When it comes to prioritising suppliers and working to budgets, we’re always surprised to find some clients have cinematographers pretty low down on their list. We are always shouting from the rooftops about how precious a wedding film is so we reached out to Scottish Wedding Cinematographers Olive & Thistle so they could explain from first hand experience what exactly makes a wedding video so special and what they love about their work. 

At the top of their list of favourite things about filming weddings is the privilege of being invited into the bride and groom prep and being a part of those intimate moments that no other guests get to see - “the moments between parent and child, sister and sister, best man and groom; these are the moments that we strive to capture, and to have the honor of being a part of that environment just sets the tone for the entire day for us”. Coming in at a close second is their love for a good party! “We’re getting paid to do a job we absolutely love and enjoy a fantastic party at the same time. It’s a triple-win!” We feel like you can always count on someone who loves their job to produce outstanding results. 

As well as capturing the unseen moments, Olive & Thistle love to capture the movement of the day. While they believe photography does a great job of capturing a single moment in time, they have seen first hand that film expands on the photographs by capturing the full emotional resonance of moments throughout the day. How beautiful it must be to have these moments captured on film so you can relive them over and over again. 

“From the adjusting of the dress as our bride gets ready, to the nervous glances from the groom as she walks down the aisle, to the way everyone moves on the dance floor, it’s that fluidity of movement that has a very unique way of capturing memories as opposed to just a moment in time”.

After Olive & Thistle’s many years of experience in filming weddings, they know exactly what their favourite moment is to capture during the wedding day…

“When a father of the bride sees his daughter in their dress for the first time. It’s one of the only times we get nervous while filming!  You can’t fake that reaction, that look of pure happiness on his face, there’s something about that relationship between father and daughter, and there’s been a number of times where even the most steely-eyed men have been reduced to tears of joy – it’s fantastic!”

When it comes to the logistics of filmmaking, Olive & Thistle know the drill. No matter what size of wedding, whether it’s an intimate elopement wedding or a luxury Scottish Castle wedding, they always send 2 fimmakers out in order to cover different angles of the ceremony and speeches and so that they can split up at the start of the day and film the couple’s individual prep. Olive & Thistle also take great pride in their editing process as they never outsource footage to be cut by someone else and they keep working on it until they’re 100% satisfied with the films

“We spend a lot of time in post production on our films, and go out of our way to include about 95% of what we’ve shot on the day. For us specifically, we spend about 3 days editing a full film (45-90 min long), and highlights film (3-5 minutes long)”

Olive & Thistle’s work can speak for itself in why you should 100% book a videographer for your wedding, but here’s what they had to say when we asked them what sets them aside from other Scottish wedding cinematographers

“What makes us different here at Olive & Thistle is that we adopt a very natural approach to filming; we don’t stage anything or have you pose in a funny way or kiss for 6 seconds or anything unnatural like that. We just document the day as it happens, and put what happens into some lovely films set to some lovely music. We adopt a very client-first mentality to everything we do, and are happy to work with couples after they’ve received their films to make any and all changes they would like. It’s a team effort here, and our couples are a part of that team!”

Head over to Olive & Thistle’s website for more examples of their beautiful work and their wedding film packages.