Video production is a valuable asset for all businesses. With the rise of social media platforms video content has become a necessity for marketing in 2024. Let’s break down how you can start creating high quality videos for use in your marketing mix.
Video production is completed in three stages. These stages are Pre-production, production, and post-production. We’ll break down each stage along with best practices.
Why Learn Video Production?
Why should you learn video production in 2024? Video has become a necessary form of marketing for businesses. Over 87% of businesses have implemented video for use in business growth and marketing. Learning how to create high quality video will help your business expand and grow in the digital world.
Getting Started: Pre-Production
Before starting your video project, it is important to have your topic and goals outlined. Having a clear plan for your video before production begins is essential to having a successful video project. Let’s break down the essentials of pre-production to make sure your video project is a success.
Deciding Your Video Topic
How do you decide a strong video topic for your project? It is important to know your brand’s tone and voice. Is your business playful or serious? Do you want to attract a corporate audience of professionals, or are you focused on increasing sales in the consumer sector? These are all important questions to address when deciding your topic. At Innova Marketing, we always encourage our clients to pick a video topic that will resonate with their target audience.
One strategy we discourage all of our clients from using is the framework including voiceovers and unoriginal stock video. This strategy is straight out of 2012 and no longer works. We encourage all of our clients to implement a story-driven approach to video projects. People resonate with people and the best way to do this is by using stories. Learn more about our story-driven video framework here
Storyboarding and Creating a Shot List
After you have decided the topic and story of your video project, the next step is creating a storyboard and shot-list for production dates. A storyboard is a representation of your final video project layed out shot by shot. Storyboards can be hand drawn illustrations, reference frames pulled from other projects, or images taken during location scouting. There is no correct way to storyboard. Use an approach that makes the most sense for your project.
Storyboards include a reference image, the type of shot (wide, medium, tight, close-up, etc.), location, key subject(s), time of day, and other relevant information.
Once you have completed the storyboard you can create the shot list. This is a comprehensive list of all video clips needed to be captured during production. When creating this list it is better to over prepare than under prepare. Leave room for experimentation because once you end production it becomes very expensive to reshoot scenes. Save your editor the headache and plan to capture more footage than you think is necessary.
Location Scouting and Scheduling Production Dates
Once you have finalized your video topic, storyboard, and shot list you can begin location scouting and scheduling production dates. Location scouting includes visiting production locations you think will work well for your video. This could include visiting business locations, nature parks, downtown streets, and all other locations relevant to your production. You should leave room to visit more than one location because you don’t know what will work best until you see the location in person.
While location scouting, it is important to take note of the direction of sunlight, location noise, and how busy the location is.
The direction of sunlight is important because it will affect how you light the scene. Are there large walls which will bounce unwanted sunlight onto your scene? Is there enough space to set up grip and lighting equipment? Are there power sources? These are all important questions to ask when location scouting.
Noise is also an important factor. During production with dialogue and interview scenes it is important to have low noise otherwise it will be difficult to record clean audio. Avoid locations with busy streets/highways, heavy foot traffic, or reflective and reverberant rooms.
Obtaining Legal Forms and Permissions
Once you have selected your final locations for filming you will need to obtain proper permissions and signed location release forms. These legal agreements are necessary to have in place before filming so you do not break local laws or trespass on private property.
For filming at private business locations: talk to the property and business owner and ask permission to film at their location. Make sure to get a signed location release form with agreement for filming on specific dates, agreement to bring professional equipment and team members, and usage rights in the final video. You may need to compensate the location owner for usage of their property. This is not legal advice so consult a lawyer as you see necessary.
For filming in public locations/nature parks: If your production is for commercial use you will still need to obtain a signed location release form to film. Contact your local government agency for the necessary requirements for commercial filming in public areas.
Obtaining proper permissions and legal forms is a requirement for video production. You do not want to skip this step and risk being sued for trespassing. Consult a lawyer for best practices.
Filming: Production
Now that you have planned your video topic, storyboarded your video, and finalized locations you can begin production of your video. Let’s break down each step of the production process.
Preparing for Video Production
Before beginning production, it is important to prepare for filming by ensuring you have all necessary equipment, charged batteries, a plan for media offloading, and having everyone on the production team briefed on the project and objectives.
The Shoot Days
Arguably, production is the most exciting part of the filmmaking process. During this step you will finally see your vision come to life. The lights, cameras, and actors are all together— it is an exciting time. But, don’t let all the excitement get to your head. Production is also the most stressful phase. Let’s break down a few ways you can avoid being stressed out during production.
Best Practices When Filming
There are some common practices you should use during video production. You should leave room for problem solving on set, delays, and other problems which can occur. You never know what problems will come up so make sure to plan for the worst.
