Stress-Free Video Shoots: Pro Workflow & Filmmaking Secrets

0:00 I just concluded a wonderful production week, and it was so exciting. Today I'm going to give you some secrets that I use to make my production week less stressful.

1:03 shot everything on Sony S-Log3, the cine profile of Sony S-Log, so it's log, I can do HDR, it's all 4K, it looks gorgeous. And DaVinci is currently rendering someone else's footage, and that's right next to me, going in and just developing this HDR footage, which looks phenomenal. Lots of colors in the background, and it just looks high class. But you can't execute something high class without a good level of production preparedness, and we call that pre-production. Today we're not going to talk about pre-production, we've done that a little bit before, but rather we're going to talk about how pre-production helps production, and some secrets that I can give you to help you with your production.

2:05 back in the day, let me tell you, I've been in productions that have been extremely stressful. I've been in charge of productions that have been extremely stressful, and I've learned a lot from my mistakes. You can ask almost anyone I've been around, they know how stressful these things can get, especially live broadcasts. I did a lot of live events, sometimes did some commercials, some spots, things of that nature, and I'd record a whole bunch of media and, you know, we'd kind of have an idea, we'd kind of have a script, and we'd go out and it just wasn't as prepared as it could be.

3:07 dollars to do a commercial or whatever it is, and then they walk out stressed, feeling like it's not successful, feeling like it hurts, feeling like, like you don't want the client to walk away thinking you don't know how to do your job. You want them to walk away thinking, I started the day stressful, or I didn't start the day stressful, and I know you've got it. Because if a client walks away stressed, A, you're not doing, if you're a Christian, you're not doing what God's told you to be, and be a carrying his peace and his spirit about you. God is not the author of confusion. God's not the author of chaos. So wherever you go, even if you're in the midst of chaos, you should be the eye of the storm, in perfect peace.

4:11 curate. Do some, you know, ChatGPT, I had it scroll through some articles, and I had research come down, and I interviewed a couple members of my team, and, you know, we sat down together and we talked about the different components and we built a script and a preliminary storyboard. Went to a meeting, you know, we had our first production, our first meeting, you know, client signs, and then we had our first pre-production meeting, and we went through and we got some notes, and the script was good but it could be elevated. And so we went through round two and we did that, and we polished the script and we were able to polish the storyboard.

5:14 the scene and the set and the mood. And it kind of helped to let the, um, client know a little bit more about the process, and so that they weren't feeling very, um, how do I say, stressed by the creative conversation. Because when I get creative, I also get technical, because for some reason I'm both creative and technical. I'm an engineer and also a designer, and it's weird, it's an interesting personality that God has given me. Now that also comes with its own benefits, and it's cool, but a lot of people on the other end of a table are going to be like, I don't know what that is, I don't know what that technology is, I don't care, I just want to feel that it's executed.

6:15 we walked in and then had a chance to look at the storyboard. So they questioned the script, I was like, well, you just pair that to the storyboard, and they opened the storyboard because they had just printed it, and it's like, oh, I hate this black and white, because that's what they had at the time. I was like, well, you can pull it up on my iPad here, you go, and they were able to look at it, we were able to connect, make a little bit more changes to the script, and I kind of got a verbal approval, and we went into kind of preliminary.

7:16 we were playing phone tag, and they sat down, because I had the other interviews and they're kind of the same type of person, same kind of job, same kind of thing, and so I was able to ask the right questions and kind of hone in a little bit, and it worked fairly well. I ask that you add that if you're going to do any testimonials, any kind of, whether it's customer or whatever it is, that you pre-interview someone, better understanding of exactly what you need, those kinds of components. And that way you sit down in the chair and you're able to know, okay, this is how I tell the story, these are the questions I ask, these are responses I expect, and you're kind of able to ask leading questions to kind of enhance the story.

8:18 an interviewer sitting behind you or in front of the camera. In fact, quick cheat code if you're interviewing someone: here's the camera, be right next to the camera so they can make eye contact with you, and it looks almost like they're making eye contact with the lens. And that's why I get that little bit off-camera look when someone's being interviewed by a documentary, because it makes it more organic, because looking in front of a camera lens is not always easy to do, A, and B, you get distracted if you're seeing a live monitor view. And that's another thing, I don't usually put live monitor views on set unless you need the confidence boost and you're someone with a lot of experience, because most people aren't going to know what that is. And frankly it is even distracting me to look over here at my preview monitor as opposed to look here at my camera lens, which is more important because you get that eye contact. But anyway.

9:21 small light cubes to add some more light to things, because we ran out of some lighting, and, you know, just a few odds and ends. And then of course the lens that we were renting at the time for the B camera, which may or may not have worked very well, so we used the A camera lens and a different lens. But in any event, we did that, and then on Tuesday I met with the cinematographer and we did a walk through all the locations. We did this because it was one kind of building and one kind of place, and it was easier for me to show him, here's the storyboard, and we'll come through positioning, and we'll come through, and so you can get comfortable with questions. So that way Wednesday morning at 7 a.m., when call time was.

10:24 arrive at 7:15, I'm okay. If you arrive at 7:30, we got a problem. But I also encourage everyone to text me and stuff. And so, you know, I arrive at 7:02, it's late, it's my studio set, I should not be late. And then, you know, cinematographer arrives at 7:10, and the person who is on time and early, because if you're early, you're on time, um, the LD, he arrived at 6:45 and I was super surprised. It's the first time I worked for this particular LD, and he was referred by the cinematographer, and they worked very well hand in hand.

