Wedding films at Fitzleroi Barn.

A photograph of the Main Barn turning gold in the late afternoon is a lovely thing to keep. It cannot give you back the sound. It will not have the sound of the vows, the laughter in the courtyard during the best man’s speech, or the music as you walked back out into the meadow. A film records all of that, and Fitzleroi suits filming well. The closed timber end of the barn keeps a voice close and warm, so the readings and the vows land clean on the recording rather than washing out the way they do in an open field.

We are Robinson Martin Green, an in-house team of two based in West Sussex, and we cover Fitzleroi Barn near Pulborough as one unit that films and photographs the same day. Hayden Martin-Green shoots and cuts the film, with Aaron Robinson on stills working beside him. We will be straight with you. We are a young studio without a ten-year list of Fitzleroi films behind us. What we have is better than a list. We have one real Fitzleroi wedding, filmed end to end, which you have already watched above, made by the same two people who would come and film yours.

Fitzleroi films across more than one look in a single day, which is part of what makes it worth filming rather than only photographing. In the morning we film the details and the getting ready. The middle of the day is the ceremony, under the beams of the Main Barn that seats up to 130, out in the rose-lined courtyard, or in the meadow with the Downs behind. Then the evening drops, the last light runs low across the valley, and a couple stepping out for a few minutes gives you the evening shots for the film. Because the venue is exclusive-use and takes one wedding at a time across two days, there is no clock counting down behind you, so we plan the day around both the picture and the sound rather than racing it. A film that looks lovely and loses the words halfway through the vows has missed the point.

A lot of couples plan the photographs first and leave the film as the thing they might add nearer the time. Then the day arrives and runs past in one long rush. The speeches happen once, the first dance happens once, the walk back down through the barn happens once, and none of it can be recorded again afterwards. Photographs freeze how it looked. Only a film gives you the movement and the sound, from the toasts to the room going quiet before the rings. In the Adam and Panha film it is the audio that stands out, more than any single frame.

Because Hayden films while Aaron photographs, there is one team, one plan and one point of contact rather than two suppliers meeting for the first time at your ceremony. That matters more on film than it does on stills. A videographer who has never met your photographer ends up in half their shots and competing for the aisle during the vows, and you are the one caught between two strangers. We have already agreed who stands where before you walk in, so the camera can hold on you without a second shooter drifting into frame.

Fitzleroi runs the ceremony, the courtyard drinks and the barn reception across spaces that sit close together, so the day flows quickly from one to the next and the film has to move with it. Hayden films the ceremony on two cameras, one held on the couple and one wider on the room, so a missed reaction on one angle is caught on the other and the vows are never lost to a blocked shot. Because the venue is exclusive-use and takes one wedding at a time, the morning is unhurried, with no other wedding being turned around behind you, which gives the quiet opening of the film room to breathe. Nothing gets staged twice for the two cameras. You are filmed and photographed at the same time, then handed back to your guests.

The edit is where the film is actually made, and it is worth knowing what happens once the day is over. We work through the footage and the recorded sound, choose the moments, and cut the wedding film, usually within eight to ten weeks. It lands in your private Wedding Hub, the same place your photographs are delivered, so the film and the gallery sit together rather than the film turning up on a memory stick that ends up in a drawer. On Silver and Gold a short teaser arrives ahead of it, so you have something to post while the film is still being cut. Because both come from us there is one delivery, one login, and one team to talk to if you want a change.