Category: Party & Event Planning

Everything You Need to Know About Renting a Photo Booth for a Wedding

A photo booth is a unit that is specifically designed to allow one to take a few pictures in quick succession for entertainment purposes. While they are widely seen in carnivals and fairs, they are also used in weddings to not only provide fun but also to create very memorable moments.

Everything you need to know about renting a photo booth for a wedding

Before you visit a vendor and discuss different types of wedding photo booths, their features and prices, there are a few things you need to decide. This will allow you to ask the right questions and make a better-informed decision later on.

• Size – Although a photo booth is technically a compact unit, there is no rule that you should always keep it that way. Sometimes it’s more fun to go in with five to six people and take some fun photographs. A wedding represents a singular moment in which people come together and celebrate the union of two individuals. People want to experience the moment together and so a larger photo booth will always be more convenient and fun for the guests.
• Booth management – Some companies offer booths with someone to manage them whereas others let the renter take care of it. So if you can’t find someone to manage it during the wedding, only look for companies that provide help.
• Price – You should check out different booths offered by different companies to get an idea of how much they cost. Once you have a rough figure, you can tweak it as per your wedding budget to make it bigger or smaller as required. Try to have a firm idea of how much you are willing to spend and stick to it as long as it is reasonable as per the average cost.
• Quality of pictures – This is one of the most important aspects to keep in mind before you approach any vendors. Some companies may have amazing photo booths but use bad quality printers which defeats the entire purpose of having a booth at your wedding. So before you visit any vendors, always ask for photo samples. If the samples look good, you can go ahead with them. Otherwise, keep looking for other vendors.
• Photo options – To get more value for your money, always look for companies that offer both digital and physical options. Different people have different tastes and some still prefer to have physical photographs rather than digital ones. They can be framed and displayed openly whereas digital copies often get forgotten over time.

What to ask before renting

Renting a photo booth for a party is a big expense, so make sure you’re working with a reputable company that will deliver a high-quality product. Before paying your deposit, take these steps to ensure a good time is had by all.

• Read reviews. You’ll learn about what your experience will be like based on past user experience. Avoid anyone who has a sub-par product, has unfriendly staff, or doesn’t follow through on their contracts.
• Look for licenses and insurance. Confirm that the companies you’re considering have pertinent business licenses and liability insurance. This will protect you and your guests in case of an accident. For more, check out our tips for smart hiring.
• Find the right financial fit. If the price seems too good to be true, it probably is. Quality equipment is an investment, so anyone with lowball prices may be operating a photo booth that isn’t as fancy as you might desire.
• Look for the features you love. If you just want a classic photo booth that prints out black-and-white strips, keep it simple. If you want a high-tech photo booth with all the bells and whistles, you can have that, too. Just keep in mind that, usually, the more features offered, the more the rental will cost.
• Sign a contract. You don’t want your dream wedding photo booth not to show and leave you with no recourse. Get it all in writing, including hours and cost.
• Have an attendant. Even self-operating photo booths run best with an informed technician on hand to troubleshoot any problems and keep things running smoothly. Most operations offer this service.
• Are prints included? Find out whether your rate includes prints, and whether that’s a finite or unlimited number of prints.

How to choose a wedding photo booth?

There are a few key aspects you need to look for when it comes to choosing a photo booth for your wedding. Here are some of them:

• Rent or DIY – You can either rent a booth from a service or make one on your own. If you rent one, it will cost you more money and won’t come with a great deal of customization but it will be more reliable. Most services will also help you out if you face any issues with the product. If you choose to make one for the wedding, you will be able to save a lot of money and customize it to dazzle your guests. However, if any issue comes up, you might have problems resolving it in time.
• Types – Photo booths come in many different types and shapes such as boxes, tents, pipes with drapes and even pods. When it comes to choosing one for your wedding, don’t go for one based purely on its appearance. Convenience is what you need to look for because it’s more for the guests and you want them to have the best time possible. The location you plan to put the booth should also be factored in when you choose the type of photo booth you want to go for.
• Features – Whether it is rented or a created one, features and functionality are what will make a photo booth experience memorable. Rented ones especially come with unique functions as their respective companies need to make their product stand out from each other. From props, green screen, video to even scrapbooking, there are a ton of unique features to look for before renting or creating one. Some come with pop up powder rooms where you can spend some time to put on some fun makeup or make sure you look good before taking pictures.
• Value – A photo booth for a wedding is going to be useful only for a single day. A wedding is expensive even without any frills or special activities. So you need to make sure that the booth you are planning to get gives you enough value to justify its price. Some companies offer package deals whereas others will up-sell some of their services. The only thing you have to ensure is that when you rent a photo booth, it should come with digital photos included. If the photos are going to cost extra, then it’s not going to offer you a lot of value for the money being spent.

Cost-saving strategies

• Book your photo booth on weekdays or off-seasons for the best rates.
• Bundle photo booth and photography services with the same company.
• A party with fewer than 100 guests will usually be satisfied with two or three hours of photo booth time. Ask to extend hours during the event if needed rather than overbooking ahead of time, unless it’s high season and the company may have two events in one day.
• Schools, nonprofits, military organizations and other groups are often eligible for discounts.

