How to Prepare for a Video Shoot in 5 Steps

The foundation of any successful marketing video is comprehensive planning. Plan well, and plan deeply, and the video shoot itself will be easy.

At Your Marketing People, we’re frequently creating videos for our clients, from customer testimonials to social media videos. Through our work with clients, we’ve developed a specialized process that ensures we create videos that not only meet expectations, but are delivered on time and on budget. That’s a rare thing in the video world.

Whether you’re producing your first brand video yourself, or you’re a marketer who just hired a third-party creative team to create a video for you, then this post is for you.

Below we’ve outlined the process we use here at Your Marketing People to prepare for a video shoot. Follow these steps to create your own video, or consider them as you evaluate the reliability of the production company you’ve hired.

Good luck with your shoot!

1. Define your video goals.

This comes down to one question: What is the action you want viewers to take after watching your video?

Your goal may be for them to visit your website and buy a product, complete a lead form, or RSVP to an event. Or, your video may have a longer-term goal, such as wanting to develop consumer trust or interest in your brand.

Whatever it is, limit your goal for the video to one of these things. The more focused your goal, the better you’ll be able to adapt the video format, length, and subject matter to serve that goal.

For more on this step, check out our post on building a successful video strategy.

2. Introduce your brand to the creative team.

Unlike other marketing strategies, video requires more input and face time between the client and the creative team. As a creative endeavor, they need fruitful collaboration to thrive. Good video production companies know that taking the time to get to know their clients and their story is crucial to a successful collaboration.

Don’t be surprised when the video vender asks for details on the history of your brand, your pain points, your main differentiators, and who else they should be talking to.

To speed this process along, do your part to gather the necessary materials (such as your website, case studies, or brand story document) and the right stakeholders (such as the founder, CEO, or marketing team members) to answer these questions. Educate them on what makes your brand special.  

This information exchange is critical whether you’re working with an internal or an external creative team. Creatives are bringing their video expertise to the project. They’ll be relying on you, as the marketer or brand owner, to bring your knowledge of the brand.

3. Nail down the details.

At their core, all video shoots share a few key details. What makes your video different is the information behind those details.

Gather the following information now, and coordinating your video shoot will be headache-free.

• Contact information: Prepare a document that includes the preferred contact information for everyone involved in the video shoot, including the marketing team overseeing the video, the production company, and anyone who will be captured on film (such as clients or staff). The document should include the person’s name, contact info, and their role in the shoot (i.e. interviewer, interviewee, main marketing contact, extras).
• Shoot availability: Find out what days and times all these people are available. Online scheduling tools like Doodle can be a real time-saver here. Block off these days and times now as potential shoot days.
• Preferred shoot locations: Where do you want the video to be filmed? Your office, your client’s location, or a production studio are all good options. If you want to film in any locations outside your immediate control, such as a public place in your city, let the production company know so they can have the necessary arrangements made.

4. Get organized with a story board.

It’s time to translate all the planning you’ve done so far into a storyboard. A storyboard is a visual representation of your video.

You can use PowerPoint, free Google Slides, or pen and paper to create your storyboard. The important part is to outline the content of the video. In your storyboard, you’ll include important scenes, with drawings (stick figures are welcome) and descriptions of the action. Note the length of each scene and their location.

Think of your storyboard as a gut check. By reviewing the storyboard together, you ensure you and the creative teams are on the same page. Getting this confirmation now, before production, as opposed to after, is essential if you want to ensure you end up with a video that’s what you were expecting.

5. Schedule your shoot.

Once you’ve confirmed the vision, you’re ready to actually schedule the video shoot!

This is much more than a simple calendar invite. At Your Marketing People, we use Excel to help us plan a shoot, down to the minute. Here’s just a snapshot of our schedule for a recent client shoot:

Consider your schedule your master plan document for the day. It should include the following:

• The schedule itself: Start and end times for every aspect of the video. This includes time for driving, setting up the equipment, and actually filming the video. Don’t forget lunch and snack breaks! Leave wiggle room for each task, as traffic and emergencies will inevitably come up.
• Shot list: The specific shots you can’t live without. You’ll get much more footage than you’ll need, but you want to make sure you don’t miss anything essential.
• Interview questions or script: Have plenty of copies of the interview questionnaire or script to go around. This should have been approved during the storyboard stage.
• Equipment checklist: A list of all the equipment you have and need to rent. Make sure you have everything packed and ready to go the day before you shoot. Also take time to charge everything, source backup batteries, and find emergency rental locations if the worst should happen.

Feeling overwhelmed?

Don’t worry. You just need a team you trust. Hire experts to manage the entire video shoot for you, from preparation to production.

Contact Your Marketing People to learn more about our video services and what we can do for you. We’re here to help you translate the vision in your head into a video that you love.