What is a legal videographer?
A legal videographer records depositions, signing of legal documentation, courtroom cases, and films evidence at crime scenes. Court reporters create a word to word transcripts of the courtroom proceedings using a steno machine while a legal videographer creates a video recording of the courtroom proceedings.
Video captures many things that a written transcript can't capture, such as facial expressions, behavior, answering, long pauses, overall personality, etc. The legal videographer also edits the voice-overs to identify the witnesses. This data can help the jury, attorneys, and other litigants to get a better view of the case.
People are used to watching videos and sound clips these days. So, showing a video recording as testimony can prove to be a preferable way. Also, it identifies the body language of a person, the facial expressions while answering, the reaction while listening to the question, and the hesitation before answering a question, which a written transcript is not able to convey.
The importance given to video testimony makes it crucial to include video testimony in the trial strategy. Jurors would also feel involved with the case by seeing the testimony from the witness himself rather than listening to testimony read by the lawyer. Hence, hiring a legal videographer to record your key witnesses will give your client an upper hand in the court and in-person proceedings.
Recording a remote proceeding
Recording using video conferencing tools won’t make the video officially submissible to the court. You need a skilled professional legal videographer with the right hardware and software to officially manage the proceedings. He should be an uninvolved and unconcerned third party who can also protect the video recording, keep it safely in his custody, and prove its authenticity in front of the court.
A legal videographer knows when to pause and when to play while recording. Someone who is experienced and a certified court reporter knows the important things to be captured in the videography, which can influence the jurors and prove to be beneficial to the client.
A legal videographer controls what goes in the record and what goes off the record. Sometimes the witness may not be prepared to give a testimony which may need some retakes, and professional videographers are experienced enough to capture those parts only, which are necessary for the testimony and remove other distractions in the video.
A legal videographer is a neutral third party who has to keep safe custody of the recording and has to ensure that the recording is not manipulated in any possible way. Recordings from anyone other than a professional and certified videographer have the risk of being unallowable by the court as it is likely to be tampered with by someone else.