The first step to any video production, whether an Oscar-worthy feature film or a small local commercial, is thorough and detailed pre-production. If you don’t have a solid plan in place to guide you through the process, you run the risk of the whole project getting derailed when something inevitably goes wrong.
Ultimately, pre-production is where everyone involved in a production gets on the same page. That way, when you actually move into production, you’re all contributing to the same unified vision.
If you don’t have much experience with video production, you might not know where to start. Don’t worry; the team at Pretzel Logic Productions has your back. As a full-service video marketing agency with an in-house production company, we’re perfectly positioned to help you through pre-production and beyond. Here are just a few tips to help you master the process.
Start With a Concept
Having an idea is exciting. An idea, however, is only the seed of a fully produced video. The real challenge is taking your idea, developing it, expanding and iterating until you have something fleshed out. In initial pre-production meetings with your team, gather all the disparate thoughts and notions you have about what your video should be and synthesize them into something cohesive. You’ll need to develop a message, a design aesthetic, characters and a narrative to tie it all together.
When you work with an experienced video marketing agency, they can also help illuminate aspects of the production process and how they might intersect with your long-term goals. It’s all about deciding what you want the video to be, answering questions in advance and familiarizing yourself with every aspect so there’s no room for uncertainty. Once you have a solid concept to guide you, you can move on to the scripting phase.
Produce a Script
With a well-defined concept, the next step in pre-production is scripting. It’s important to remember to be kind to yourself. If writing were easy, everyone would do it. The key to succeeding in scripting is giving yourself room to fail. Don’t be afraid to try things you aren’t certain about.
Many people get paralyzed by the idea of committing their ideas to the page or taking the thoughts and feelings that their concept evokes and translating them into a fixed form. Will what you write meet your expectations? It’s important to remember that your first draft will not be your final draft, and that’s okay. It typically takes many revisions of a script to bring it to the caliber of a final draft and to ensure it achieves your overall goals. A video production company that offers pre-production services can guide you through this process as well.
Develop a Storyboard
Almost everyone, whether they’re a part of the film industry or not, is familiar with the role a script plays in a production. There’s another important part of pre-production that the average public might not be as knowledgeable about though: storyboarding. A storyboard is a kind of roadmap or sketch of your final video. Before you shoot a single frame, you take your script and render it into a visual format so you can get an idea of what it will look like. This can be extraordinarily helpful, allowing you to see how shots might be framed or arranged within the edit.
Remember what we said about getting everyone on the same page? Storyboarding can be indispensable in doing just that. You might have a very different idea from your director of how a shot should look, and by making the storyboard, you can address that difference and reconcile those two conflicting thoughts before filming begins.
As a video marketing agency, Pretzel Logic Productions uses storyboards constantly. We offer our clients storyboards presented in either a paper or animated format, as some people find one more helpful than the other. We’ll work with you to adapt and adjust as needed until you’re confident in how your story unfolds.
Set a Budget
One of the most important, and least glamorous, parts of pre-production is budgeting. While it would be wonderful if our production ambitions were restrained only by our creativity, in reality, your budget will have as much of an impact on your final product as your ideas. You need to be diligently informed on the numbers so that you have a full understanding of what’s possible and what might be a stretch.
Working within a set budget is one area where partnering with an expert production company can be of real benefit to your process. At Pretzel Logic Productions, it’s our goal to give you something compelling no matter what your budgetary restrictions are. We’re not afraid to break from tradition to find creative solutions to problems. Even if something seems beyond our grasp, we’ll do everything possible to make it work within your budget.
Define Your Goals
Pre-production gives you both the opportunity to plan for production and post-production and the chance to envision the long-term goals of the project. Any good digital marketing campaign needs to set out specific, measurable goals to be used to judge its efficacy later. You don’t set up an email campaign with the vague idea of growing your business; you need to set a measurable goal and define how you’ll know if you’ve achieved it. Maybe you want people to head to your website to participate in a sale, or you’re just trying to get people to sign up for your mailing list. Whatever you end up aiming for, you need to know in advance.
This is where we really get to put our skills as a video marketing agency to work. As part of our conversations during pre-production, we’ll hammer out what you want your video to achieve. Once we know that, we can direct our efforts and make sure the final product works to reach that goal. With our expertise in both production and marketing, we’ve helped countless clients take their ideas and turn them into effective video campaigns. If you have a video concept, a marketing goal or both, speak with Pretzel Logic Productions. We’re excited to help you get your video out into the world.