Think of this as cooking for the first time.
You’ll spend some time thinking about what to make.
You’ll find a recipe.
You’ll make sure you have all the ingredients. If you’re really meticulous, you’ll measure out what you need based on the recipe.
And then you’ll follow each step meticulously.
You do this because the chances of screwing up your dish drastically reduce because you planned well.
As you get more experienced, and more confident, you start winging it more, adding your own twists – and most of it works because you got good at the craft.
Making a video is no different. There may come a time when you can sit down in front of a video-creation software and convert your thoughts into a beautiful video, but when you start out, every hour spent planning will make your life easier and your video crisper.
The first step would be to organise your thoughts into a storyboard.
A storyboard helps you break your narrative down sequentially. They can be as detailed or as rough as you want – the idea is to put the story down on paper sequentially and see if it makes sense.
The simplest and most popular way to do this is to use post-its. The biggest advantage here is that you can rearrange your notes, add stuff in between, basically experiment with your narrative arc.
Found this old image on my phone… still holds true for our video-creation tool!
Personally I like sketching stuff out. Not because I’m good at it – quite the opposite. But because drawing itself becomes a fun activity, and makes it less likely for me to get bored. Remember, you’re supposed to be having fun doing this!
Told you I need to work on my drawing skills!
Let’s go back to that cooking example. Being organised and following a recipe does not guarantee success – you could still get it wrong because ‘salt to taste’ is a vague instruction. What it does is dramatically reduce the chances of a disaster.
So it is with your videos when you’re starting out: all this planning and organising may not guarantee a great video, but it gives you the best chance of success.
