Some of the elements that go into pre-production are scripting and storyboarding. Depending on the type of video you're making, a script can take quite a few different forms. If you think about a kind of drama script or a commercial script, you know, that's going to follow characters lines and stage direction. Then if you think about a documentary or an interview-led film, that's going to require a slightly different type of script. What's the story we want to tell here? And then you can work backward from that to say, Okay, what would be the best set of interview questions?

When you're able to be prepared, like putting in that extra time with your script or your storyboard. You're just going to ultimately save money on set. It's kind of like your Bible, in a sense, or your guidebook before you get onto the floor. Once you have your script and your storyboard, you need to figure out a way to execute this. And that's where crewing comes involved. Making sure that you have a reliable team that is also skilled is extremely important.

We'd consider the technical skills we'd need from the crew, any experience specific to this production, as well as their availability. I always say that your crew or your production are the greasy, hardy hardware behind the glossy product because we're the ones that keep the wheels spinning smoothly.

Locations is also a huge part of free production. The difference between a good location and a bad one, well, it makes sound obvious, is its extreme. A lot of the time with our clients, we tend to use their space. So it might be their office space, that we'll shoot the content at, or if our creative is a bit more kind of, a bit looser in terms of it doesn't need to be their business specifically, then we'll look at kind of, we'll look at getting a location hired in.

So you have scouting for locations. So looking online for studios, office spaces, and more bespoke things. And the third and sometimes forgotten, stage of location, sometimes referred to as a tech recce. You will walk through kind of every location that you plan to shoot. Talk about, you know, a lighting setup, talk about access, the work you do there, with just a pen and a pad or a laptop, saves you so much on the day.

It's really important to have client feedback or other client collaboration through the pre-production period. This is the point in the production at which we make sure everybody is on the same page. And there is a certain element of, you know, testing out ideas. You don't want to get to the kind of production or the post-production side of things, and the client goes, "Actually, that's not really what I wanted", or "We never had our eyes over that location", or, "We never had eyes over those kinds of lenses that you were using or the look that you were kind of looking to create."

We want to be giving suggestions on how to achieve your messages as well as trying out visual techniques to make the video a really strong one that stands out.

Without that pre-production process, you aren't having production or post-production. You haven't got on set, you haven't got the crew that you need, and you haven't got the sign-off from the client. You would run into so many hurdles at those next stages. And because of that, it's really important to have pre-production to, you know, preempt, to plan, and bring about efficiencies in everything as much as possible, be it budget, time, or crew management.

Essentially, you are creating the foundation that your creative project stands on. People often think of the shooting, the editing, and the animation as the really exciting bit. None of that really happens without the planning stage beforehand. All of that pre planning just makes your set and then inevitably post production as smooth as possible.