It’s the morning after your wedding and everything might already feel like a blur. You and all your guests are still riding on a high from the day before. What can possibly top this feeling? Well, your 30-second teaser film, of course! Within 24-48 hours after leaving your reception, we'll edit together a short recap highlighting some of the best moments of your wedding. We post this teaser on Peaking Zebra’s Instagram and Facebook pages for you to easily share with your friends, family, and anyone who was unable to make it as a guest! This holds you over while we edit your cinematic feature film and documentary edit in the 6-10 week editing turnaround time. Watch an example of Glenna & Kyle's next-day wedding teaser from their wedding at Aquatopia:

Your wedding will go by so quickly and it's unfortunately common to forget some of the emotions and feelings you experienced. We want to give you a chance to relive your day at a quick glance by capturing the story of your wedding in a way that’s enjoyable to watch over and over again, yet long enough to include every important moment. Our cinematic feature film is the main piece showcased in our portfolios. Depending on the amount of coverage recorded at your wedding and the package selected, it can be anywhere from 3-10 minutes long. We put our heart and soul behind this edit. It features creative and emotional storytelling, attention to detail editing, audio design, colour grading, harmonizing music selections, and industry standard file processing. Watch an example of Christina and Matt's cinematic feature film at Le Belvedere:

That’s a fair question as we don’t have any of our documentary edits posted publicly online for the privacy of our couples. While we film with the 3-10 minute cinematic feature film in mind, we understand that you probably want to relive the rest of the special moments from your day too! A lot of other filmmakers only offer the main events as simply raw footage or one static camera angle, but we take it up a notch. PZP's documentary edit is the chronological account of your wedding day. This film includes the FORMALITIES of your day, such as the full-length ceremony, grand entrances to your reception, full-length speeches, and full-length first dances. If there are any newlywed games or special performances during the reception, these will also be included in their full-length. This memorable edit can be anywhere from 1-3 hours in length depending on how your day plays out -- there is no official time limit to this edit. PZP's documentary edit does not include all the other moments from your wedding, such as the getting ready in the morning, cocktail hour, photoshoot, reception detail shots, cake cutting, bouquet/garter toss, and party dancing. These in-between moments are captured in 10-15 second clips and are included in your cinematic feature film. To watch any other unseen clips that didn’t make your feature film or documentary edit, you can purchase our raw footage add-on. While PZP's cinematic feature film is perfectly polished, ready to share with your friends and family on Facebook, parts of the documentary edit might be a bit more raw as it's an unscripted and live event. You may notice the camera slightly adjusts here or there sometimes because we're always on our toes ready for anything to happen. But honestly, you probably won’t even notice these subtle camera movements anyway :) Our doc edits cut between multiple camera angles, are colour graded, and have professionally recorded audio so you can effortlessly watch your wedding on your anniversaries for years to come from a new point of view. It's like a movie! Feel free to skim through an example of Lydia and Thor’s documentary edit from their wedding at Bean Town Ranch:

Your love story film can be used in a number of ways -- it’s totally up to you! It could be a memorable save-the-date announcement or an engagement film to premiere at your wedding reception (projector not included). Do you have pets or kids? You should totally include them too! What an opportunity to capture the excitement, nerves, and emotions you're likely feeling during this unique chapter in your life; before or after your wedding. This add-on is a 3-hour session including a sit-down interview with you as a couple, two locations of your choice, and creative video editing with the choice of including personal photos from your relationship. The approach to this love story add-on can also translate over to our maternity or newborn films. Watch an example of Amber and Matt's love story film:

You likely already have some form of book for your guests to sign during your cocktail hour or reception. But what if we told you that we could also walk around with a microphone and ask your guests if they’re willing to share a message to the bride and groom too? These can be words of wisdom, funny stories, warm well wishes, or whatever the alcohol tells them to say! Hilarious, sweet, or tear-jerking -- the possibilities are limitless and unscripted. You don’t know what your guests will do and it might be the last surprise you get to experience and look forward to AFTER your wedding. Watch an example of Devan & Mitchell's video guestbook here:

With at least 10 hours of coverage and multiple camera angles, you can imagine the amount of the leftover footage not shown in any of the three wedding film deliverables. With this add-on, we provide you with a hard drive or USB containing ALL of the footage captured on your wedding day. Unedited -- meaning bloopers, camera shakes, and details, details, details! This is quite a popular add-on, even years after your wedding has already passed! We never delete your footage, after all. Watch an example of Sarah & Jake's raw footage here:

