Proposal video

Hiding is the craft. The videographer films from 20 to 40 m away with a long lens, from a spot chosen during a scouting visit or on a map before the day, and you carry a small wireless microphone in a pocket so the words are recorded even though the camera is far away. The 90 minutes start before your partner arrives, so the camera is set and the sound tested, and they leave room for a late taxi or a lunch that runs over. You stay in touch by message throughout, with one code word for “on our way” and another for “change of plan”.

Some settings come with rules. Filming for hire inside an Argentine national park — Iguazú, Los Glaciares, Nahuel Huapi — falls under the Administración de Parques Nacionales, whose filming rules ask for a written request at least 20 business days ahead, so a proposal there is booked early or moved just outside the park boundary. Restaurants, hotels and private gardens set their own rules on cameras, and any passer-by who ends up recognisable in the film is either framed out or asked for consent, as article 53 of the Código Civil y Comercial requires for anyone’s image.

A proposal video and proposal photography are separate bookings that work well together: the photographer and the videographer follow the same hiding plan, one with a long lens for stills and the other rolling film, and the minutes after the answer become a short couple portrait for both. If the proposal is part of a longer trip — Buenos Aires, then Mendoza, then Patagonia — the film can be shot wherever the moment falls, and the edit, with licensed music and the recorded sound of the question, is delivered within the same 2 weeks.