Memory Machine Films is a wedding videography company owned and operated by Amber and Brian Grider. With Amber’s background in photography and Brian’s in film and music production, their artistic styles weave together gracefully to capture some of your most important memories on film.
“We love meeting new couples, learning their stories and capturing the love, emotion and spirit of their wedding. We believe that video is essential for keeping your precious wedding memories close and we produce films that help you do just that. When the day is done, we want to be able to give you a keepsake to enjoy for years to come.”
– AMBER AND BRIAN
We film with passion and sensitivity. Our goal is that every moment we capture is a reflection of your love on the day you’ve created together.
Our Plus and Premium packages include an artfully edited highlight film as well as documentary style edits of your ceremony and toasts. We use only the best 4k cameras and audio equipment to ensure that you receive the highest quality product – we want to give you something you can enjoy for the rest of your lives.
This highlight film tells the story of your wedding day from beginning to end in beautiful 4k. It will feature a getting ready sequence, time spent with the bridal party, highlights from the ceremony (such as the processional, the ring exchange and the first kiss) and key moments from the reception (like the grand entrance, décor/details, the first dance, toasts, party dancing, etc). Music is hand-picked to reflect the feeling and energy of your day and the style can range from sweet and playful to sentimental and emotional.
People always say that the ceremony goes by in a flash – but we want to help you keep it close. Your ceremony will be covered by several 4k cameras and top-quality sound recorders. Footage will be edited between camera angles to highlight the emotion of your ceremony including the processional, unique traditions and customs, vows, the ring exchange, first kiss, celebration, etc.
The kind words and anecdotal memories shared during the toasts by your loved ones will be captured for you to remember for years to come. Your toasts will be covered by several 4k cameras and edited between angles to highlight the mood and movement of the atmosphere.
We offer multiple options that are tailored to couples who may be looking for different things. At first glance, it may seem confusing so we thought we would break it down for you!
The biggest difference between our Plus/Premium packages and documentary style event-only coverage is that our Plus and Premium packages both come with a highlight film while documentary style event coverage does not. The highlight film is a complete cinematic representation of your entire day, starting with bridal details and bride and groom getting ready shots all the way through the cake cutting and open dancing, including each of the special moments in between. Because it is usually around 5-7 minutes, it is easy to share with your friends and family and on social media. The Premium package also includes a documentary style edit of your toasts, raw footage, aerial footage (when conditions allow), a longer highlight film, and extra coverage. While we consider the highlight video to be our main product, we understand that it is not necessarily important to everyone. This is why we offer custom packages that only include event coverage!
Event coverage packages are for couples who may be more budget conscious and want a documentary style video of just their ceremony and toasts. If you’re just looking for a way to relive these two events, exactly as they happened, this is for you! The ceremony and toasts feature film is a complete video production edited between 4-5 cameras just as we do with our Premium package and is a great way to preserve the memory of your wedding! The length of the video will be the exact duration of your actual ceremony and toasts combined, up to an hour. If you're interested in one of our other packages, the Plus package includes a ceremony video while the Premium package includes the ceremony and toasts video.
All of the other features of these packages are based on the deliverables. For example, we’ve found that for most weddings, we generally need at least 9 hours of coverage to put together a complete highlight film. Additionally, we’ve learned that two wedding videographers are a must if you want to capture every important moment of your special day while just one videographer is fine for filming only the ceremony, vows and the toasts.
To sum it up, if you’re looking for a highlight film with footage from your entire day as well as a ceremony and toasts video, go with the Premium package! If you’re only looking for a documentary style film of your complete ceremony and toasts and a highlight video is not important to you, or you have a smaller budget to work with, go with documentary style event coverage. If you're somewhere in between, go with the Plus package.
For many years, wedding photography was pretty much the only media requirement for weddings. This was because there was no easy way to share a wedding video with others or watch it for yourself. Unlike a wedding photo, you couldn't hang it in your house, make prints for others, or mail it to someone else for quick consumption. It was also much easier to pick up a wedding album than pop a DVD or VHS tape into a machine. In the last 10+ years however, everything has changed. Now that people are able to quickly and effortlessly view and share videos, wedding videography has become pretty much essential!
