A Pre-Production Checklist

When creating videos, pre-production is the first and most vital stage of the process. Most professionals in video making emphasize on this phase of production because it involves the planning of every task that takes place before production begins. However, as multiple things need to be planned, the pre-production phase can get confusing or take longer than it needs to.

At Islandmoss Productions, we understand the complications and stress our clients face with the pre-production phase. Yet, with a little bit of preparation, everything can be handled quickly and easily.

As renowned video production experts, we’ve created a handy checklist to help you complete your pre-production process with as little stress as possible. Follow our pre-production checklist to get started.

1. Define your audience.

Defining your audience is the first step in the video pre-production process. If you want better insights from Google Ads or a more targeted video, this step is crucial to producing a compelling video. Simultaneously, note that defining an audience can be a complicated process that includes building buyer personas. Narrowing down your video viewer to a specific buyer persona— rather than a generic audience—will help you create a more targeted and effective video in the long run.

2. Decide on a message.

Knowing your message is just as important as knowing your target audience. Don’t try to put multiple ideas into one video. These days most videos run anywhere from thirty seconds to two minutes, so pick one or two messages per video. Also, a tailored video with a specific message and a particular goal will be more effective in the long run. If you have multiple messages to get across, try creating different videos for each of them.

3. Determine your budget.

Setting a budget will help you to keep expectations in check. It will even allow the production company you hire to produce high-quality content within your financial limits. The company you commission will also be able to advise you on what you can and cannot achieve with your budget. That way there are no surprises when you begin the production process. In case you’re thinking of cutting costs by whipping up a quick video on your smartphone with your employees as cast and crew, remember that for brand perception, a poor-quality video is worse than no video at all.

4. Decide on the “look” of your video.

There are numerous ways to present your message. You can either choose video images with just a musical background, animation, on-camera interviews, voice over with images, or something entirely different. If you’re not sure about which option will present your message effectively, meet with your video professional. They will see your vision and guide you on the best ways to showcase it while keeping your budget in mind.

5. Decide your ideal video length.

While conversion and completion metrics shouldn’t be the end-all when it comes to determining the length of your video, you should know that the final length of your video will affect your overall completion rate. Also, with people’s busy lives and our ever-present technology, attention spans can be short, so you need to make your message short and effective. Again, lean on your video professional to guide you with this as they are the experts and know what works and what doesn’t.

6. Write a script.

You need to write out your vision for your video production. If you want images in your video, say of your storefront, the interior of your store, and some of the products you sell, you need to write down all these things to ensure they are included. With interviews, you need to make a note of your questions and have a rough idea of what you want the person being interviewed to say. You will also need to list out visuals to add in the interview. If you want a voice-over narration, this script needs to be written out fully and precisely. You cannot “make it up as you go along” as voice talent can be costly. Hiring a professional scriptwriter can help with this process.

7. Organize your talent.

If you want on camera hosts or you want to interview people, you have to organize dates and times for when their schedules and yours will work within the production time frame. If you have more than one person to interview, don’t schedule them too close together. You also need to determine if all of the recordings are happening in one location or several. At the same time, you need to allow for travel time, equipment set-up and tear-down time.

Besides these fundamental requirements, there are still more preparations to consider before getting to the production stage of your video. However, starting with these will help you get your production smoothly off the ground. To take care of the rest, hire a professional production company with experience and a highly trained crew. They will help you through all the stages of pre-production, production, and post-production delivering your video on time and within budget. Moreover, they will make the whole process fun and exciting!

If you’re looking for a video production company in Ottawa, ON, reach out to the experts at Islandmoss Productions. We have over twenty-five years of experience in producing videos and excel at every stage of the production process. Once you share your video ideas, concepts, and budget with us, we make sure to stick by them unless you say otherwise. That's our promise!

To learn more about our services, please click here. Have a question? We’d love to hear from you. Contact us here.