It's indeed a filmy affair!

It’s the wedding season and there’s perhaps no other country in the world that knows how to wed in style like us Indians. For most of us, weddings are nothing short of a movie — it’s all about the glam, glitz and style — and we love to capture the minutest of details on camera and keep the memories locked for the rest of the time.   

This fascination to make the weddings resemble a movie has rooted in deeper  among Chennaiites and has given space to exclusive wedding film companies.

There are trailers out before the D-day, invitations are no longer on paper but have become digital voices on screens, and there’s the final film — that recollects all the little things about the wedding in mere five to 10 minutes. So, what makes these films so captivating that it has the gen-next swearing by them? Some of the well-known wedding filmmakers in the city speak to us about what goes on behind making these films, and why they’re such a hit.

For Amar Ramesh of the Studio A, a wedding film and photography company based in Chennai, it is all about the space for creativity that these films allow that challenge him. “From wedding videos to wedding films, the transition is obvious in the name itself, as clients today expect a lot of cinematic turf in their captured wedding moments. From a creator’s perspective too, I feel it is a lot more exciting for us to work on these films. It offers scope to experiment and come up with something new,” says Amar.

One might not imagine the amount of meticulous effort that goes into making a five-minute film, but it is definitely much longer than what we think it is.

Each wedding film is unique. Ultimately, it is the love story of the couple that we capture and one can’t script what is going to happen. But yes, we spend a lot of time with the couple to understand their story. And just like love, ‘it (the film) just happens’ and we document it all and then spend many man-hours to craft the perfect film,” Amar explains.

To be precise, for Chandru Bharathy, the cinematographer at city’s Focuz Studios, it takes nearly eight or more days to sort out and edit the footage they shoot at a wedding, comprising bytes from the family members, rituals and more. “Wedding, we believe is like a movie! And a wedding film needs to tell that story and tell it right. So, we need to look at everything we capture in a cinematic perspective and there are over 2,000 to 25,000 clips that we need to choose from, and edit. It is painstaking, but it’s storytelling and filmmaking at its best.”

But what is it like for the ones getting wedded to see themselves star in a movie? S. Karthik, a doctor, says it was like a childhood dream-come-true. “For many of us, it’s an unfulfilled dream to be a part of a movie, and looking back at the wedding film makes us feel like celebrities — capturing even the tiniest of the emotions and all of our life in just few minutes.”

Realising the need to have an exclusive wedding film and making space to deliver such highly creative work, Anvitha Pillai, along with her husband Naveen Yadav, started the Chennai-based The Marigold Company, which has been making art wedding films across the country. “Film makes it so much more personal than photographs. People are just realising the power of wedding films – there can be a concise way of putting the most important, most joyous and auspicious moments woven together. Although photographs would always be there, the films give more life to the story.

“What’s interesting in the Indian wedding scenario is that each wedding is set in a different cultural space, with different rituals, sensibilities and aesthetics, all being different. I get a sneak peek into someone’s most intimate moments and, also understand the country culturally well,” Anvitha elaborates.