A shot list for the person who has never filmed anything

Search for a wedding video shot list and you will find excellent ones, all written for somebody who already knows what an establishing shot is. That is not who ends up holding the camera at most weddings. The person holding the camera is a friend who agreed to it two weeks ago, has never filmed anything longer than a birthday, and would quite like to enjoy the party.

This is the list we print and put in the box, reproduced in full. Copy it, cut it down, put it in somebody's jacket pocket. There is a fuller version in our filmer's guide, including a printable one-pager, and it is built to be sent straight to whoever is filming.

Six rules that matter more than the list

1. Hold it still and count to ten. The most common fault in guest footage is not bad framing — it is clips that are two seconds long. Start recording before the thing happens and stop after it finishes.
2. Get closer instead of zooming. Zoom makes the picture softer and the shake worse. Two steps forward beats any amount of it.
3. Film sideways. Horizontal for anything that might end up on a television. Vertical is not banned, it is just a different shape and it cannot be undone later.
4. Point at the light, not away from it. Faces lit from the front read; faces against a bright window become silhouettes, and no editor can bring them back.
5. Get within arm's reach for anything spoken. Phones and camcorders record the whole room equally, so the further away you stand, the more of the room and the less of the person you get.
6. Do not review the footage. Watching it back is how you miss the next thing, and how the battery ends up flat by the speeches.

Getting ready

The easiest hour to film and reliably the best material, because nobody is nervous yet and the camera is still a novelty.

• The room as it is — dress hanging, shoes, rings, the general mess of it
• Hair and make-up, from across the room rather than over a shoulder
• Whoever is helping with buttons, laces or a veil
• The parent who goes quiet when they see the dress
• Somebody reading a card or a note out loud
• The walk out of the door to the car

The ceremony

The part guests film worst and the part that cannot be re-staged. If your person only does one section properly, make it this one.

• The room filling up, from the back
• Whoever is waiting at the front, before they turn around
• The turn, and the face that goes with it
• The walk down the aisle — from the front, not from behind
• The vows, unbroken, from as close as is polite. Do not stop recording between them
• The kiss, and then keep going for ten more seconds
• The walk back out, and the noise that comes with it

In between

• Hugs in the first ten minutes afterwards, which is the most unguarded either of you will be all day
• The couple while the formal photographs are being taken — the gaps between the poses, not the poses
• The venue, empty, before anyone sits down
• Guests arriving at the reception, finding names, complaining about seating plans

The reception

• Every speech, from the front, in one unbroken take
• The listeners, not just the speaker — reactions are the reason speeches are watchable
• The first dance, from two positions if there is time to move
• Parents dancing, grandparents sitting, children under tables
• The dance floor after about an hour, when self-consciousness has gone
• Short pieces to camera: ask people to say one thing to the couple. Thirty seconds each, all night. This becomes the best part of the film more often than anything else on this list

What is missing from every guest-filmed wedding

Consistently, three things. Wide shots that establish where you are, because guests film faces. The quiet middle of the day, because the camera goes down between events. And clean audio of the vows, because nobody stands close enough.

You cannot fix the first two with a list, and they matter less than people fear. The third one is fixable for the price of a clip-on microphone on one person, and it is the difference between a ceremony you can hear and a beautiful silent one — the same gap we describe in what actually comes back from a self-filmed wedding.