Plan It Hollywood

The dream is always the same. You are back in school when you suddenly realize that you have to take a test. It is a three-hour test and you are late. Two of the hours set aside for the test have already passed before you even make it to the room. The prompter hands you a test; you sit down, open the booklet and stare at the questions. You don't know any of the answers. You are about to fail miserably.

This is an anxiety dream, usually brought on when you're about to embark on a shoot you're not prepared for. It's often a project requiring more skill or experience or money than any you've yet to produce.

No, you don't need a shrink. What you need is a plan.

Plan It Now

The fancy way to say it is pre-production. The simple way is planning. It's not the most glamorous part of putting a video together, but it's one of the most important.

Here's the cold truth: the more effort you put into pre-production, the better chance you have of creating a worthwhile video. When clients pay you to produce a video, they expect you to prepare a plan. Even when you make the video for your own entertainment, you'll enjoy the process more if you prepare a plan of action before you shoot.

Why is the plan so important? A shoot is a complex situation. And the larger the shoot, the more complex the situation. You're in charge of this situation; everyone comes to you with questions. The camera operator wants to know where to put the tri-pod. The talent wants to know where to stand. The lighting director wants to know what mood you want. Do you have the answers? Do you even know where yOU are in the script? You don't have a script? That could be trouble.

Pre-production planning is simply making most of these decisions before you get into the field. You've got to know what you want and how you're going to get it. Then when things get confusing-and they will- you'll have your solutions at the …