Pre Production Planning

By Katherine Pruce


The procedure of filming is a long one and incorporates far more planning and preparation than one may think. From past experience if this is not organised effectively, a lot may go wrong. In a team there are a lot of ideas and opinions flying about and if these are not well thought through, planned and communicated, the end result will not be successful. When exploring tips on how to make this pre-production process smoother and more efficient for future projects, I found the pre-production checklist put together by LAMBDA films. Which outlines three fundamental strategies to ease a process that can otherwise be fairly stressful. These included, scripting, storyboarding, and a treatment making the final aims of the project clear to everyone involved.

Whether you're creating a video for a movie, or a small accountancy firm you need to have your head on straight, keeping your goals and objectives clear and ensuring that anyone working on the project with you understands your vision.

You should be asking questions such as: What am I trying to achieve with my video? What am I going to shoot? What locations/people/resources do I need to accomplish my goals? What can I remove to simplify the process? Where is my video going to be shown and what do I need to do during production to make sure it displays correctly?

Scripting and storyboarding and writing a treatment are all crucial in the pre-production of a project, they ensure that there is a vision and plan for when it comes to the filming. They both undertake fundamental features of the filming process. Scripting and storyboarding are relatively similar, one dealing with the people/person being shot and the other dealing with those behind the camera, filming the action. Storyboarding is the practice of pre-visualizing a production through drawn, painted or rendered pictures called storyboards. In the past, storyboarding costs restricted the practice to productions with modest budgets. But recent software releases allow anyone to build storyboards using pre-created people, props and scenery. Most programs have multiple aspect ratios and import scripts, photos and scanned images for use as well.

Looking back at when I started becoming interested in filming and production I did not recognise the significance of storyboarding until it was way to late - on the day of filming when things became very intense and stressful with the deadline rapidly approaching. Without a structured storyboard the day was very unorganised and unenjoyable. I have however, learnt from past errors and since then have made sure that a well thought through storyboard always features in the pre-production process. Making sure that it continues to develop and progress all through the entire planning period to ensure that we are all happy with the end result.

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