Wedding films in Hampshire.

A photograph of a Hampshire wedding is a lovely thing to have on the wall. It cannot give you back the sound. It will not have the sound of the vows, the laughter in the room during the best man’s speech, or the music as you walked back down the aisle. A film records all of that. That is the whole reason to book one, because the sound of the day comes home with you as well as the pictures.

We are Robinson Martin Green, based at Mudberry Lane in Chichester, which puts us just over the West Sussex line from Hampshire rather than inside the county. It is close ground all the same. Havant is about 8 miles away over the top of the harbour, around 20 minutes door to door, Petersfield is about 20 miles up the A3, and we travel further across to Eastleigh, Southampton and Winchester at 35 to 45 miles for the right wedding. The films are led by Hayden Martin-Green, who shoots and cuts them, with Aaron Robinson on stills working the same day beside him. We will be straight with you from the start. We cover Hampshire but we have not filmed a wedding in the county yet, so we will not invent a Hampshire couple to fill this page. What we do have are full wedding films from days a short drive away, filmed by the two people who would come and film yours.

Hampshire films well, and the county gives a filmmaker two very different things. Along the Solent and around the harbour, open water light gives you a wide, bright opening frame and a horizon you do not get inland, though a coastal ceremony needs the audio planned so the wind does not wash the vows out. Up under the South Downs the light turns softer and slower, and in the final hour before sunset it shifts fast enough over the hills that a filmmaker watching for it can catch the whole grounds turning gold. We plan the day around both the picture and the sound, because a wedding film that looks lovely and loses the words halfway through the vows has missed the point.

Most couples plan the photographs first and leave the film as the thing they might add later. Then the day passes in a blur of adrenaline, the speeches happen once, the first dance happens once, and there is no way to go back and record any of it again. Stills freeze how it looked. Only a film gives you the movement and the sound, so you hear the speeches, the vows and the room again. It is the one part of the day you cannot make again afterwards, so it is worth deciding on early.

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 in the middle asking two strangers to sort it out. 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.

Hayden films the ceremony on 2 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. The vows and readings are caught on 2 discreet microphones, one on the groom and one on the officiant, with a third recorder by the top table for the speeches, so the words survive on the edit rather than washing out under a music track. For a Hampshire venue we have not filmed at before, whether it is a harbourside room near the Solent or an estate up under the Downs, we go and walk it first, so the first time we film there is not on your actual day. We work out where the sound is clean, where the light will be at your ceremony hour, and where the drone can fly if the venue and the airspace allow it. 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 a wedding film is actually made, and it is worth knowing what happens after the day. We work through the footage and the recorded sound, choose the moments, and cut your wedding film, which tends to take 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 in one spot. How long the film runs depends on your day, and on Silver and Gold the speeches are recorded in full inside it. Those two collections also bring a 60 second social teaser, which comes first so you have something to share while the film is still in progress. Because both your film and your photographs come from us, there is one delivery, one login, and one team to talk to if you want a change.