There are quite a few differences between our one and two filmmaker packages. To start, it’s physically impossible for a solo filmmaker to be in two locations at once. This usually happens at least twice on any given wedding day; during the getting ready in the morning and during the cocktail hour/photoshoot time frame. It’s definitely possible to still capture all of these moments by staggering the schedule (otherwise we wouldn’t offer the one filmmaker package, of course). It just means that some moments might be sacrificed or missed while the single filmmaker is traveling back and forth between locations. In order to successfully film everything solo, the filmmaker will also have to leave each location 10-15 minutes before everyone else in order to arrive at the next spot and start setting up cameras, tripods, audio, and be ready to press record on schedule. Another difference between one or two filmmakers is that there will be fewer overall camera angles throughout the day and a shorter feature film being 3-5 minutes instead of 6-10 minutes. This is due to there being consequently less footage with only one filmmaker. Typically, the Jungle package works best at “one-stop” venues where the getting ready, ceremony, photoshoot, cocktail hour, and reception are all happening at the same place, or within walking distance. This means the filmmaker would park and unload the car just once, and spend the rest of the time filming uninterrupted. With two filmmakers, we have all our bases covered. Two sets of eyes, hands, and ears all day. While one of us is setting up for the next formality, the other one of us is still filming meaningful moments. Double the zebras, double the creativity. You really can’t go wrong with the Kingdom package! Watch an example of Vanessa and Devin's Jungle package wedding (1 filmmaker): Watch an example of Lindsay and Ryan's Kingdom package wedding (2 filmmakers):

Simply said, using copyrighted music without proper licensing is illegal. To actually license your favourite top 40 song could cost more than your entire wedding. We’re not kidding. And to use copyrighted music illegally could result in a multi-figure lawsuit. If anyone tells you differently, they are lying to you. Truly not worth the risk, right? Instead, we license a few royalty-free songs for your feature film edit. These song licensing costs are included within your wedding package price. So, since you can’t pick your own love song, we always respect requests made in terms of music genre, vibe, etc. Otherwise we do usually get a good idea after hearing the music played on your wedding day what compliments you and the footage best. We use a few different royalty free music websites and the selection is incredible and updated frequently. We have never repeated a song so far in over 100 weddings filmed. It truly makes your wedding film UNIQUE. Also, please don’t forget that if you’re planning to play these meaningful copyrighted songs on your wedding day during your ceremony, first dances, reception, etc., they will still be included in your documentary edit anyway as the music will be captured within the live footage. Check out our work to hear the incredible music selections that best fit the flow and feel of each wedding.

It’s FAQ season! We’ve been working hard behind the scenes to produce a new series of videos to help you make your decision of whether or not you want to hire a wedding filmmaker. Whether that’s us or another company in Ottawa, we can guarantee that you won’t regret this lifelong investment. Every company has a unique style and has a different approach. In this video, we’re answering how we would describe our filming and editing style.

One of the hesitations we frequently hear from inquiring couples is that they worry that hiring a filmmaker on top of their photographer would be too distracting for them and their guests. We’re here to tell you that this is so far from the truth. We end up being such a quiet and unseen vendor on the wedding day despite capturing every single moment and following your heels everywhere you go. Well, how do we do this? We’re like flies on the wall. We hug the perimeters of every area and use flexible zoom lenses to get wide or get close. We’re recording audio so the only peep you’ll hear from us is if we’re telling you that a bra strap is showing, there’s a bit of fluff on someone’s jacket or if a moment is way too sweet that we can’t help but say “awww” along with everyone else. Other than that, you won’t even remember us being there. Crazy, right? We’ve actually had a few couples come up to us at the end of the night because they were worried we missed the speeches!!! They said that they didn’t even see us the entire reception - we blended in THAT well with the crowd. We don’t use camera flashes nor do our shutters make clicking noises because we’re continuously recording video. Nothing distracting about us! One more thing we often hear is, “Which camera would we look at if there’s both a photographer and a videographer though?” Our general rule is you that can ignore us and our cameras ALL day long. Seriously! Perfect for camera shy couples in our opinion :)

You’re likely going to have more than one vendor be a part of your wedding day. So it’s totally reasonable for you to be concerned that everyone has good chemistry. For filmmakers in particular, we spend the entire day side by side with your photographer. Our mentality is that if you hired both of us, then both photos AND video are important to you. You obviously don’t want your filmmaker in the background of all your photos and/or your photographer standing in front of your video. It’s simple -- all you should worry about on your wedding day is getting married to your partner and having the best day of your life. We’re not called professionals just because of our specific talent with flowers, coordination, desserts, hair/makeup, stationery, or capturing photo/video. We’re called professionals because we’re aware that this day isn’t about us - it’s about the newlyweds. When hiring your vendors, research their portfolio, get to know their personality, read reviews about their reliability, and ask other vendors if they’re a team player. Because in the end, as you know, it takes a village.

In this FAQ video, Cassidy shares some behind the scenes insight into what makes PZP unique. Spoiler alert -- AUDIO plays a significant part. Did you know we both have a hand in every film we produce? Teamwork is one of our biggest business values. Alone we can do so little, but together we can do so much.

If there was ever a lightbulb moment, it was the day we finally came up with the name “Peaking Zebra” for our company. In this FAQ video, we’re addressing the infamous question every other person asks us. Are we just really big into wildlife or is there a more meaningful explanation? BONUS ZEBRA FACTS: Did you know, every zebra has a unique pattern of black and white stripes, they have excellent eyesight and hearing, they stand up while sleeping and they eat mostly grass.