I’ve been creating wedding video in New York for some time now, but teaching is a little newer to me. I was teaching the basics of editing the other day, and a student asked one question over and over that really stood out. Specifically, she asked whether what she was doing was right. To her frustration, I would usually say “Maybe.” I showed example after example, but the question never went away, until finally, I realized that the problem wasn’t that she didn’t understand what I was showing her. It was that she didn’t understand the nature of editing and its influence on our perceptions.

She saw wedding video in a completely different context than I do. She was looking at the editing for its ability to reflect the beauty of the footage. Her arrangement of footage was based on the notion of creating the most visually appealing sequence, making it seem like a natural question as to whether she was doing things “properly.”

The problem is that editing isn’t about creating beauty. It is about revealing and creating meaning. This is the aspect of editing that has always intrigued me the most, and, by the same token, it is my most frequent gripe with the work I don’t like. It’s probably also the least understood aspect of the art or editing. Wedding videography takes a bad rap because so few practitioners focus on the meaning behind their footage.

The truest nature of editing is that the sequencing of footage and the selection of footage used has more to do with storytelling than the existence of the footage itself. There’s no right decision until we see what happens before and after any given clip. This is commonly lost upon the beginning wedding videographer, for whom the natural tendency is to focus on visuals, emphasizing the prettiest and most dramatic images. The idea is that the nicer the video looks, the more powerful it is. This belies the truth about editing.

What’s better? A movie that looks great but that is uninvolving, or a movie that looks adequate, but that takes the viewer on the same journey as the characters? All too often, I see videos that play out like a sequence of still photos strung together. Sometimes nice, sometimes not, but almost always failing to reveal the nature of the couple and their personalities. I’ve seen some videos where 80% or more is in slow motion. How much slow motion do we see on television and in theaters? Why not more? Because too much of it interferes with our ability to connect with the story, and connecting to the story is the very purpose of editing, not special effects.

If I cut to a shot of a bride crying after a groom whispers some special words to her, what is the effect? The two events (the crying and the whispering) could have occurred 15 minutes apart, but when placed next to each other in a video, the implication is clear. And it speaks volumes. What if I show a bride during her preparation, staring into the distance, then I cut to a shot from the ceremony to come? Now, we have a bride who is thinking about her future. It doesn’t matter what she was thinking about in real life. The context of the footage gives meaning. This is the real nature of editing.

Beauty is in the crafting of stories that bring us closer to the emotional core of the people we see on screen. I have nothing against stunning cinematography, but it is the small things – a glance, a squeeze of the hand, or a coy smile that gives it its power. This is true beauty. Trust the footage and find ways to reveal its meaning.