed by an awkward moment of total confusion – her staring at me blankly while I tried to figure out what I’d missed.
See, she thought my life went a little something like this…

Weekdays wake up 10am, go to yoga, have coffee with friends, maybe go shopping or see a movie, go out to dinner, you know – relax, relax, relax.
Then on the weekend, I’d shoot. Go to amazing weddings and enjoy it just like any other guest. It’s not stressful, it’s just what I do and such a joy from start to finish.
Sounds good right? Yeah, to me too – if only it were real!

Shooting weddings is a BIG job. Now don’t get me wrong, all of us at CloudHerd still love the absolute sh*t out of it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not stressful, complicated and extremely high pressure. Ever wondered what we really do before and after the big day? Let me break it down.

We want your wedding film experience to be great. Start to finish, we want you to know you’re in good hands, know what’s going on and trust us to create a film that’s perfectly you. So how do we do this? We take our jobs VERY seriously and from first contact your wedding film story has already started to evolve. From day one we are getting a sense of who you are, what matters to you and how we can best put that into film. We look up every location, dream up shot lists, read through your questionnaire VERY carefully and discuss how we can tell your story. Then we meet with you, share these ideas, fine tune the schedule for the day including working out the best light in your location on that specific date, learn what makes you tick and make sure we’re going to nail your story. We make sure we can get good audio out from whatever PA is being used, scout locations either physically or via Google maps, plan our route for the day, make sure we know where we can park and book our accommodation.

Then comes the wedding eve. Sadly, we are not hitting the clubs on a Friday night (although we may well be up late)! There’s a fine line with getting your sleep cycle just right – so you’ve had enough rest to be switched on from the word go but also having slept late enough to stay alert for the late finish.
We iron our best outfits, pack day bags to make sure we’re well prepared and fuelled, triple check and test every piece of camera and sound equipment, the list goes on!

And then the big day arrives. We rock up 30 minutes early, scout locations, and always bring our A-game. Some weddings are up to 12 hours and we have to make sure we are ON the whole time. It is so much more than capturing the big moments. It’s all those tiny moments in between that we want to be sure to preserve perfectly for you. We need to be there, ready to catch it, and ready to do it damn well! We need to be able to make good creative and practical decisions on the fly, to adapt and change, and to manage anything Mother Nature throws at us like pros, all while being as unobtrusive as possible and making your experience fun and relaxed.
The energy at a wedding is crazy. Everything is heightened and, as amazing as all that is, it’s also exhausting! The only thing more tiring that shooting a wedding is getting married yourself (believe us, we’ve been there!). So when you wake up the next day, feelin’ a little ‘how’s your father’, take solace in the fact we’re probably only doing slightly better.
Pro – we don’t have hangovers. Con – we also didn’t get laid.

Then, come Monday morning it’s straight down to business (unless of course you’ve gone all out and booked ‘The Epic’ package in which case you better believe we ain’t sleeping to get that next day edit out the door). We’re uploading and backing up your footage, sorting it, lining up multiple camera shots and audio, culling it down to the best shots, making trailers, listening to all of the audio multiple times to select speech and ceremony sections to use, matching visuals to audio, selecting music, editing, re-editing, re-re-editing and on it goes… And then it’s on to the USB. We create the content, order your custom USB (which yep, we also spent time designing), pack it up and ship it off. It’s all done by us, all with lots and lots of love, and it all takes time. But you know what, we wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s this TLC that lets us create films we can stand behind and be proud of, knowing we went the extra mile to really knock it out of the park.

So is our job easy? HELL NO! But do we love it? Can we get a “HELL YEAH”?