Video production is a science as much as it is an art. It’s an opportunity to be creative and captivating, while communicating effectively with your target audience. As the internet and social media continue to evolve at an unprecedented rate, video has quickly become the most popular channel to reach customers. 

As an experienced video production company having produced thousands of videos over the past decade, we’ve narrowed down the 5 key stages of video production as follows:

1. Strategy
2. Pre-Production
3. Production
4. Post-Production
5. Distribution

These phases remain consistent regardless of type, length or purpose of your videos.

In this post, we’ll take a closer look at each of the 5 stages of video production and give you a clear understanding of each of them.

1. Strategy

Laying The Foundation for an Effective Video

The work you do before ever turning on a camera is absolutely critical. This is where you develop your ideas, goals and vision step-by-step. 

This first stage is all about reverse engineering the message. Creating a video design that will achieve its intended end result. Start by mapping out your ideal customer profile and defining your story. Who is going to see this video and how can you strategically create a video that speaks directly to the target audience.

Other important questions you should answer include:

• What’s the purpose of this video?
• What does a successful project look like to you?
• How will this video be distributed?
• What’s your budget?

Here at Your Story Agency, we take you through a process we’ve developed of years of producing videos in different industries, outlining your ideal customer profile and translating that into our video production process.

Once you feel like the goal is clear, you can work out a plan, framework, and timeline for completion. 

2. Pre-production

Building on the Foundation with a Clear Roadmap

The next step in the process involves translating the information you collected in the strategy phase into a clear storyboard, message, and concise plan. This is everything from location scouting, shot listing, talent scouting, and everything in between to ensure a smooth and seamless process from production through to delivery and satisfaction with the end result.

We break pre-production down into the following components:

a) C.E.R. (Context, Emotion & Relevance)

Context, Emotion, and Relevance. This is a unique process we developed to help pinpoint the messaging for your video. It gives our creative team potent information to build out your script and storyboard and get the process started. It’s the essence of every video we produce, and helps deliver a better end product.

b) Script

Think of a script as the foundation of your video that everything else is built on top of. It is the exact words that are being read and the tonality and emotion behind how they are read. The script is vital to tell an engaging story, and it also provides us with an accurate video length.

c) Storyboard

The storyboard is simply the script merged with visuals. What is being visually shown during sections of the script to engage the viewer? How much time do we have during those sections to get our message across? This is a creative document where you will really start to see your video come to life.

d) Shotlist

A shot list is the evolution of the storyboard and the script and provides an itemized list of shots we need to capture on shoot day to achieve our target objective. It provides our crew with technical details to plan in advance so everything goes smoothly, and allows us to move into the production schedule ensuring no important details are missed.

e) Scheduling

The production schedule is a shared document that allows us to plan out each shot from the shot list in detail and shoot everything in an efficient manner on shoot day. It’ll provide exact times, locations, and any props or actors that need to be available at those specific times – factoring in travel time, rest, and meals. This is the last step in our Pre-Production process before moving into Production.

3. Production

Telling Your Story & Capturing Your Message

If you’ve gone through development and pre-production thoroughly as outlined above, production should be seamless and efficient. While there may be a few variables that are unaccounted for on shoot day, the planning you do before hand ensures that the project will achieve its desired result – reaching your target audience.

This is the stage where you’ll want to ensure you have high quality gear, proper lighting and well planned logistics. We shoot all of our projects on a cinema camera opposed to a traditional DSLR. Even if you’re not up to speed on the technicalities with camera gear, you’ll be able to notice a huge difference in the final quality of your videos.

4. Post-Production

Revising the Project to Its Final Form

Here you’ll put your creative minds to the test and add graphic elements, audio/sound design, color grading, and a wide variety of editing techniques. Here are the key elements of post-production:

a) Organization

This step is where you take the time to organize, sort and prep the footage for editing.  

b) Editing

After selecting the footage, the crew will handle edits like color corrections, grading, SFX, VFX, music sourcing and more.

c) Revisions

The final step of post production, where final revisions are made and the final video is acheived.

Pro Tip – Post Production is a collaborative process, so you’ll want to keep the entire production team involved throughout so that you can fully capture your audience and story in the most effective way.

5. Distribution

Getting Your Video In Front Of Your Target Audience

Homepage, thank-you pages, landing pages, social media, advertising, email marketing and more. This is where you’ll want to uncover all the places your audience is consuming content, and make sure your videos are visible in those areas.

The plan for marketing and distribution should be discussed in the development phase, so that when the time comes, it’s all execution.

Let Us Do the Legwork for You

Now that you have a better understanding of all the stages of video production, you can make a more informed decision on how to proceed.

If you choose to get help for your project, we’d love to earn your business. With over a decade of combined experience in the industry, we create videos that work as incredibly powerful tools for your business. During this time, we’ve had the privilege of working with hundreds of highly successful entrepreneurs, business leaders, and global corporations across Canada, as well as internationally.

Get in touch with us and request pricing for your project today!