3 Good Reasons To Rent A Photobooth For Your Birthday

You want to organize your birthday or that of a friend and you are looking for inspiration for events that will certainly be successful? Are you panicking in advance at the thought of an evening too quiet where guests sit gently in their chairs and look into the whites of their eyes. 3 reasons to rent a photo kiosk for a great event right away!

1. With the rental of photobooth, it’s the big atmosphere guaranteed!

We all remember an evening a little too wise, guests waiting impatiently for the cake to arrive so they can slip away, a few balloons swollen in a hurry and a slightly wobbly « Happy Birthday » sign on a wall. The good will of the few motivated people present that evening was not enough to set the atmosphere in motion, despite a desperate attempt to set the dancefloor on fire on « Les Lacs du Connemara » at around 10:25 pm. People inevitably stuck to their seats, lethargic and depressed, mobile phone in hand, trying to hide the first yawning.

Renting a photobooth for your birthday is the guarantee of a memorable and completely crazy evening. Everyone likes to have their picture taken in these festive moments, everyone is dressed up, the beautiful dresses turn heads and the bow ties are out. It is often an opportunity to see people we may not have seen in a few months or years, with the desire to have their pictures taken together. A photobooth animation is also a whole bunch of fun accessories at hand: big glasses, straw hats, bushy beard, wigs… With this, the atmosphere is guaranteed until late at night (or early in the morning for the most daring)

2. Your guests leave with memorable memories

Smartphones are great. The latest ones offer sumptuous photos, it is possible to take as many as you want and you can share them in a second on social networks. The latter are not to be outdone, with new filters every day that make us beautiful, with blue eyes and smooth skin or cute little ears. The other side of the coin is that you spend a good part of your birthday party on your phone, posting your photos on Instagram, following the stories of your contacts on Snapchat (« They look like they’re having fun at this party! ») or responding to comments on your latest Facebook post.

Renting a photobooth will allow you to really enjoy the evening, with your friends or family, here and now! No need for someone to take the picture, the terminal does it for you. Gather your friends, put on a beautiful afro wig and come and pose in front of the lens of the photo box. Different formats are available to vary the pleasures: landscape photo, portrait, bookmark… Switch from one frame to another and print your photos in 10 seconds, in professional quality thanks to the integrated printer. And why not put a nice guestbook on a table near your photobooth? Your guests will be able to stick a few photos on it and leave you a loving little birthday note!

3. Pictures in the colours of your birthday

Printing your photos on paper is good! But being able to personalize your photos with the colours of your event is even better. Imagine: you decide to rent a photo kiosk to spend a crazy birthday party. You then think of a theme that will perfectly match the evening, and this year it will be an exotic evening. You go and buy all the necessary decoration: tablecloths, plates, paper napkins, balloons… You decorate your room with little onions and you plan a corner specially equipped for your photobooth. But here we are, the photos come out classic, frameless and tasteless. Too bad!

By renting a Burddy photobooth for your birthday, you will enjoy the free customization of your frames to stay as close as possible to your theme! Choose and create up to 16 different frames, vary formats, texts and colours and switch from one to the other during the evening. Our online tool will provide you with many examples of backgrounds and different writing styles, so you can let your imagination run wild. And for even more customization, the blank frames can be downloaded in PNG or PSD format for the delight of Photoshop and other image editing software enthusiasts.

HOW TO MAKE EVENT VIDEOGRAPHY WORTH THE PRICE

With all the planning and resources that go into organising an event, successful companies do consider how event videography can be used to promote, document, and take advantage of all that hard work. But your event videography shouldn’t be an afterthought, another box to tick off in the run up to the big day.

DEFINE YOUR GOALS

If you don’t know what you want to achieve with your event video, then you risk throwing money down the drain. To get the most out of your content, you need to establish your goals before you start filming. Don’t miss the opportunity to get the right footage: not everything can be ‘fixed in post’

What Do You Want To Achieve?

The first step is to know what you want to achieve through event filming. Is it to sell more tickets for next year’s events? To grow awareness within your industry? To share the highlights of your event with those who couldn’t make it in person? To make your main competitors jealous?

Who Are You Creating This Film For?

In order to achieve your goal, you should know who you want to reach with your films. Do you want sales? The films will need to speak to potential customers, from those that know what you do to those who are unfamiliar with your work.

Showcase Your Audience

People like to see people like them, so make sure you feature the audience that you want to attract in your film. Want to increase revenue from your exhibitors? Don’t just show exhibition stalls. Make sure you capture vox pops with happy participants talking about how exhibiting has transformed their business.

Tips to Capture Perfect Event Photos and Video

It has been a known fact that events are never a one-time transaction. The efforts put into the event reap your results in many different ways. With the modern age, events are no longer a one-day transaction as well. No, I don’t mean a 2 or 3-day transaction either.

Advancement of high-tech documentation equipment like digital cameras have made sure that all events become virtually immortal in the online realm.

Work with professionals.

The first and the foremost requirement of having the right kind of documentation done is to work with the right professionals, professional photo/ videographers and professional equipment. This ensures that all the technicalities will go right.

