 In this episode, we are going to be talking about one of the most dangerous parts of making a video. The part that happens between the video's ideation and the video's shooting, and that is planning the video. We're going to be going in-depth into this, what could seem like a treacherous process that is paralyzing for a lot of creators, and we're going to break it down into step-by-step process that you can follow in any type of video project. Welcome to the Movement Media Mentor Podcast, the show where we help movement artists, dancers, and creators share their greatest movements through advice and stories on media and video creation. Today we are going to be talking about how to plan your video or creative project. And the reason I want to talk about this is because this can be a very, very scary part of the entire video production process for a lot of people. It might be the part of the process that stops a lot of people, including myself, from actually executing videos, is having an idea, something that you think should be cool, or something that you feel like you should do, but not understanding what it's going to take to get there. And there can be a lot of steps to doing that, depending on the scale of your project. It could be as simple as finding a location, knowing what kind of video you want to shoot, it can get as complicated as locations, making sure everybody's time is in sync and on the same date. Costume, wardrobe, coloring, music, all of these different things, they can get overwhelming. And I wanted to give you guys a little bit of a taste of what I've been able to learn over the past few years. Shooting videos for people on my own content channel on TikTok and Instagram and YouTube. And I want to give this to you so that you guys can use it. It is a streamlined process condensed into the best lessons I've learned from mentors and from just trial and error, and how you can use it for your own creative projects. There was a really great visual post that my friend Sean Liu shared on Instagram, and it was a picture, two different diagrams. One diagram was a clump of little black balls, and the caption for that clump of little black balls was all the things that you need to do. And I think that's a good analogy for how a lot of us see the types of things we need to do in a day. If there are a lot of things we need to do, it can be overwhelming and we don't know what we need to do first and prioritize. But the second diagram is the same amount of balls, but they're lined up in a straight horizontal line. And the caption is everything you need to do when you take it one by one. And that is what we're going to do today. We're going to take all of these different pieces and we're going to put them in line in sequence from highest priority to lowest priority, from what you should do first to the very last thing you should do. And this can work for small videos on TikTok. This can work for big 20-minute, 60-minute films. Something we did recently with a dance team in San Diego called 220, was we created a 16-minute film. And a lot of the lessons I'm going to share with you today I used in the production of this video. So I hope that it really helps, and here we go. Before I even start to dish out the three steps, the three main steps I'm going to share with you guys. Step zero is to grab and make an outline document. This outline document can be as simple as a piece of paper in front of you. It can be on your notes app on your phone. It can be in Google Docs. It can be on Evernote. Whatever you use, whatever is most accessible and most familiar to you, I recommend you create a Google Doc or some sort of document to make sure that you can start to list all the things that you're going to be creating. And this is not supposed to be a scary thing. I know a blank page can be very scary for a lot of creators, but we have a process here. We're going to be taking it step by step. And so we're going to be starting from the most bare-bone, minimal, imperfect thing. That's going to be our idea, and we're going to continue to build on it until it is ready to shoot. So here we go. This is step one. Step one of this creative and video project planning process is to identify your intention. And when I say identify your intention, what I'm talking about is you want to be able to know that you are doing the right things and you're making the video for the right reasons. For example, recently, actually, this just happened almost less than an hour ago. I was doing a video that's still in the process, working with my friend who's an editor and a team of females who are actually really, really talented dancers that I've been wanting to work with for a long time. And they hired us to shoot their event for them. And we had a recap video that they wanted us to make as well. And I thought that we had a very good idea of what we needed to do. I made some assumptions and I felt like we talked enough that we were going to be on the same page. Turns out I did not ask enough questions. I didn't know the right intent. I thought they wanted to shoot an ad that they wanted to run on Instagram and Facebook. Turns out that what they actually wanted was not an ad. They wanted a more in-depth, longer-length video, which would not be suitable for an ad, but more just as a recap video that could live on platforms like Instagram, TV, and YouTube. So by that, I got that wrong. And because of that, my editor and I are suffering the consequences for that. We're going to fix it, but this could have been avoided if I was more careful about identifying the intention of the video. I think that I learned a big lesson there. And I keep pointing these lessons. It's funny because I came up with this idea for the podcast before that happened. And this is an exact example of why you have to be more careful about identifying your intents. As well as the second step I'm about to share with you, which goes in line with the first step, which is find your fundamentals. So I know that this is probably the step that a lot of creators start on because not a lot of people like to think about the intention, which is more like the back page or background or subtext of a project because your intention could be creating a portfolio piece or trying to make a viral video or trying to create a brand video