Specifications
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A Digital Video Primer
The creative process: an overview of movie-making
Let’s assume you have a story to tell. Whether you are making a very short video for the web,
an industrial or training presentation, a television commercial, a feature lm, or just doing a
personal project, the process is virtually the same. As you can see from the following chart, the
stages of the production process oen overlap. You’ll end up tailoring your own process to t the
project, or to your own, individual working style. Depending upon your personal working pref-
erences, you may choose to shoot, create, or gather all your clips before you begin the assembly
process. Or, you may prefer to go back and forth between production and post-production tasks.
If you have a team, you may choose to work on production and post-production tasks concur-
rently. With digital video, your movie making tasks can ow over and around one another in an
extremely uid manner.
Preproduction
Preproduction is the planning stage. Typically, it includes the steps you take before you begin
production (shooting lm or video). When you begin your project, you may have already shot
some or all of the video you’ll need. You may be repurposing content, such as existing video, still
photography, charts, graphs, illustrations, or animations. Or you may be starting with a blank
slate. e preproduction phase includes all the steps you need to take to be sure that you are
prepared to move from concept to completion.
• Outline: No matter how simple you intend your project to be, begin with an outline. An outline
helps you plan. It can be shared with co-workers or clients to make sure everyone has the same
expectations. Your outline will help you identify what materials you need to create, assemble, or
acquire to get your process underway. You can also use your outline to plan the budget for your
project.
• Script: An outline may be enough for you to work from, or you may want a more complete
script that includes dialogue, narration, notes about shooting locations and settings, the action,
the lighting, the camera angles and movements, the edits, as well as visual and sound eects.
ink of a script as the blueprint for your production.
Virtually all productions follow this basic process.