Wedding videography and wedding photography both give massive value in their own unique ways. Both a professional photographer and videographer are necessary for preserving your memories as well as sharing the happiest day of your life with others because each of them capture the spirit of your wedding day with a totally different feel. Wedding photos are moments frozen in time. They feel iconic, almost like an idealized version of each moment. On the other hand, wedding videography tends to be about cinematic storytelling and can feel more tangible and real. Seeing the moments from your wedding unfold in motion is a completely different experience and can bring those memories back to you in a way that feels familiar and alive. If we were to sum it up, wedding photography tends to feel iconic, timeless and idealized while modern wedding videography is moving, real, vibrant and alive.
Also, wedding videographers and wedding photographers capture different things in different ways throughout the day. For example, your wedding photographer may capture family photos traditionally with people standing still and smiling at the camera. On the other hand, as wedding videographers, we may capture the exact same group cheering, laughing or talking. We will generally seek out candid moments between your family members and close friends while your wedding photographer may try to set them up for a particular shot. Another example is, as wedding videographers, we focus on establishing moods and feelings. This means your wedding videographer will spend a lot of time with you as you’re getting ready as well as filming lots of establishing footage at each location or event change. As wedding videographers, we are all about telling the story of how your wedding day evolves.
All of these reasons are why both wedding videography and wedding photography are must-haves for your wedding. If you’re looking for an Orange County wedding videographer, we would love to meet you! Reach out through our contact form below. Additionally, if you haven’t found your perfect wedding photographer yet, let us know! We work with many incredibly talented wedding photographers whose work is absolutely beautiful.
This is a tough one to answer since styles, personalities and tastes vary so much from person to person but there are a couple of things that you should be able to check off your list when looking for a wedding videographer.
One of the most important things is making sure your wedding videographer fits your style preferences. Each videographer has their own cinematography and editing style and it’s similar to art in that something that resonates with one person may not work for someone else. Since filming a wedding video is something your videographer can’t just redo, make sure you like their style! Equally important is making sure you jive with their personality and that they make you feel comfortable. When it comes to the big day, your videographer is going to be with you almost the entire time so feeling like you could be friends only makes the experience that much better! You’re also going to want to make sure you understand their deliverables. The way wedding videographers deliver their work varies from package to package so make sure you’re happy with what you’ll be getting. Lastly, you may have a budget you’re working with, so you’re going to want to make sure your videographer fits within that price range. Sometimes it may be okay to stretch your budget a bit to get the type of wedding film you want (you only get married once, after all) but it’s definitely something to keep in mind!
If we are delivering a wedding highlight film, we usually like to arrive around two hours before the bride steps into the dress and film throughout the day until at least a half hour to an hour after open dancing has started. This gives us a chance to capture all of the bridal details and candid getting ready moments all the way up until your guests are partying and having a great time. This usually works out to around 9 hours of coverage for most weddings. Another good rule of thumb is to book at least as much video service coverage as you do event photography coverage.
Yes! Definitely. Just do it. Wedding coordinators are so incredibly crucial to weddings that we would say they are indispensable. We actually waited until the very last minute to hire a coordinator for our wedding and even then, they were so extremely helpful. We have filmed a number of weddings without event coordinators and while they are always beautiful, they can often be more stressful and disorganized than they need to be. If you’re looking for a list of awesome Orange County wedding coordinators, let us know! We’ll be happy to send one over.
Unfortunately, we are not currently filming destination weddings outside of Southern California. However, let us know if you are having a destination wedding as we would be happy to recommend an Orange County wedding videographer who films throughout Southern California as well as worldwide!
Yes! We have many other Orange County and Southern California vendors we can recommend! From micro weddings and small elopements to large Indian weddings, we have worked with plenty of incredibly talented Orange County photographers (who specialize in both portrait and special event photography), event coordinators, DJs, florists, photo booth vendors and more and would be happy to send you over lists of whatever you need if you decide to book with us! Additionally, if we are unavailable for your date, we can send you a list with a couple of other Orange County wedding videographers who are super awesome! Whether you are having a small micro wedding or a huge ballroom celebration, we've got your back.
