How to Prepare for a Video Shoot: What to Do the Week Before

A shoot day is mostly decided before the shoot day.

I've filmed inside more than a hundred businesses at this point, and the ones that go smoothly aren't the ones with the biggest budgets or the nicest spaces. They're the ones where somebody handled four boring things the week before. Nobody tells you what those are, so here they are.

Decide who is actually in this

Start with the one that matters most: decide who is actually in this.

Not "the team." A name. Somebody who's going to be on camera, who knows they're going to be on camera, and who has agreed to it more than once. The single most common thing that derails a shoot is showing up and finding out the person we planned around got pulled into something, or never really said yes, or thought this was next week.

And if that person is nervous about being filmed — tell me before the day, not during. That's a completely solvable problem with about ten minutes of warning. It is not solvable with a camera already pointed at them.

Walk your own space with the lights off

Second: walk your own space with the lights off.

Sounds strange. Do it anyway. Stand in the room we're going to shoot in and look at what's actually there — the pile of boxes in the corner, the sun-bleached poster, the cable running across the floor, the whiteboard with last quarter's numbers still on it. On the day, that stuff becomes fifteen minutes of moving things while everyone waits.

You don't need to stage anything. Please don't stage anything — a real working space reads better than a cleaned-out one and it's not close. But know what's in frame before we get there.

Protect the time

Third: protect the time.

Block more than you think and tell your team it's blocked. If we've got four hours, four hours means four hours, not four hours interrupted by a delivery, a walk-in customer, and a call you have to take. Every interruption costs more than the minutes it takes, because we lose the setup and have to rebuild it.

If you can't protect the time — say so, and we plan a different kind of day. That's a real option. It's just a much worse surprise than a plan.

Know what this video is for

Fourth: know what this video is for.

Not the format. The job. Where does it run, who sees it, and what do you want them to do after. "We need content" is not a job. "People find us on Google and don't understand what makes us different from the three other companies on that page" — that's a job, and it changes what we shoot, how we shoot it, and what comes out the other side.

This is the one people skip because it feels like something the video person should handle. I will absolutely help you find it. But you know things about your customers that I can't guess, and thirty minutes of you telling me the real answer is worth more than any piece of equipment in my car.

The small stuff that comes up every time

Now the small stuff, all of which is genuinely small and all of which comes up every time.

Wardrobe. Solid colors, no tiny stripes or tight patterns — they buzz on camera. Whatever you'd actually wear on a good day at work. If you'd never wear a blazer, don't start now, it reads instantly.

Sound. This is the thing that ruins more footage than anything visual. Find out what's noisy and when — the HVAC cycle, the compressor, the espresso machine, the loading dock, the neighbor's leaf blower at 2pm. Bad audio kills a good shot dead, and it can't be fixed after.

Access. Doors unlocked, gate code sent, parking figured out, and somebody's phone number who can let us in. Twenty minutes lost at the front door is twenty minutes off the end of the day.

Permissions. If customers or staff will be in frame, they need to know. Handle that before, not with a clipboard in the doorway while we're trying to roll.

On the day itself

And then, on the day itself — the actual advice is do your job.

That's not a throwaway. The best material I've ever gotten came from people who stopped performing and went back to work, because the camera was there long enough to stop being interesting. You do not need to be charming. You need to be doing the thing you're actually good at while somebody films it. That's the whole trick, and it's why the businesses that get the best footage are usually the ones that were busiest that day.

Last thing, and it's the one nobody warns you about. It will feel like nothing is happening. There's a lot of standing around on a shoot, a lot of resetting, a lot of "one more time." That's normal, and it's not wasted time — it's what the difference between fine and good actually costs.

If you've got a shoot coming up, with me or anyone, run this list a week out. It'll save you an hour on the day and it costs nothing.