Basic Video Project Planning
First—establish size, scope, and purpose of video before you begin. Whether online, social media, or professional long format, they all have a purpose and can take as little or as much time, assets, and cost as necessary. Pricing can vary from a $100 clip to a $25K+ 2-minute video. And most are in the $1500-$5K+ range. There are a lot of possibilities. Please see my longer guide on video production to see how much can be involved.
Feel free to copy and paste text and email answers.
Step 1: Summary
So first write a summary of what this video project is for:
Do you envision this being on social media? On a website? Or recycled in multiple areas?
Do you have a timeframe or date in mind?
Think of the project as an investment. So how much time and cost would you consider for this project? If you're not sure, let me ask you a few simple questions:
On a scale from one to 10 how important is this video?
On a scale from one to 10 how important is the successful outcome to this video?
Are you truly looking for professional work here as opposed to having a family member a friend crank something out quickly for you?
Are you prepared to establish a reasonable budget to have this professionally done? In other words, is that even realistic?
Provide some example of a budget you might be comfortable with just as an example (if you know). So for example, if you were to pay the cost right now, what might that be roughly in your eyes?
Step 2: Your Next Steps
Be sure you have the summary filled in above
Write a list of all the potential images and video shots you might want in this video (for a longer, more elaborate video please see my link at the top of this page to my other resource. This list here will help indicate whether there's an offsite video shoot needed, if stock material is needed, etc…
If other individuals are involved in a potential video shoot, be sure to get their permission and find out what dates they might be available.
Whether you plan on having a voice over or not it's a good idea to plan on a 60-second video script. So write text that you would literally read out loud into a microphone to record that might be used over the video. Pretend that you are literally walking somebody through what you're watching. It doesn't have to be tightly done. Just something rough. Figure about 180 words for each minute.
Are you planning on doing the video shooting or are you hiring me or somebody else to shoot the video?
Assemble as many assets as you have for this video. Photos, videos, notes, or anything else that might apply to this video so that we can go over it together.
3. What’s Next?
If I'm going to be helping you with this video, I will review the above material. You can copy and paste this in an email and provide the answers. I can get back to you promptly and give you my initial thoughts and walk you through the next steps!
