How Do You Plan?

Bossman1113

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I was wondering how everyone does their video planning here? There are a lot of different people here I thought it would be cool to see the many different strategies everyone uses to plan out their videos. Maybe you might find something you like, and use it next time your planning out that new video.

For me, I start out with an Idea spreadsheet listing ideas that I want to use, a little bit of info on each of them, and color code them so I know how far they are in development process. Then I choose one I want to focus on for a specific video and start scripting it. I'll probably go through the script 5 or 6 different times to make sure the content in it is something that I would enjoy. Then I turn the script into a mini-storyboard with actions and notes for editing so that I won't be swinging in the dark when it's time to edit my video.
 

mcfluffers

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Well on the video's of mine that require planning (Mostly just league of legend parody's) My plans usually consist of "HEY JAKE!" (my brother) jake:"WHAT?!?!" me:"WWANT TO MAKE A MOVIE!?!??" jake: OK!!!!!!

And then we find his/my friends and we pretend they are talking on the league game so I get plenty of footage. Then I voice over all of it. Because it's to hard to have them make voices and no one wants to ha ha.
 

TylorSkory

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Good question! Of course, I think that has a lot to do with your personality, your videos, and just finding out works best for you. But for our channel, since we have four people's schedules we need to coordinate to all get together and film two videos a week, I find it helps us to be really organized. At the beginning of the month we sit down in a coffee shop and plan out all 8 episodes for that month. We will brainstorm and come up with basic synopsis's for our Thursday sketches, and decide on a theme for that month's "Random Monday" episodes, along with what exactly we are going to do in each episode. Then, we typically write the scripts weekly as we need them. It goes much faster to film with a script for us (at least for our sketches. We don't use scripts for our Monday videos). We film our Thursday episodes the prior Friday, and our Monday episodes the prior Wednesday. This gives us enough time to shoot, edit, etc. Having everything planned out for the entire month takes a LOT of stress off making the videos. Again, we've spent a year tweaking and seeing what works best for us, and we still by no means have it perfect yet. I'm looking forward to hearing some other strategies!
 

UltimateKirbyBoi

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I use the notes app on my phone to record down most of my ideas.
These ideas naturally formulate into speech when I make a video, I suppose. =P
 

Symph

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I use the notes app on my phone to record down most of my ideas.
These ideas naturally formulate into speech when I make a video, I suppose. =P
omg your cup song video LMAO!!!!!

And for me ummm... good lord it varies so much. I do alot of blind vlogs. The one in my sig was like that. A funny feeling comes over me, I think "If I start saying crap in front of a camera while I'm in this cooky mood, it will probably be funny" or I get a vague idea like "I should make up a retarded story about this scratch on my head Mitch Hedburg style" I just grab the camera and go. But then some videos I will write a script, then loosely memorize it, and wing the rest. Alot of times my videos change during editing and filming, I get ideas while doing that, and have a tendency to use my mistakes for comedy alot.

Then there's my music videos, some of them are really involved and I have to really plan by getting outside footage or getting others involved, but some I just turn on the camera and dance around in front of it for like 3 takes and then splice together my favorite footage from that lol.

I guess my channel is like 75 percent spontaneous and 25 percent planned.
 

AreYouAwareBro

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Large scripts, many shots of the same scene, lots of post.
 

Mike Kowalski

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Most of the time I just wing it, if it needs planning I use these simple/vague guidelines:

1-Contact people if I need people to be in the video
2-Plan out and look for places to shoot
3-Shoot the video with a few takes
4-Pick a song
5-Edit it all together

:D
 

jak6jak

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Brainstorm like crazy! And then wing it unless it's a long a video then I'll write a basic script that I might change during production.