for a company. But once you're past that and you understand the intention that you've outlined and you've begun to iron out with your clients and your team, then the next thing you should do is start to figure out the actual solid points that you want to work on for each project. These solid things can be cinematography, locations, colors, video length, music. The list can go on and on. There's a whole lot of things you can identify. But of course, just like the analogy of the balls, make sure you take them one by one. And it's okay. Right now you have your outline doc and right now what you should be doing is putting your intention on the outline. So making sure that the questions you're asking to find your intention such as why are we making this video? What purpose do you want this video to serve? How do you want this video to help you achieve your goals and what are your goals? These are questions that will help you with step one. Once you have those questions and those answers, write them down on the outline doc. Now, when you're on step two, it's time to take those answers you got from the intention, exploration and identification. And you're going to start to list down the types of things that will help support this. Chances are that if you're doing a project with a dancer or another person, then you already have some leads. This dancer probably already has a certain style, a certain type of music they like to listen to. They might even have a choreography already ready for this piece. And as long as it matches their intention, which is important to line it up together, then you can use that as a base point. That is why it's called a fundamental because it's one of your fundamental building blocks into creating your video. Use those biggest, most obvious building blocks that fit the intention and start to write them down on a piece of paper. For example, for this video, one of the biggest intentions was these three dancers are all poppers. They're all poppers or wackers or some sort of open style dancer. And so based off of that, we know what type of movement they're going to do. And from that, we can gather what type of shots we want to get. Poppers dance very different from break dancers or breakers who spin on their heads a lot and use their entire body. Poppers do use their whole entire body, but they often don't go doing flips and stuff. And wackers often focus on their upper body. So once we know that, then we can go into the training class knowing what exactly we want to shoot and the type of subject matter and how we can use the rest of video elements to complement and support that style. If you are creating by yourself, your intention is going to help you create videos that are leading you towards your goals. For example, some people starts to create videos just for fun and they go viral, which is great. But honestly, 99% of the time, that is not the case. A lot of people who managed to make a long term living off of creating have a certain type of brand image, a certain type of theme, a certain type of personality that they often imbue in their videos. And this intention seeking strategy and also finding your fundamentals is going to be extremely helpful and it's going to be your guide map to helping you find that thing and focus on that so that you can create things that will support your long term creation career. For example, when I started TikTok in 2019, that's kind of what I did. I just kind of threw videos all over the place to see what would work and see what wouldn't. And that's an important part of the process. I'm not saying that you should skip that, but it wasn't until that I found my edge and my actual intention, such as when I started to build and fly FPV drones and I really liked that stuff and I wanted at the time to create my brand and my theme around FPV drones. That really helps me zero in and I wrote that down and I made sure that most all of the videos I created, somehow linked to creating films or videos or content with the FPV drone and from there, I started able to make a very coherent brand image for myself. Now that time has passed. I'm not just doing FPV. I'm starting to do movement media mentor. That's why we're doing the podcast right now. My intentions have changed and that's okay. Your intentions can change and they will evolve, but it helps to continue practicing honing in on your intention because every time you do it, whether it's for a project for your own brand or for a series of videos, it's going to help you get better at the process every single time. So once you have found your base fundamental points and objects, such as choreography or music or type of edits you want to do or platform that they want the video on, then you can take those and you can start doing more research. For example, if you want to do recap video, I would do more research on recap videos for events and don't just look at recap videos from the events and the cultures that you are filming for. In fact, try your best to take inspiration from outside as well and that way you will be able to create things that are super unique. For example, Hey guys. So they often say that you are the average of the five people you hang around the most with. So if you're looking for a community of people who will push you, who will help you grow, keep you accountable and give you advice on career advancement, dance, professionalism, media creation, video production, any of that, I would highly recommend you check out our movement media makers discord group. The link will be in the show notes of whatever video you're watching or if you're listening on podcast, it will be in the show notes description. Take a look and I hope to see you in there. Now back to the show. I remember watching a lot of EDM recap videos and there's a lot of different things happening in those edits. There are some really, really, really talented people who are making recap videos out there in that scene and when I watched their works, they were very, very different from what I was seeing in the dance and breaking scene. So I was able to implement things from those different videos into mine and it gave me a very unique edge and I continue to keep doing that and keep experimenting with different types of backgrounds. So that's something you should do too. And as you