How to plan your stories

1. What is the purpose of your video?

• Is the video going to be used for training, office tours, recruitment or something else?
• What do you want to happen when your audience finishes watching your video? Is it to feel motivated, influenced, educateted or more aware of your service?

2. Who is your audience?

• Understand your current demographic and consider who your company needs to appeal to in order to grow. What are their interests? What problems do they might encounter?
• The goal of every video should be to solve a problem your audience might encounter or enlighten something they find interresting.

3. Who will participate in the video?

• Is a co-worker? A student? Is it a customer? Or is it just you recording yourself in your office?
• Regardless of who you invite to be in your video, you need to make sure you are preparing them. You will want to talk through the big idea, make sure they know what their role is and what you expect from them.

4. Where will you film?

• When choosing a location, you need to know what background you want to film on, how you're going to get there and what permissions you need to record in that location.
• Are there obstacles that might get in the way? Are there noise issues, like construction? Is the lighting going to work?

5. Draft a simple script or bullet-points of the idea

• Write down everything that'll happen in the video down in chronological order. Start with the problem and work your way onto the solution, with any specific details you need to include.
• Your draft can be a little messy or even just be a bullet-point outline. Write down any questions you want to answer and things you want to highlight.

6. The day of recording

• With all your planning in place, the recording day should be relatively straight forward. You have your location, your actors and elements all ready to go.
• Ultimately, there should be no curve balls that come your way, because you've put the time and effort into getting your ducks in a row before filming. Your video shoot should be all about putting the video plan into action.

‍