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We belong to a great local association of video and imaging professionals, the Houston Professional Videographers Association. At our meeting last week we determined there were a few local companies and individuals that we had come in contact with (not in HPVA) that were less than honest in some of their dealings. For instance, in one case a rather large video company in Houston actually hired an ad agency to produce the eye-popping demo that you will see at Houston Bridal shows. The work done for you by this company will not look nearly as good. No, we’re not going to tell you who it is.

So how can you be sure the company you hire will do a great job for you? There are a few things to look for:

1. Ask to see a complete finished product. This can be on a DVD, on the web, or some other delivery device. It’s relatively “easy” to produce a 3 minute highlight that is entertaining and emotional. Highlights are important, but don’t base your purchasing decision off of just that. Ask to see a complete product.

2. Are they members of HPVA? I am not suggesting that videographers who are not members don’t do good work. I am reinforcing the fact that, as members of the association we are involved in learning and perfecting our craft. We are well-respected in the Houston video community.

3. Be sure to meet with the people who will actually be attending and filming your event. You don’t want to meet with and be sold by the owner of the company only to find out that two newbies will be filming your wedding, because they’ve scheduled 2-4 events on the same day. There’s nothing wrong with running multiple crews of shooters, but you should know this up front and you should be able to meet with the videographers who will actually be spending the day with you.

Can you think of any more? Add them to the comments below. Have a question about this? Email or call us today and we’ll be happy to discuss.

We’re proud to announce that in December, McKnight Video was awarded the People’s Choice award for the year, and that we tied for First Place for the year for all the annual Houston Professional Videographers Association competitions.

The winning video for Tricia and Ryan is an example of our cinematic ceremonies. This wedding was coordinated by Summer at For Your Memories and the event was featured in Houston Brides magazine.

We are sometimes asked “what are StoryTeller Highlights?” when discussing video services. Sometimes it’s easier to show an example than to try to explain it.

This video is a special example wherein the Father of the bride already had a note written out and knew exactly what he wanted to say. It turned into a very emotional piece that tied for Second Place from a panel of judges in the Houston wedding and broadcast industries. We hope you like it.

We haven’t done one of these in a long time; an edgy trailer that leaves you wanting more.

The ceremony was at the Trinity Episcopal church and the reception was at the newly revamped Omni Hotel in Houston.

Here’s a clip from a wedding video we’re finishing up. As the guests arrived at the Petroleum Club of Houston, they witnessed the bride & groom sharing their first dance as husband and wife to the song “Spend My Life With You”.

Stay Tuned! More to come soon….

A beautiful couple, a beautiful location in the Spring area. Here’s an example of a documentary short form ceremony, where we take the highlights from the ceremony and layer them and composite them in such a way that you never feel like you need to “fast forward to the good parts”. In this wedding, Carter and Laura had a wonderful string quartet which we recorded in stereo.

Gosh! We’re finally getting around to putting some up-to-date video samples on our website. For the foreseeable future they will all be appearing within these posts on our blog.

Here is a bride prep segment from Valerie’s & Chris’ wedding video; the event took place at the beautiful Ashton Gardens location in north Houston.

Congratulations Elizabeth and Mathew !  Thank you for allowing McKnight Video to take part in your special day !  It was a pleasure working with your sister on her wedding day and we look forward to working with you and your family once more.  

This completes our availability for May 2009.

Also, a big congrats to Brittany and Jonathon for their wedding in July! 

The summer is filling fast so book your special day today!

We would like to send a big Thank You to Piper Heinrich for inviting us to participate as the exclusive videographer for the Bride To Be Cruise sailing today. For more information on booking your wedding or other event aboard the FantaSea, visit their website, by clicking here.

Here is a highlight from Tera and Kevin’s wedding aboard the FantaSea. Congratulations you two, it was truly a one of a kind event.

We delivered two wedding projects and one civic project this weekend, as well as shot a wedding out of town Saturday – and made time to celebrate Dad’s 82nd birthday with family, friends, and neighbors.

We shot Brittany and Cody’s wedding in Spring; one project was delivered to Tomball, one in Texas City, and one shipped today to Colorado. Thank you Chris, Kevin, Beth, David, and Jenny. Making progress, whoo hoo!

If you are one of our wedding video customers, we want you to know we are working very hard to complete your video within 6 months from your wedding date. Depending on the specifics of the project, and the number of projects in our queue, some are taking longer than that. (You know who you are…)

Christie and I are taking a couple of months off this summer from shooting so that we can spend even more time editing some of these long-outstanding videos. (You know who you are…) In addition, we have raised prices and started being more selective about bookings for 2009 and beyond. For the foreseeable future we are going to shoot fewer weddings per month than what we did in 2007-2008.