There are all different kinds of wedding videographers in different price ranges. Generally, the more experience a wedding videographer has and the more in demand they are, the higher their price will be. This is true for most businesses but there are always exceptions. As wedding videographers, we try to keep our pricing somewhere in the middle (even though we could charge more) because we love what we do and we want to keep our services as affordable as possible while still honoring your love story and producing the quality of work that we do.
What’s most important, however, is choosing a wedding videographer whose style and personality you resonate with. While everyone has a budget and no event videography service is cheap, do your best to pick a wedding videographer whose work you really love and whose personality you jive with the most.
We are primarily Orange County wedding videographers and generally film weddings in Orange County and the surrounding areas including San Diego, Los Angeles and the Inland Empire as well as other areas in Southern California! Here are some of the cities we often film in:
Any wedding outside of a 50 minute drive from us here in Dana Point will have at least a $200 travel fee and must be in Southern California.
We currently limit the amount of weddings we film a year to 25-30 so that we can give each couple the love, attention and focus they deserve. Because of this, when we reserve a date, we’re not just holding that space for that person on the day, or even the month but we may actually turn down dozens if not hundreds of wedding inquiries across the year to hold that spot. This is why it’s really important to make sure you absolutely want to move forward with your date before booking. Our retainer is 50% of the total package price and non-refundable.
We do not currently take credit card payments and prefer Zelle or personal check.
Our contracted delivery time is six months but we can deliver in as little as three months from the event. We put a huge amount of love and creativity into our films and never outsource or cut corners so while it does take a few months to receive your film, know that it's because we will always do our absolute best work for you!
We use only the best wedding cinematography gear to film our weddings. All of our cameras record in 4k with excellent sensors that allow for shooting an event in low light conditions. Most of our footage shot for the highlight video is filmed at 60 frames per second allowing us to add creative speed effects in our edits while still delivering in 4k. We use multiple cameras (up to 8) and 8 audio recorders for the wedding ceremony giving us numerous backup options while editing. We also bring multiple lighting setups allowing for all kinds of fun and creative event lighting configurations and for creating a cinematic and vibrant look during the reception.
We take great care in choosing the music for our wedding films! While we generally can't take requests or use songs suggested by our couples (unless they have acquired the licensing for them), we are very good at matching the music we choose to the feeling of your wedding day. We also ask questions about your music preferences during the final timeline walkthrough and take inspiration from your music choices during the wedding. We spend hours in the studio just choosing the music we use for each one of our films so it's safe to say we’ve got you covered!
Every wedding is unique so we definitely understand that the packages we offer may need to be modified or expanded to fit what you need. So yes, we can absolutely create a custom package for you! Our Plus and Premium package pricing is already discounted so it’s important to note that custom packages tend to be more expensive than what we offer in our pricing section, even if we are removing hours of coverage and/or features.
We really recommend you choose a wedding filmmaker whose work resonates strongly with you. There are lots of different styles out there and they are all beautiful in their own ways so don’t feel pressure to go with a wedding videographer if they don’t match what you’re looking for!
While we can’t speak to the pricing of the wedding industry as a whole, we can definitely explain our wedding video editing process! It would be impossible for anyone who doesn’t work on wedding films to know how much love, creativity and sheer work hours go into editing and delivering a single highlight film. It is a massive process with many steps. Some of these steps include:
You can see just how much work is involved! This can take over 70 hours, not including the time we actually film the wedding. Based on the time it takes to both film and edit a highlight film, we’ve set our pricing at the minimum we feel is fair. Additionally, many of these steps take a huge amount of creativity and skill as well which is something that is very hard to price.
So while weddings are indeed expensive, just know that as your wedding videographers, we are working hard and loving every minute of it!
No, we never outsource our edits! We regularly receive sales emails and ads from companies located outside of the US (where wages may be lower) that want to edit our footage for us for a very low cost. But we know that if we sent our footage to an outside studio, the final product could never be as good as what we do. We are incredibly passionate filmmakers and we put a tremendous amount of heart and creativity into not just the editing process but every aspect of our work. We know this could never be replaced. Because of this, we will never send your wedding video off to someone else to edit!
You can find more of our Orange County wedding videos on our blog and our Vimeo page! If you’re interested in viewing more of our wedding films, we have many, many Orange County wedding videos for you to check out from most of our favorite venues on both of these pages.
