There are two basic types or styles of wedding films: Documentary & Cinematic, let’s define them:
Documentary:
Think of it as just how your wedding happened from beginning to end, chronological wedding movie. It is nothing super fancy; it’s just like how you see a documentary on TV.
Documentary type focuses on simply capturing the day, as it happens, in the order that it happened. This type of editing usually has very little cut out of the final product, and has little to no dramatic camera angles, music added or special effects used.
Documentary edited wedding videos tend to be 1-2 hours in length and most who watch them keep their finger on the fast forward button. Why? Sometimes people don’t want to watch a long drawn out movie. Contrast that with the other type, Cinematic.
Cinematic:
A cinematic-style video captures the emotional feelings you have for each other on the biggest day of your lives.Think of a cinematic type as the romantic feeling you and your soon to be spouse have for each other, the passion, the love, the fun times. It’s that feeling of butterflies you get when you first met and realized "this is the one".
It’s the “butterflies in the stomach” feeling you get when you realized “they are the one”. It almost can’t be described; it’s a beautiful, magical movie of your wedding day, set to music.
Cinematic edits are defined as a "film-like" look. This style aims to increase the emotional impact through use of slow motion and transition effects, saturated colors, creative camera angles and dramatic music. They are usually less than 20 minutes in length.
It has that "wow" factor to tell your story in a unique way. A cinematic filmed wedding can cost you a more and use to be more intrusive with large cameras but with today’s smaller equipment, a cinematic film can be captured as easily as a documentary type.