The quality of experience we have with each couple is very important to us on the wedding day and beyond. Even if you don’t hear from us personally every week following the wedding, you can always check the Edit and Delivery Schedule page on this website to see exactly what we’re working on at any given time.

Eariler in May we had an email from a customer who had just received her video:

“I wanted you guys to know that Matt and I got the wedding videos. It is amazing, great, wonderful, grand. I am so happy to see it. It turned out better then we expected. We got it yesterday and I have watched it 3 times so far. I just wanted to thank you guys again for such a great job.”

So, for everyone who is waiting on your video, it will be worth it. Parents and family are especially prone to Not Liking to Wait. And we understand that, we really do. The only thing we know to do is reduce the number of projects we take on and raise our prices for future work, which we now have done.

(Note to future clients: we are just now getting to the average price points in the Houston area for the award-winning quality and style of work we do, so, we still won’t break your budget. We may even be cheaper than your chair covers.)

Yes, this is not a misprint. We get calls and emails every week asking us to provide video services for weddings or events for this current season. With very few exceptions, we have no more availability in 2008. So, certainly, call or email to inquire but don’t be surprised if we’re not already booked.

And more importantly, if you are getting married in 2009, don’t wait too long to hire your videographer!

From my friend Earl Chesser in California, compelling information you may not have realized…Thousands of brides every year say they regret not including video in their pre-wedding planning. Now, after the wedding, it’s too late.

According to many members of the professional wedding and event video production community this reaction has been their collective experience when talking with these brides. “Our company is always marketing through direct mail, client referral programs, participating in area bridal fairs and other events,” says Mary Ann Osness of CorElAnn Productions in Southern California. “We get to speak with many newly wedded brides as a result and the vast majority of them tell us they regret not having a video of their wedding day.” Osness says that a good number among this group admit they got portions of their wedding day on video, taken by friends or family.

“They will tell me it’s a good thing to have some of their wedding videotaped, but that often the things they wanted to see the most were not recorded, or that they could not hear the vows, readers or other special commentary due to bad audio,” says Osness.

Our experience here at McKnight Video has been exactly the same. Recently…. Read More »

Here is a highlights piece that includes a unique setting; the reception was at the Tall Ship Elissa in Galveston.

This is absolutely a true story from a DJ who belongs to WEVA, one of the national organizations we belong to. All names have been omitted to protect the guilty and I corrected some spelling here and there. This DJ is describing the “service” a $500 videographer provided at a wedding he was a DJ for. This wedding was not in the Houston/Galveston market. It’s too bad that this client will get exactly what she paid for, but sometimes we all learn things the hard way:

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…For $500 they (the couple) got unlimited time. It was a two camera setup and for all of the toasts both cameras were focused on the person giving the toast. Forget the cut aways of the bride and groom laughing or crying – they don’t exist. As soon as we got through the celebratory dances, the videographers returned to their table and sat down. And sat.. And sat. All the while they missed the happy couple dancing with people like grandma, granddad, the bride with her mother, the groom with his sister and on and on. About 45 minutes into this the videographer wanders over to me and asks… Read More »

Congratulations to Casey and Daniel, married Saturday at Burkeshire Plantation in Conroe. As a surprise from Casey’s mother Byrdie, the crowd at their reception got to experience an InstantView Ceremony.

Here it is, including their childhood photomontage.

We had the pleasure of hanging out with Juanita and Mike this weekend as we shot the first part of their Engagement Story video.

Their first date was at a Hooters, so we marched in guerrilla-style and took over the place…actually no, we had full co-operation from Hooter’s at NASA Rd. 1 in Webster. Their management and staff were great to us, allowed us to shoot anything we wanted and even gave Mike & Juanita some free T-shirts! After that was a walk through Helen’s Garden in League City and a fun romp in the water down on the beach in Galveston.

Christie attended the 4EVER Group Convention in Jacksonville, FL back in January. (http://4evergroup.org)This is a national convention of some of the brightest and most talented wedding and event video companies in the world. We were one of only 2 or 3 from the Houston area. We like these conventions a lot because you always learn new techniques, new and innovative ways to produce high quality video.

One of the most popular seminars this year was on Blogging as a way to communicate with anyone who visits your website. And now, weeks after the convention, videographers all over the country are starting to Blog. Blog blog blog. Heck, we’ve had this Blog up for over a year!

We must be cutting edge…
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