Visual Composition
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Video Pre-Production Planning Checklist: 11 Steps to a Successful Project
Whether you've never picked up a camera before or you're a seasoned professional, your new video project should always start with the basics. If you were building a house, would you start with the foundation? Or would you start with a detailed blueprint to ensure your team knows where to lay the foundation? Pre-production for a video project can be complex and overwhelming, so it's often overlooked. With your team comprising several different roles, you want to ensure everyone is on the same page (or scene) with the same understanding of your project's goals.
To kick off your pre-production planning, start by identifying your goals and objectives for a start. For example, do you want to spread awareness for a cause, influence an audience, or bring in more customers for a local shop or café? Next, narrow down your goals to ensure your team focuses on creating the outcomes you want. Now that you have your goals, who do you want to see this project? Think about the demographics of your target audience or common concerns they might have so your video speaks directly to what they want.
Along with these, clarify the key message you're sending to your audience. What are the ideas, themes, or topics you need to highlight? Answer this question: What problem do you want to solve? How does your solution uniquely solve the problem? Also, how do you plan to get your video in front of your target audience? Certain features of your video will rely on the format you use to distribute your video.
Using the context you created for your project, you can compile a creative brief for your team. This seemingly monotonous document details the essential information for a successful creative collaboration. Next, assemble your creative team to brainstorm for your big idea. Depending on your project, you might also want a treatment to pitch your ideas for approval. This document is a short outline to summarize your big idea, style, approach, and actions you want in your video project.
Storyboarding
Think of your storyboard as a blueprint for a house. You've thought through every detail for your video: equipment, locations, actors, music, ambient audio, video length, shot list, structure, and story flow. The storyboard is essentially a much more elaborate version of the treatment. It gives you the chance to work out any kinks in the production process before the camera even starts rolling. This is also a good place to clarify if you will need any permits or waivers during filming, what types and how much equipment you will need, and schedule your shots with talent. You might also consider pre-production meetings with your team for larger projects.
The Bare Bones Camera Course for Film and Video
Camera Basics
Cameras imitate the human eye with a lens that gathers light reflected off objects and directs the light onto a surface that senses the patterns formed by different colors and brightness in a scene. Since the human eye and camera lens are convex lenses, they flip light patterns upside down. The brain and the camera viewfinder then turn the images right side up.
Still-film cameras project light patterns on film coated with light-sensitive chemicals that react to colors and light intensity. Later, the film produces an image after processing in other chemicals. Movie cameras record more images per second than still film cameras but use the same recording process. For example, 8 mm movie cameras take eighteen frames per second, and 16 mm and 35 mm cameras capture twenty-four frames per second. When projected at the same rate of speed, viewers' minds will fill in the gaps between images to give the illusion of movement, known as persistence of vision.
The lens in digital cameras projects light patterns on an image sensor, either a charge-coupled device or a complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor. The surface of these sensors contains thousands to millions of light-sensitive picture elements (pixels) that change based on the amounts and colors of light. Video cameras also use pixels to form images recorded at twenty-five to thirty frames per second.
Exposure
The amount of light coming through the camera lens is referred to as exposure. Exposure in an image is influenced by the aperture, which forms a hole in the center of the lens to let in light. Large apertures let in more light, while small apertures limit the amount of light hitting the lens. The f/stop ring on the outside of the lens measures the size of the aperture.
Color Temperature
Professional video cameras have internal filters you set according to the light used during filming. With your color filter selected, adjust the white balance to make sure whites are recorded as white and other colors are reproduced accurately. If you shoot colored film in a different color light, add an external filter to the lens to adjust the incoming light waves. When you start recording, you should be able to record details in both the highlights and shadows. Adding external filters will reduce the amount of light reaching the lens, so you need to adjust the aperture to balance the light absorbed by the filter.
ISO
The ISO number on your film label represents the speed or sensitivity of your film. Lower ISO numbers indicate a less sensitive and, thus, slower film requiring additional light. Conversely, faster or more sensitive films need less light for a discernible image. However, slower low ISO films create a higher quality image than faster high ISO films.
Lenses
The lens in a human eye can adjust focal length, but the camera needs different lenses. Every camera comes with a lens considered the standard lens, which will reproduce images with the same perspective as an eye. Additional lenses can replace the standard lens: "wide-angle" lenses have a larger area than the standard lens, and "telephoto" lenses have a smaller area.
Focus
Cameras with automatic focus often don't focus on what you want. On cameras without through-the-lens viewing, you measure the distance of your subject from the camera and adjust the focus ring to that setting. On cameras with through-the-lens viewing, the process is as simple as adjusting the focus ring until your subject is sharp and clear on the viewfinder. Many cameras use a zoom lens since they contain a range of focal lengths. To focus on a particular subject, you fully zoom in and adjust the focus ring until the telephoto image is crisp. Then, you can zoom out to your final framing, and your subject will stay in focus at any zoom unless you move the camera or the subject.
Depth of Field
Depth of field refers to the space in an image where everything is focused, and anything out of that area is blurry. Depth of field will increase as you shorten your focal length, meaning wide-angle shots have a deeper depth of field while telephoto shots have a shallow depth of field. Therefore, it's often better to shoot at a wide-angle while in focus when you don't have time to zoom in and adjust focus. Your depth of field will also increase as you close in the aperture or as your subject moves further from the camera. Also, you have less depth of field in front of your point of focus than behind it.
