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How to Plan Your Video Production Calendar
Producing a video seems like an extremely daunting task. There are plenty of different moving pieces and overlooking a single one could doom your project from the start. The best way to make sure this doesn’t happen is developing a video production calendar. It keeps you on-task and on-time, and makes sure you don’t accidentally miss any important details.
Here are six important phases that your video production calendar must include, what’s involved in each phase, and about how long it should take.
1. Brainstorming – about one week.
The first step to successful video production is figuring out exactly what you’re looking to do. You’re going to need to answer questions such as:
- What are we trying to achieve with this video production project?
- Which parts of our audience are these videos targeting?
- What types of videos are we looking to make?
- What style and tone does our video need to be?
Essentially, this phase is all about determining the broad strokes of your project. Once you have these concepts fully developed, you’ll be ready to dive into a bit more detail the next week. You’ll want to wait the full week to make sure you don’t overlook any important details and to give your concepts time to fully form.
2. Putting Ideas to Paper – about one week.
Your second step is where your team gets the chance to really let their creativity shine. During the second week, you’re going to spend time going over the specific script ideas you brainstormed in week one and writing them down. After you’ve whittled it down to the best ideas, you’ll want to loop back in with the stakeholders (management, marketing, sales, or whoever it is) and get their feedback. You’ll use these ideas to select an existing idea to run with and improve upon it. By the end of the week, you should have a finished script that all appropriate parties are willing to sign off on.
3. Finalizing the Storyboard – about one week.
You can think of the third phase as taking a week to build your video’s skeleton. By the end of this third week, you’re going to have everything you need to get started. You should work on completing all of the following:
- Editing and finalizing your script, if this hasn’t already been completed.
- Determining your audio and visual needs, and laying out exactly what equipment will be required on-hand during production.
- Determining what specific locations, props, and people your video needs.
- Having all production and post-production tasks assigned.
Typically, you should have the groundwork in place from your first two phases so that this only takes you a week. However, this is one phase that it is important not to rush, so if you find yourself falling behind it’s better to take your time and try to think of ways you can cut production a bit short (by filming longer days, for example).
By the time you have completed this phase, all pieces of your video production puzzle will be in place and you’ll be ready to start filming!
4. Producing the Video – about two weeks.
Actually producing the video is perhaps the trickiest part, which is why you need to dedicate enough time to it. To start, you’ll need to complete and finalize any sound effects, sets, or actors you need. You’ll need to obtain the equipment and bring in the crew (if you don’t already have these in-house). Then it’s finally time to start shooting.
Bringing in the right crew gives you an edge and ensures you have everything you need on-hand to succeed. To help keep you organized, however, here is a quick run-down of some roles you’re probably going to require:
- Director – this could be you if you’re in charge of the video process, but it’s usually better to bring in a professional to keep things running smoothly and on-time.
- Video Crew – you’ll need at least one experienced videographer to shoot everything. If you’re taking shots from multiple angles, you’ll probably need one person per camera. It’s always worth hiring a sound specialist to make sure everything sounds just as good as it looks.
- Continuity Specialist – this person will take notes and assist the director. If you’re shooting across multiple days, they’ll make sure that you don’t have any continuity problems (such as an extra in the background changing clothes between days).
Once filming is complete, so is this stage of the process. Everything gets finalized during post-production.
5. Post-Production – about two weeks.
You can think of post-production as the editing phase. It’s best to begin by scheduling yourself two weeks for proper post-production work, although you may quickly find that you don’t need that much time. Make sure to plan for edits, format conversions, and any voiceover or special effect work that needs to take place. If you don’t have anybody with strong editing experience, it’s usually best to outsource this phase. Ideally, the manager of the entire project will work closely with the editor to ensure that the finished product matches the original vision.
It’s important to have a thorough post-production process so your final video is as good as it can possibly be.
6. Distribution – as soon as possible.
The final part of the process is distributing your completed video content. Send it to your web development team to add to your website, your social media team so that they can share it, and your sales and marketing teams so that they can distribute as necessary. Once you’ve delivered the completed product, it’s time to start thinking about your next video production project.
If you need help with your video production, make sure to reach out to us here at Crews Control. We help put businesses of all sizes in touch with the right crew for their video production needs, no matter where in the world they are. All you have to do to get started is click here for a completely free quote!
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