Speaker 1: Video isn't just for TV and movies anymore, it's become a key marketing strategy for corporate brands and advertising agencies who want to use the power of storytelling to compel and connect with their audiences. Good video content requires careful planning and intention at every stage of the production process. There are simply too many moving parts to just wing it. One misstep along the way can quickly throw your budget and timeline off course. That's why you should always start with a plan, no matter how big or small your video production may be. Our free video production schedule template and video series planning template make it easy to build a timeline quickly and share it with anyone involved in the project, but we'll talk about the templates a little bit later. A video production schedule is a high-level plan that shows how the entire production process should track over time. This enables you to make sure that cast, crew, props, and equipment are in the right place at the right time, major deadlines don't get missed, and final creative meets stakeholder expectations. While a video shooting schedule establishes a detailed timeline for filming scenes, a video production schedule focuses on the tasks and resources needed to produce the video at all stages of the process, from pre- to post-production. It can be used to manage any type of video project, from TV and film to corporate marketing and commercial advertising, and it's a valuable tool for communicating with stakeholders. The video production process is made up of three main phases, pre-production, production, and post-production. Here's a quick look at what you can expect at each stage so you have a starting point for scheduling your own video production tasks. If you're a seasoned video pro, you can skip this part since you already know what happens throughout a production. Feel free to skip ahead to the schedule templates if you want. Pre-production is all about creative development and logistical planning. Think of the blood, sweat, and tears you pour into pre-production as the necessary ingredients for a successful video shoot and smooth stakeholder approval. It can be easy to overlook your pre-production steps in your schedule, but it's super important to make sure it's all accounted for. Any video you produce, whether it's a video series, documentary, or some other piece of content, should have a goal. So before you put pen to paper, or fingers to keys, think about what you want to accomplish. These questions are a great place to start. Who do you want to reach? What action do you want your audience to take? What's the message you want to convey? And how will you measure success? With clear goals in mind, you can form a solid creative concept that's centered around your audience and objectives. Work closely with stakeholders to get their input and buy-in early in the process to avoid costly surprises down the road. A creative brief can be a helpful tool for documenting goals for your video project as well as other key details like scope, requirements, and tone. Next, carve out time in your video production schedule to move into script writing. Generally, your script should be conversational, concise, and clearly formatted with characters, scenes, and stage actions noted. If you're filming a documentary, prepare for interviews by drafting your questions and sharing them with guests or featured experts ahead of time. This helps make sure conversations stay on track so you don't miss important points of discussion. It also gives your guests a chance to think about some answers. Your editor will thank you for having less ums and dead air to remove. You've got your concept and written your script. Now bring your creative vision to life by sketching out storyboards. This will help you identify all the different shots that go into each scene and hopefully weed out shots that don't work. Once your storyboards are solid, outline a shot list with specific details on who and what each shot needs to capture. Finally, get down to business and lock down all the logistical details so things go smoothly the day of your shoot. This is a great time to bring budget into the equation so you know how much money you can spend on talent, equipment, and locations. Think about these tasks as you plan and prepare for your shoot. Casting talent or conducting interview outreach for documentary productions, scouting locations and obtaining any necessary permits, renting or purchasing equipment, meeting with all cast and crew members, and developing the shot list and shooting schedule. Now that you've got a detailed roadmap for your production, it's go time. The production phase is where the action happens. It often includes a studio or location setup with things like getting staging, lighting, and audio just right. Once talent has been brought in, you can block scenes to determine the movement of the actors. Then rehearse, make any adjustments, and roll camera. Just because you call a wrap on filming doesn't mean the hard work is done. On most video projects, post-production takes as long if not longer than pre-production and production combined. Here are the key steps that take place in post-production. Ingesting and organizing footage, creating assembly cuts, color correction and grading, music scoring and sound editing and mixing, and adding titles, credits, graphics, and visual effects. Be sure to get approval from your stakeholders before exporting the final cut. Look for opportunities to streamline feedback in a centralized place so it's easier to wade through edits and avoid getting stuck in an endless loop of revisions. Once you get the green light to launch, you're ready to post and promote your video across your digital marketing channels, but that's a plan for another day. Click the link in the description to check out our digital marketing campaign template to help you map out a promotional strategy for your awesome new video. We've created two free templates to help you plan, update, and communicate your production schedule quickly and easily. Whether you're shooting a single video or an episodic series, you can use these templates to build a timeline for pre-production, filming, and editing so you can release videos on time, every time. This template is perfect for planning and producing one-off video projects like documentaries, advertisements, corporate videos, and more. Now that you understand the video production process, let's look at a few examples of how you can build and use a video production schedule inside of TeamGantt. The Gantt chart is a useful way to view the full scope of your video production timeline. Not only does a Gantt chart provide an overall view of how your project is progressing, it allows you to see how any changes to the plan affect the timeline and important delivery dates. Tasks in each phase of video production typically have to be completed in a particular order. For instance, you most likely can't develop an accurate shot list before you have a script to work with. Make sure work gets done in the right order with dependencies. Call out key dates, deadlines, approvals, or deliverables in a project by using milestones. Hit your launch date or hold that important approval meeting right on schedule. And collaboration is essential to the momentum and ultimate success of your video project. Make sure there's no confusion about who's doing what by assigning people and teams to tasks. Keep everyone in the loop on the progress of the project by updating the percent complete as you work through tasks and milestones. Use List View to review to-dos in each phase of your video project. Consider it a helpful guide for knocking out that post-production task list. Use Calendar View to get a clearer picture of the timing of activities and see how tasks are stacking up. We've created a free video production schedule as well as a video series project plan for you in TeamGantt so you can jump right in. Customizing the video production schedule or video series project plan templates is quick and easy thanks to TeamGantt's drag and drop simplicity. And since everything's online, your whole team can collaborate on activities in real time. Click the link in the description to access the free template. I hope this video and our production templates help you to keep your next video project on track. 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