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Maximizing Referrals Apart From SDE’s
There are a lot of people reading this blog who are probably in the same boat as me when it comes to Same Day Edits. Either you are scared (I’ll admit that!) or you live rurally and don’t have the people power to pull it off. I live in Northern, NH and it would be tough to get the two or three other filmmakers to help with a SDE, seeing that they may be booked with their own weddings. We don’t have a film school nearby or eager college grads looking to beef up their film reel.
So what can you do? I’m always super excited to see footage from the wedding, so the first thing I do the day after the event, 1) I get the media into the computer 2) Set the timer, limit myself to one hour of editing, 30 minutes to color grade, 30 minutes to render and export. Two hours (maybe three) and you are done. 3) Upload online.
Remember this is a one minute (no more) preview geared towards building anticipation of the upcoming film. Post it immediatley to FaceBook, your blog, tweet about it etc… be sure to post it to the bride and groom’s profile on FB if you have become friends with them (this kind of won’t work as well if you aren’t friends!) In minutes or hours you will see the comments come in.
Don’t forget to first get permission before the wedding, to post the preview to your clients FB page or your blog since they may leave right after for their honeymoon and you want to take advantage of all those wedding stalkers looking for visuals on the couples big day!
For 2010 I booked two weddings from my one minute previews from attendees of those weddings. I also booked three more weddings from FaceBook related incidents. So you see, you don’t have to rely completely upon SDE’s and highly polished highlights to get superior exposure and targeted referrals without having to spend the big bucks!
Meg