continue to experiment, make sure you're taking each of these references that you like and you're saving it onto that outline. This outline document is going to continue growing and growing, but of course it starts off little. So make sure that you're starting with that intention and then you're starting to write down the fundamentals one by one and soon enough it will turn into a mood board, which is essentially a board which helps reflect and visualize the mood of the video. And a mood board is just one of a few different things that we're going to work on in finally step three of the planning process, which is to preview your production. And the reason I call it the preview of the production is because there is a term we use in the filmmaking and just creation world called pre-production and essentially is production before production. And a mood board is one of the very popular documents that is used to start to create a solid visualization and bring the ideas to a reality. We often take images from Google images or stock photos or screenshots from different music videos or films and we try to compile those together into a thing that can help us create our own little mix of what we want our visual to look like. Because often no ideas are born from nothing. It's actually almost impossible for an idea to be born from nothing. A new idea is often a combination of two or more different sources of inspiration that have already existed. A very popular example you can think about in music is Lil Nas X's Old Town Road. That video and that song blew up and was on Billboard number one forever. And a lot of people say that came out of nowhere but if you look closely, you don't have to look closely or listen closely, you can easily tell that it was inspired and it's mixed of a country and hip hop genre. And even though that is a very new thing and hasn't been done before, combined in such a successful and popular way, it's two different things that existed. We just combined it into one and boom, there you go, you have a viral hit that completely dominates the charts. So that is one popular example of there are no ideas that are new under the sun. So don't be afraid and make sure you actually are going out of your way to do that research. It helps a lot, it helps a lot. And I have to remind myself that a lot as well because sometimes research can be an extra step but it's honestly worth it. It helps because it gives you a more solid idea of how you're going to shoot this video versus the abstract thought of it floating in your mind which may not even be a solid visual and not only that but it's putting you and your entire team onto the same page. So that is why I recommend making the mood board. And then the next things you can also make on top of that are other types of documents such as a script. If you're writing a narrative or if you're writing a skit then it's really helpful to just write something. It doesn't have to be a perfectly formatted script. If you know how to do it, then perfect. Then you should definitely do it. If you don't know how to do it, don't let it stop you from trying to write a script. If you want dialogue, literally just either open a new document or go in the document that you created for your outline doc and just start typing dialogue or just start typing an outline of what you want to happen, the beats in the story, a bare minimum skeleton, whatever you can do to get the ball rolling is better than nothing. I've learned this lesson over and over again and it is always just getting started is always better than just thinking. So continue to continue applying that and practicing it. Another two super helpful documents you can create in order to pre-visualize and coherently describe and communicate your vision of your video not only to yourself but also your team is one a storyboard and two a shot list. A storyboard is you may have seen it in behind the scenes videos of movies and stuff like that but essentially like a comic book type of graph where there's different panels of frames in the movie that someone has actually drawn out and under that they write the text of what's going on in the dialogue that's happening in each panel. So it's kind of like a comic book version of the movie and a lot of people use these storyboards in order to most closely get that visual that they want and then bring it to life. So you have the storyboard and you also have even easier the shot list. And on the shot list you can provide all types of different descriptions and details that you may need when you're shooting. It could be as simple as just a little description saying oh the character or myself does this or the dialogue he says this here or you can even make it a schedule each shot and how much time you need to get each shot how much time you want in each shot so you can budget and allot your schedule properly. You can get the shot types whether you want a long or medium a wide a close up I don't know why I was having such a hard time finding the word close up but yeah if you want any of the types of those shots then you can put that into your document as well. The shot list is probably my favorites personally to bring on set with me because it helps me stay on schedule and it helps the descriptions often give me enough of a lead without having to spend too much time drawing and there's just so many details and it helps organize as well and keep us just everyone together on set. There are a lot of different documents you can use to aid your pre-production and your planning of your video and creative projects shot listing mood boarding, story boarding, scripting the list doesn't end as budgeting there's a lot of different things and if you want to learn more about it and take your planning and your video production and your creativity to the next level then you might want to look into the movement media mentorship which I will talk about more at the end if you are interested in taking yourself and your creativity and your production and your business and your platform to the next level then stay tuned till the end and I will give you guys a hook up. Either way you don't need to use all of these documents everything will help and everything will give you more and more benefits and make it more and more solid but eventually you are going to have