Shereen and Ahmed’s Engagement Party

Wow, what a blast we had creating Shereen and Ahmed’s engagement video! We got really creative with the editing and we hope that the happy couple enjoy their engagement video as much as we enjoyed making it.

The booking was made via Shereen’s father Mo, who had spent countless hours searching for an Essex wedding videographer to cover the event. We didn’t really know what to expect as the party occurred the weekend before new strict lockdown measures came into effect which limited social gatherings to six people, it was quite uncertain as the government guidelines at the time weren’t really clear as it was, but thankfully everything went smoothly and as you can see from the video, it was a great party!

No video is ever the same, and as a video production company, it’s our job to keep the videos fun, engaging and enjoyable to watch. These days it seems that pretty much every wedding video follows the same narrative structure, it’s almost as if the “cinematic wedding video” is becoming cliché.
It’s safe to say that we didn’t fall into that trap with this video but that’s not to say that the it wasn’t a challenge! Engagement videos are particularly tricky because quite often, there is a lot to film in regards to the running time, but it’s often quite a lot of shots of the same thing e.g. people eating, and people dancing. Thanks to the creativeness of our videographers, we had a great assortment of shots to play with in the editing suite! The main challenge comes from a lack of dialogue in engagement videos, which makes it challenging to drive narrative and to convey a love story and also show the events of the day/evening. This is why a lot of video editors will create videos that are simply montages of clips set to music in chronological order, but that’s not our style! We wanted to give Shereen & Ahmed something that was truly unique, not just a cookie-cutter template or ‘cinematic video’, we wanted it to have charm and character. Thankfully both the couple and the wonderful guests were all so natural in front of the camera and all of the interactions were not only genuine, but they were never awkward or sticky, which can occasionally happen when a camera is pointed towards somebody! For this reason, we are very discreet when filming.

We place an emphasis on not turning the day into a photo shoot or movie set, but when we noticed the sun setting, we just had to take the couple away for a couple of minutes to take a stroll through the country park and WOW, the shots of the sun reflecting on the lake!! What a perfect backdrop to their story!

We opted for a filmic and vintage wedding videography vibe when choosing the look for the final edit, the clips were all handheld, and focused mostly on people interacting and on the couples photo shoot. Grain, scratches, and transitions were all manually created to add to the aesthetic and we chose to transition between two different songs for the two sections of the evening to highlight the progression of time, and the change of activities. Audio extracts from Alan Watts.

We loved creating the engagement video for Shereen and Ahmed and we wish them all the best in the future, thank you for choosing The Camera Guys!