Pre Production

There are three basic steps in creating a good video, pre-production, production, and post production. In this entry I will focus primarily on the various steps of pre-production. The first step of pre-production is to come up with a good idea for your project, this can be quite challenging. Coming up with an idea can be frustrating, so it helps to get together with a group of people (preferably the group who will be making the video with you) and just spitball ideas back and forth until you come up with a solid concept of what you want to create. Coming up with a creative idea is—in my opinion— the most difficult part of creating a good video, without a good idea everything else falls apart.

                The second step, after you have your idea, is to write a script. Now you only need one final script, but it helps if you and your team come up with the basic situation, characters, and overall plot together and then have a few people write their own scripts that takes the story from point a to point b. Ill get more detailed in scripting in a later blog entry, there is a lot to explain, but in this entry I want to get to all of the basics of pre-production.

                The third and final step in pre production is drawing out a storyboard. In order to do this you need to have your script. A storyboard is basically your script in picture form. This is where you decide which type of shot you want to use for each scene, where you want people to be positioned, and how you want the story to flow visually. This is a crucial part of the video production process, mainly for editing purposes, the more detailed your storyboard is with where people’s bodies are placed and where objects are from scene to scene, the more fluidly the final product will come together.