What is RAW Footage?
As you’ve embarked on the search for your perfect wedding videographer or while reading the latest wedding blogs or magazines, chances are you’ve come across the words “Raw Footage” multiple times. What does this mean?
What is RAW Footage?
Raw footage is the footage of your wedding day, straight from the videographer’s camera. It’s not one continuous video, but rather a collection of many many separate clips. Every time the videographer starts and stops recording, a new clip is created. At the end of your wedding day, there will typically be hundreds of clips. When uploaded to a computer, you will see multiple folders, each containing numbered files (These are the clips!). To watch these, you’ll need to click on every single one, individually.
Raw footage is completely unedited – It’s not cleaned up, enhanced, color corrected, and does not incorporate higher quality audio from external devices (such as microphones). It’s likely that the audio in your raw footage will not be as great as it would be in an edited video, depending on how close or far away the camera was positioned.
The difference between RAW footage and what you see online.
Think of raw footage as all the pieces to the puzzle. An editor takes all of those pieces and strings them together with smooth transitions. They seamlessly cut between different camera angles, enhance when needed, and incorporate clean audio from microphones and other devices. The final product is the beautiful video you enjoyed watching on their website.
Do you need the raw footage from your wedding? As with many aspects of wedding planning, this has its pros and cons.
Pros of getting raw footage:
It’s good to have as backup, in case you ever lose your edited video.
You will be able to keep everything that was filmed on your wedding day, even if it doesn’t get included in your final edited video.
Cons of raw footage:
Often times, many videographers will charge extra if you if you want to receive the raw footage from the day.
It is completely unedited. That means it can be difficult and tiresome to navigate through and watch all the individual clips. You can’t just hit “Play”, sit back, and enjoy the show. You have to click every. single. clip. to watch it and still miss out on all the other positive aspects of an edited video.
Essentially, it’s not entirely necessary for you to get the raw footage. It’s good to have on-hand, and can be fun to peruse from time to time. It’s perfectly fine to even just get raw footage of your day and have the video edited later, but raw footage is absolutely not a substitute for a fully edited video. In the end, it comes down to what works best for you both!
Check out these additional resources explaining more about RAW Footage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtoNdP60M6I
https://vimeo.com/211567905/f9f3dc7757
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqzlschRrpU (**disclaimer about this video** - The speaker mentions that RAW footage formats are not usable by the consumer. Typically this is true but we convert everything to something user friendly before we send it to you)