How your photographer and videographer share the day

A question that comes up at consultations more than you'd think: "Will you and the photographer be in each other's way?" It's a fair worry. You are hiring two teams of people, each with cameras, each wanting the same moments, and the last thing you want is to spend your wedding watching them negotiate. So here is how it actually works when it works well, which is nearly always, and what makes the difference on the days when it doesn't.

For what it's worth, we work alongside a different photographer at almost every wedding, and many of them are people we now count as friends. The good ones make our film better. We like to think we return the favour.

A photographer wants the moment. We want the twenty seconds around it. Those are different things, and they fit together.

Why it works better than you'd expect

A photograph and a film want different things from the same moment. The photographer is after the single frame: the exact instant of the kiss, the one expression, the composition that holds still. We are after the run-up and the aftermath: the walk towards, the breath before, the laugh after. So while the photographer is moving in for the frame, we are usually wider, holding the scene, and the two of us are rarely reaching for the same square metre of floor. On a good day you could draw a line between the areas we each work in and it would hardly cross.

Where it does cross is the portraits and the ceremony, and those are the two places where a plan matters.

The ceremony

We place our cameras first, because ours don't move once the music starts, and we tell the photographer where they are. The photographer then knows which sightlines to keep clear and, just as usefully, where they can stand without appearing in our wide shot for forty minutes. We tend to give the photographer the aisle and the front, because that is where the single frames live. We take the sides and the back, because that is where the whole scene lives. In a church, the priest often settles all of this for us, and everybody is happier for it.

The portraits

The half hour couples worry about most, and the one with the simplest fix. The photographer leads. They choose the spot, they pose you, they shoot. We work at an angle to them, usually about ninety degrees off, filming the two of you being posed as much as the pose itself, because the bit where the photographer says "closer, closer, now look at each other" and you both laugh is often better in the film than the pose that follows. Then, for a few minutes at the end, we swap: the photographer steps back, and we ask you to walk, or stand and talk, or do nothing, and that gives us the moving footage a posed portrait can't.

The dance floor

By the evening, nobody is negotiating anything. The room is dark, the floor is full, and there is more than enough for everyone. The one thing we agree in advance is the first dance: who takes which side, and that neither of us walks through the other's shot for the length of the song. After that the night runs itself.

When it goes wrong, and why

It goes wrong for one of two reasons. Either the two teams have never met and don't talk on the day, so each is quietly surprised by the other all afternoon. Or one of them believes their work matters more and behaves accordingly. We have seen photographers stand in front of a video camera for an entire ceremony, and we have seen videographers set up lights so bright the photographs had to be rescued afterwards. Both are rare. Both are avoidable. The fix is the same in each case, and it is embarrassingly simple: a conversation in the car park before the ceremony, and a shared timeline.

What you can do

• Introduce us by email once both are booked. One message, both copied in. Two minutes for you. It changes the whole feel of the day for us.
• Share one timeline with both. The same document. If the photographer thinks portraits are at four and we think they're at half past, the afternoon has a hole in it that you will end up standing in.
• Ask each of us whether we've worked with the other. Often the answer is yes. If it's no, that's fine too, but it tells you the car park conversation matters more.
• Don't referee. If a photographer and videographer need you to sort out a disagreement on the day, one of them is in the wrong job. Enjoy your wedding. We'll sort it.

The best compliment we get from photographers is that they forgot we were there. The best one we get from couples is the same. That is the whole aim: two teams, one day, and nobody who was at the wedding able to tell you where either of us was standing.