Divide and get good.

If you are thinking about imperialism, it is definitely not that. In every event, there are a lot of different things going on simultaneously. Some of them are a part of the formal event, while others are more informal. Either way, they are important for documentation and that is why deserve some good space on your camera roll.

Tell a story.

With the technicalities done, we can now move to the more creative parts. All the photos and videos of the event that you will make public are going to tell a story. They are not just mere documentation tools. They serve as a tool that will tell something to a lot of people. Now what that something will be, is up to you to decide. But you can’t do it after the event.

How to Create an Awesome Promotional Event Video

Video is an important part of event marketing these days. It’s an engaging and cost-effective medium. In fact, 52% of marketers claim it creates the best ROI out of any marketing technique. Videos aren’t just tools to attract guests to your event. They can also be used to find sponsorship opportunities, attract speakers or presenters, and build hype for your attendees. If you place a video on your landing page, you can increase conversions by up to 80%!

Plan the Type of Video You’ll Create

Content Marketing World, finds it difficult to capture everything that happens at one of their events. Instead of trying to film everything (and doing nothing well), she prefers to carefully plan out what kind of video content she wants to make before the event. This way she can get the right footage to produce superb content.

You don’t have to know exactly what your next promotional video will be like, but it helps to have some idea of what you’ll create. Start by defining the purpose of your event video. Ask yourself what kind of value your event offers and how you can emulate that in a video.

Make a List of Must-Have Shots

If you plan to use footage from one event for the next video, there will be some parts you’ll definitely want to get. For instance, you’ll want to record the entire presentation from your keynote speaker, the bride and groom’s vows, or an award ceremony.

Make a list of any times or locations you want to capture on video. Compare these to your schedule to make sure you’re free at those times to hold a camera. If not, task someone on your team with getting the footage for you.

Videography

Videography refers to the process of capturing moving images on electronic media (e.g., videotape, direct to disk recording, or solid state storage) and even streaming media. The term includes methods of video production and post-production. It used to be considered the video equivalent of cinematography (moving images recorded on film stock), but the advent of digital video recording in the late 20th century blurred the distinction between the two, as in both methods the intermittent mechanism became the same. Nowadays, any video work could be called videography, whereas commercial motion picture production would be called cinematography. A videographer is a person who works in the field of videography and/or video production.

Uses

The arrival of computers and the Internet in the 1980s created a global environment where videography covered many more fields than just shooting video with a camera, including digital animation (such as Flash), gaming, web streaming, video blogging, still slideshows, remote sensing, spatial imaging, medical imaging, security camera imaging, and in general the production of most bitmap and vector based assets. As the field progresses, videographers may produce their assets entirely on a computer without ever involving an imaging device, using software-driven solutions. Moreover, the very concept of sociability and privacy are being reformed by the proliferation of cell-phone, surveillance video, or Action-cameras, which are spreading at an exceptional rate globally.

Videography in social science

In social sciences, videography also refers to a specific research method of video analysis, that combines ethnography with the recording of sequences of interaction that are analysed in details with methods developed on the basis of conversation analysis. One of the best known application is in workplace studies.

Videographers

On a set, in a television studio, the videographer is usually a camera operator of a professional video camera, sound, and lighting. As part of a typical electronic field production (EFP) television crew, videographers usually work with a television producer. However, for smaller productions (e.g. corporate and event videography), a videographer often works alone with a single-camera setup or in the case of a multiple-camera setup, as part of a larger television crew with lighting technician, grips and sound operators

Typically, videographers are distinguished from cinematographers in that they use digital hard-drive, flash cards or tape drive video cameras vs. 70mm IMAX, 35mm, 16mm or Super 8mm mechanical film cameras. Videographers manage smaller, event scale productions (commercials, documentaries, legal depositions, live events, short films, training videos, weddings), differing from individualized large production team members. The advent of high definition digital video cameras, however, has blurred this distinction

How to Prepare for an Awesome Video Shoot

It’s been a hot topic in 2013 (we’ve written about it, too), and many end-of-year predication posts assert it will be more of a focus in 2014. Why? Well, as Forbes explains, people respond to faces, voices, movement, and emotion—and video often contains all four of those elements, making it one crazy-powerful marketing tool. But you’ve heard the “whys” before—that’s not what we’re talking about today.

Start with a Project Brief

Before doing anything, you need to define the purpose of, style of, and audience for your videos. These points should live in a project brief, a document outlining the key expectations and specifications for the final product. The brief will help you stay on track, keep the goals of the video shoot top of mind, and ensure that everyone working on the video shoot stays on the same page.

Project Specifications:

This is the bare-bones, straightforward description of the video project. How many videos are you creating? How long will they be? How many days or hours will you be filming?

Overview:

Write 2-3 sentences that sum up the topic and purpose of this project. Why are you creating this video? Who is the audience for this video? What is the main message?

Outline:

Think about each video as a story with a beginning, middle, and end. Whether you’re creating one video or twenty, think through the key points you’d like to cover during each. It may seem like overkill, but the more prepared you are the better, especially because small details make a big difference on film.