When planning for a shoot whether it’s kind of sporadic where you are just getting B-roll on the fly for a promo or its a film that every shot counts and must be well thought out, you must have an idea before the day of the shoot. For example, I have been on promo shoots that we set up the talent interview style and they speak about their business, organization or school and based off of what they spoke about we would get B-roll so that everything matches for the final edit.
Even if we never stepped foot in the premises before we would think of things on the fly. Beforehand we would either write up a script or have questions for them to answer and then shape the video around that. There’s only so much that can be done with this type of project and that’s where the creativity comes in.
However, when it comes down to a film its a complete different ballgame. There’s no room for error and you can’t just walk in with a script that doesn’t have full dialogue and decide to film whatever comes to mind. You have to remember that time plays a big factor and cannot be wasted. That’s why with narratives you always have to make a full script then draw your storyboard.
After the storyboard you have to line your script based off of the camera angles from the storyboard. Once you do that then you can work on the shot list and shooting schedule. The shot list is in order and it shows the scene with shot numbers and other details such as movement,description,location and audio. The shooting schedule has everything organized to film for the day but will not be shot in chronological order as it appears on the storyboard.
You will also have your camera and lighting plots which are overhead visuals of each scene displaying where the talent will be placed with the equipment.
One can do this with microsoft word or apps such as celtx which is very handy for the drawing part. There’s much more details than this for a larger project such as a feature film but you can definitely get a commercial or short film done with this. Obviously depending where your locations will be you will have a location scout and get permits if needed.