Composition
Now that you have the basics down, let's move on to framing your shots. You are in total control of the camera, which means you control everything your audience will (or won't) see. Shaky camera shots, however, are the most common distraction in filming because they destroy the illusion that the audience is seeing the real thing and make certain clips indiscernible. Tripods allow you to film steady clips and create smoother movements.
The oldest tried-and-true theory about composition is the rule of thirds. You will hear this often and for nearly anything intended for a public audience. Essentially, you divide the frame into thirds horizontally and vertically. Then, place your subject on one of those lines and, if possible, at one of the four intersections of those lines. This prevents your images or video clips from looking static and uninteresting, but make sure to leave nose room in front of people's faces when they're looking to the side.
When you capture images with a large object to one side, it's best to place a smaller object within the frame to balance the mass in a composition. Bright objects or spaces also carry weight in a composition for you to balance. If you frame your composition at an angle to show two sides of a subject, the viewer will have an illusion of depth to make the image less flat and dull. You can also angle the camera up to make a subject appear superior or angle the camera down to make a subject inferior.
Natural framing is another great way to make your composition more interesting to a viewer. Use any found object at your location to create a frame around your image, such as flowers or foliage, rocks, building frames, etc. You can also use leading lines to direct the viewers' attention to your subject.
Camera Moves
There are a few basic camera movements to help you reveal or conceal context. Zooming in from a wide shot directs the viewers' attention to your subject. Zooming out from a close-up shot exposes new information. Pans are horizontal movements, and tilts are vertical movements that also expose different information. Fast pans will cause vertical lines to strobe, so it's always best to pan slower when in doubt. You can also lead viewers through a long pan by following a moving object as it passes your subject.
The most important rule in filming is only to use camera movement when it benefits your storyline or helps your audience better understand the context. Camera movements can be cool, but it's best to use them for a purpose rather than showboating. When you decide a camera movement is necessary for your shot, start and end with a well-composed static shot. Hold the camera steady for a few moments at the beginning, make your movement smooth and gradual, then pause for a few moments at your end shot. Next, plan out your movement, so your final body position is comfortable. This will likely make your starting position more uncomfortable but allows you to rest comfortably in your final position for a steadier end shot. If you use a zoom with a tilt or pan, the transition will look better if you start the tilt or pan movement slightly before the zoom.
Montages
A montage is a series of shots to represent the changing of time, summarize information, or create a feeling or mood. For these to pan out (ha, puns), each shot should be distinctly different from the one before, or it will look like a bad cut between shots.
Research to Inform
In this clip of Taylor Swift's All Too Well: the Short Film, you can see the focus shift to a shallow depth of field to emphasize the emotion crossing Her face. The first half of the scene has a sense of balance while He is on-screen, but his exit throws the weight off-balance.
AJR is one of my favorite bands, and their music videos are goofy and sometimes absurd. AJR's Way Less Sad music video incorporates several different video composition guidelines:
From 0:17 to 0:20 (and several later shots in the video), the main singer's quirky dancing balances out the highly distracting carousel in the background. However, it does take a moment to notice the other band members near the carousel.
At 0:31, the hallway uses leading lines to direct the viewer's attention to the band.
At 1:49, the video switches from an ordinary perspective on an ordinary subjective to a unique perspective of the same subject.
Finally, here's a throwback to One Republic's Counting Stars music video. First, the lighting above the band creates an illusion of leading lines directing attention to the band members. Later, shots with the alligator use shallow depth of field. Other shots use varying perspectives, especially low angles, to feature the textures in the building.
Create
Between this week and the next, I will be creating a montage. Initially, I started planning the montage to create an essence of serenity and solace. I planned to use Enchanted Rock State Natural Area in Fredericksburg, Texas, as my filming location, but this didn't work out. So I quickly changed to the Hot Wells Conservancy on the southeast side of San Antonio. Granted, this was planned and filmed on the course of a road trip to San Antonio. Some of the videos turned out well, but others did not look anything like what I wanted. I had to change plans (again) and very quickly, so I took another short trip to Natural Falls State Park in West Siloam Springs, Oklahoma.
Download the Serenity Montage Pre-Production Planning here:
Located an hour away from my hometown, I heard about the Dripping Springs Waterfall in Natural Falls but never visited. The park is fairly isolated from large cities, but visitors crowd the narrow walkways to take in the views. There is no shortage of breathtaking scenery here: from the babbling streams above the falls to the fairytale grotto hiding beneath the stones; there is something beautiful to find.
I chose to visit near sunset (the park closes at 5 PM) to capture the sun's rays lighting up the autumn leaves. Boy, was I ever endeared? Aside from families coordinating photos after their journey down the steps, the falls absorbed nearly every sound. The falls were nearly inaudible from a short distance as if the rocky pathways and shrubbery swallowed the sounds of splashing water. Certain areas of the trails carried different noises as I strolled along the path.
Along the drive, several small towns gather around the highway, slowly dilapidating. Abandoned and weathered buildings dot the landscape, but the sun setting across the horizon lit them up in such an incredible way.
Download the Visual Composition Shot List from the Hot Wells Conservancy here: