Lights, camera, action! The girl and boy waltz in slow motion. The teary-eyed mother hugs her daughter as the flower bedecked sedan makes its way out of the venue. Cut to a grand set where shimmering lights go on, champagne bottles go pop and glasses clink. And the boy enters the extravagant set holding the girl in his arms.
No, it’s not a shot from a film; but a video capturing the great Indian wedding that has now metamorphosed into nothing less than a mega film production.
As couples discover new, grander ways to capture their special wedding moments, a new crop of wedding photographers and photography studios have emerged, only to make the experience a more glamorous affair.
Consider this: ‘Strada’, the 90-feet crane that was used to shoot films like ‘ Magadheera ’ and ‘ Dhoom 3 ’, is now being used in Telugu weddings to shoot high angle and long sweep shots.
“This is the tallest crane in the country, available at the Ramanaidu Studios in Hyderabad. I have covered a couple of weddings in the recent past with Strada. The magnificence of the wedding captured through this is an out of the world experience and the couples marvel at the resulting birds’ eye views and breathtaking cinematography,” says V V Ramana of Villart Photography. Considered to be one of the premier photographers of the South, Ramana had recently opened his studio in Vizag at Lawsons Bay Colony.
He established Villart Photography in the year 1990 and since then has seen the wedding industry boom. With a core team of 35 people, Villart deals mostly with high net worth individuals and families.
These multi-day wedding extravaganzas defy the craziest imagination, complete with pyrotechnics, performances by celebrities and deployment of the latest technology to capture the memories.
Not just that, couples also have their pre-wedding videos shot in a filmy way with freshly composed songs. “Depending on the budget, a team (sometimes even popular music directors) writes and composes a song for the couple which is then creatively shot just like a film song. This is a growing trend in Telugu weddings,” says Ramana.
Vizag-based wedding photographer Nani Narendra says that Telugu weddings are increasingly becoming an elaborate three-day affair with events like Sangeeth originally a north Indian concept, being seen as an integral part. “This has added to the extravagance of the weddings and wedding studios and photographers are imbibing new technology and creative methods for making it a grand affair,” he says.
Nani, who works with a team of eight photographers, uses Slow Cam Gimbal and Glidecam for motion-control videos, which he says have become popular as a concept in Vizag.
Budgets, for photography and video alone, for a high-end wedding in the region can easily be anywhere between Rs 10 lakh to Rs 50 lakh, sometimes even more.
And, each year, these weddings seem to become more and more extravagant. At a recent wedding at the Visakhapatnam Ramanaidu Studios, chartered flights were deployed to shower flower petals on the bride and bridegroom during the Arundhati Nakshatram ceremony.
Wedding planners in the city offer a range of services, from a coffee table book to a photo booth. And wedding photographers are lapping up the chance to turn it a more fun experience by offering instant photos. “We recently did that at a wedding held a resort near Vizianagaram,” Nani adds.
The wedding albums have gone through an equally extravagant makeover. “Now we have the concept of Italian wedding albums that are studded with Swarovski diamonds,” says Ramana.
Specialised film cameras like black magic and GoPro cameras are also being increasingly used by wedding photographers to experiment with style and technique and shoot time-lapse videos to highlight the grandeur of how the wedding took place.
According to Bollywoodshaadis.com , an online platform that aims to be an end-to-end wedding planning resource outlet, newer trends like world cuisine in wedding menu, intricately designed invites and wedding themes such as Bollywood and Retro and concepts like ‘Wedding Moon’ have come up to make weddings a grand elaborate affair.