to start your video which is why it is very very important to set a deadline one of the fundamental things that you should continue to communicate with your team and with your dancers and everybody are deadlines when are we going to shoot and when is the video going to be released start from the end, start from okay when is the latest date are we launching this for an event are we trying to launch this at a certain holiday or are we just trying to get this out as soon as possible once you have that deadline of when the video is supposed to be released then you can work backwards on how much time do we need to edit, maybe like a week or two so then you can push it back a week maybe give yourself a little bit of buffer time and then you have your date you need to shoot so make sure that you use your fundamental planning phase step 2 to identify those deadlines because it is extremely extremely important because just perpetually planning your video is almost as bad if not as bad as never releasing your video at all just thinking about it laying it live in your head because it never gets out there Steve Jobs once said and I mean Steve Jobs is a pretty cool guy he made the iPhone stuff he wasn't the best guy but anyway Steve Jobs said real artist ship and that is true it does not matter how much planning and thinking and effort you put into a video unless it is out there for people to see make sure you share your work so in summary remember this three step process I guess four steps if you include step zero which is step zero create an outline document whether it's on a piece of paper, notes app google docs, ever notes anything that works for you just create the outline doc and you're going to start listing the answers and the three steps from here step one you're going to identify your intention ask questions ask why you're making this what is the goal that you are trying to achieve what is the goal that your clients or your dancer or your team is trying to achieve and how is this video going to bring you closer to your goals the answers to those questions are going to give you your intention if you have your intention it is time to find your fundamentals step two find your fundamentals which is to take your intention and start to build around it if there is a choreography or a song that you want to use and it's going to aid your intention and it's going to get you closer to your goal then go ahead and use that and start to build around that start to take little details maybe the song is very catchy it's very bouncy so it's going to give you visuals it's going to bring certain colors to your head start to look up music videos that also have those colors take screenshots of those videos put them into your outline doc and then you'll start to build a mood board and building a mood board is the first step to starting step three which is to preview your production aka pre-production and that is to create documents that are going to help you further solidify your vision amongst yourself and all of your teammates you're going to start making shot lists you're going to start making scripts you're going to start making storyboards, mood boards, budget sheets you don't need all of these things but each of these are going to help you get you closer the more in depth your project is the more you're going to want to use them but if it's a simple one video tiktok maybe all you need is an outline you might just be able to stop there it is up to you, use as much as you need and make sure make sure that you set a deadline make sure you set a deadline because if you don't, the video might not ever get done take it from me, please and from all the other hundreds and thousands of artists that have come before me you need a deadline you need to give yourself something to work off of and once you have that deadline, then you start to work backwards how long do you need to edit it how long do you need to shoot it, how long do you need to plan it how often do you try to release this video, is this a weekly video basis once you have those details then you can figure out what schedule works for you but just start small just start small, just get started and release release release once again my friends, my name is Kai your host for the movement media mentor podcast and if you really enjoyed this episode, if it brought you a lot of value and you want more take a look and subscribe or follow our podcast Spotify, Apple Podcasts YouTube, wherever you're listening or watching this and if you really liked it go ahead and leave a 5 star review it really helps us boost the channel gives us more opportunities because we're always just trying to feed this creative community with this platform and as a gift for staying until the end of this episode if you are feeling serious making your creative potential to the next level if you want to tell stories, if you want to tell your greatest stories if you have a story that you feel needs to be told or want to just maximize your creative potential I invite you to join the movement media mentorship and in this mentorship this is a full program that is completely pre-recorded and also live sessions it's a lifetime membership and it is where I share with you my 7 plus years of creating of building a 100,000 plus following on social media and being able to work with brands such as tag warrior and a bunch of other crazy brands I never thought I'd dream of working with it is everything I wish I had when I was first starting out or was in my first years and now I'm bundling it all into this single mentorship where you all have live access to me including a library of videos that will take you from zero to create fully loaded concepts, music, project videos so if that sounds interesting to you then as a gift once again you guys are getting a $25 off coupon code MMMPodcast if you go to movementmediamentority.com and you put MMMPodcast into the discount code you'll have $25 off of the full-time lifetime membership I would love to have you as a part of it and I'd love for you to join our roster of 20 plus amazing students who are just killing it in their own way and they will be able to help you as well so please join us it would be awesome to have you and I would love to help you unlock your greatest movement thank you and I'll see you in the next episode