Have a team layed out with key roles filled. Traditionally, a large scale video production team includes above-the-line and below-the-line team members. Above-the-line includes executive producers, the director, director of photography (cinematographer), actors, and screenwriters. Below-the-line includes assistant camera operators, key grip, gaffers, and production assistants.
On smaller video projects (typically with budgets under $50,000) you will have team members wearing multiple hats. It is best to plan production roles during the pre-production phase.
Capturing Beautiful Images
Capturing beautiful images is the goal of any successful video project. You can ensure your images turn out beautiful by using proper lighting techniques, using a high-quality professional camera package, having excellent production set design, and having a knowledgeable team who know how to create beautiful scenes.
Recording Clean Audio
Recording clean audio is essential for a professional video. While filming, make sure to eliminate all noise interfering with production (including HVAC systems, refrigerators, engines, talkative team members, etc.). You can also ensure clean audio by using production sound blankets. These are made with special fabrics which eliminate reverb and noise. Consult with your audio engineer and location sound recordist when location scouting to see what steps are necessary to record clean audio at your location.
Editing: Post-Production
Congratulations! You have now completed the production stage and can move into assembling your final video. Let’s break down the editing steps:
Ingesting Footage and Media Offloading
Ingesting and offloading footage is when you take your captured video clips and transfer them from the camera media drives to a computer. You should have backups of your captured media during production in case of technical failure.
Best practices for media offloading include copying RAW footage onto multiple storage harddrives to prevent loss of data from technical failure. Using a redundant storage system, such as a RAID, is encouraged to safeguard against data loss.
Deciding your Editing Software (NLE)
Now that you have backed-up your video footage you can move into the editing stage. To assemble your video, you will need to use a non-linear-editing application (NLE). Non-linear-editing is the process of manipulating your raw captured media by cutting, splicing, and assembling raw clips into a cohesive video. Some common NLE applications used by professionals include:
- AVID media composer
- Adobe Premiere Pro
- DaVinci Resolve Studio
- FInal Cut Pro X
Each NLE application comes with pros and cons. Pick one which makes the most sense for your workflow and budget.
Best Practices for Editing Workflows
When editing video, some best practices include duplicating your sequence every time you make large changes, assembling a few variations of rough cuts, and consulting with your client at key stages of post-production. Your editing workflow should roughly follow this timeline:
- Watch all captured footage to determine the best takes.
- Organize and sort captured media into bins to easily find clips.
- Annotate clips with keywords
- Sync audio with video
- Create separate timelines for distinct scenes.
By following these best practices, you will be able to have an organized project for assembling your final videos.
Best Editing Practices
During the edit process, there are some key guidelines you should follow while editing. These include:
- Avoiding jump cuts (cuts which are jarring to the viewer)
- Using J and L cuts to create smooth transitions from clip to clip.
- Using correct color management (i.e. REC.709 delivery).
- Creating a story structure in your video to make it engaging.
- Creating layers of audio to add texture and create a world behind your visuals.
Audio Enhancement
Audio enhancement is an important part of the editing process. This involves taking your captured audio and sweetening it through the use of EQ, compressors, and other tools to create pleasing sounding audio. Audio is 70% of the viewing experience so ensure you take time to create great sounding audio.
Color Correction and Grading
Color correction and grading is the process of turning flat LOG footage into beautiful dynamic images. This is an important step when nearing the end of video editing. Before beginning this process, you will want to ensure your project is in “picture lock” (the stage where all clips and cuts are approved and “lockedin”) because you will not want to change clips once they are color graded.
Graphics and Special Effects
Depending on the type of video you are creating, you may use motion graphics and special effects to tell your story. These are an engaging form of media, but take time to create. Talk with your client or team members to see if graphics would fit well into your project.
Exporting and Formatting for Distribution
Now that you have cut together all your clips, sweetened audio, color corrected and graded your footage, and added all graphics it is time to export your project. Exporting is a technical process due to the many different codecs, resolutions, and delivery specifications that need to be weighed. Before exporting, you should know where your final video will be distributed (either online or on broadcast television) to select the correct codec. You can read more about exporting formats here.
Distribution
Sharing your Final Video
Now that you have completed your video project it is time to share it with the world. You can share your project online via social media and other video sharing platforms, or you can broadcast your project on TV. Distribution is important because you want to share your video in a place where people who care about what you created will be able to watch it.
Reviewing Video Performance
It is important to review how your video is performing after it is posted. How long are people watching your video? How are they finding it? Do people leave comments? These are all important factors to keep track of when reviewing how well your video is performing. These statistics will help you understand what works in your video and what doesn’t, allowing you to create better videos in the future or even re-edit your current video for better performance.
Summary
Now you know the entire video production process. First you will start with pre-production to plan your video project, then move into production to film video content, and finally you will end in post-production to edit and distribute your final video. Happy filming.