11:29 sure that we had the storyboard and we checked all the storyboard, and then we also got extra and additional footage. I always recommend, if you have the time and you have checked the box of your storyboard, great. Commercials are made by the spontaneity, the creativity that happens. We had a haze machine, we started adding haze, we started adding the colors, and we started adding it. We'd be like, oh, you know, it'd be cool if we could, you know, get tighter and extreme close-up here and show this action here, and the kind of things that were above and beyond what was spec'd on the storyboard. And you can only do that if you've done all this pre-planning, you, the cinematographer knows what he's doing, the LD knows what they're doing, and everyone just connects on set.

12:30 have been, um, two B-roll shoot days was mostly all, two, three, was mostly all shot on first day. Now we had personnel issues, and so we had to wait till the next day to do a few additional shots, and then we had interviews spec'd for, um, that Friday. And we were just literally on Wednesday running, running, running, we're good, checking, and then I pulled the SD card at the end of the day, check all the footage, make sure we're good. We had one footage, I was like, I don't know if that will work, and I was messing with the color grid, it's like, okay, good, I can make this work.

13:32 dude, I'm like one guy, and I have writers and I have people I contract with and I bounce ideas off of in a creative community, but for the most part this guy is it. And so for someone to say this is the most prepared production, I feel bad for everyone. Because if you're walking into production, you're walking on a set and you're stressed, A, that's going to convey to your talent. Your talent's going to see it in your face, and there's no way of hiding it. No amount of, you know, covering your face or, or pretending this smile is going to hide that you're stressed, and that's going to convey to your talent, and your talent's going to feel stressed, and that's going to convey to your, um, people you're working with, and they're going to be stressed. People on set stress, if they're all on set, that's when mistakes happen.

14:35 on set, and, you know, those kinds of things. People who know what that is know what I mean. So we were able to shoot these sets with both this creative capacity, to be stress-free, A, and to know exactly what we're doing, and added stuff, the haze is added, all that diffusion and those beams of lights, and it added that next level cinematic look. And we were able to add that in because I did test shots. The biggest, biggest thing I say in pre-production is do test shots.

15:40 a commercial, a piece unique, is because of all the adaptive colors and the HDR step. And now people use Rec 709 as their standard, but I've gone away with Rec 709 completely on most of my commercials, because most prosumer technology now supports HDR. And of course YouTube will do the, you know, conversion for you, and it's not a bad conversion, it used to be way back in the day, but it's now much, much better. And Instagram now does HDR. And so like the whole world right now is 4K HDR, and soon it'll be 8K HDR, and soon, if Apple can get it, it'll be VR.

16:43 you know, on Wednesday after we filmed the B-roll, we stayed for an additional hour and a half to set up the interview set, to strike stuff. We couldn't keep things, you know, lights and stands and everything where they were, so we had to literally strike it with gaff tape, and you know, you know, this is where it's going. We took photos of the scene and the sets and scenery, and we tested it. We did a bunch of test shots, it's able to be like, okay, this is going to work great if we change the lighting here. And the cinematographer's like, no, always point lighting directly on your subject. I'm like, no, no, I want that film work. I don't mind a little bit of harsh shadows, because I'm going for that kind of gritty story, but I also want that cinematic look.

17:45 like, when I use AI for suggestions on script, I give it all the information, I give it the research I get, and I pull the script and I make changes to the script, we go rounds, you know, team goes through it back and forth. It's just, it's a tool that helps kind of push things forward so they get a little bit faster and less stressful.

18:52 You know, test shots, pre-interview people, do location scouting, do all the traditional things that you think, oh, a movie company hires people to do. No, no. If a client is paying you, you have to understand that they're going to expect you to know your craft, whether it's printing T-shirts or whether it's, you know, creating a musical track or providing an accompaniment for something or whatever it is. They're going to expect you to know, or at least be able to hire people and include that in your invoice and those kinds of things. Most clients don't care if it takes XYZ to get the job done. You know, of course some people have budgets and things, you don't want to give an unlimited, you know, multi-million dollar cost for something that's not multi-million dollars. But if something takes extra time and resources, you as a business don't have to front that. You just have to know, okay, okay, we need this done, okay, I have to go get a cinematographer and make sure that I'm producing. And you have a cinematographer producing, directing, and he's cinematographer who also can direct and can also step in and works, we work well together, I mean, I pull him for everything we do, it's awesome, I love it. When he's here in Columbus

19:57 and because he's usually in Washington, DC, then, you know, try to find someone who can step in as key grip and step in as lighting director, kind of a combination of the two. And though technically in this particular instance he was more key grip than lighting technician, lighting director, but was award-winning and was kind of like a good sounding board for us. And it's first time I worked with him, and because, you know, I met with him, you know, a week before, interview, pre-interviewed him and got through paperwork and all that kind of stuff, I was able to know who he was.

21:02 to clients if you're walking in unprepared and not able to execute what you need to do. Now I will say this: when I was doing a lot of live stuff, um, no amount of preparation can prepare you for someone knocking over the set, for someone literally dying on live TV, going to their eternal reward, and you take a shot and you think that they're praying or whatever it is. This was for a non-profit, and they passed on. You're like, oh, there goes my career. No, it's things happen. And the amount of preparation you do, I always tell people this, when I spec days and I spec shots, I tell them, hey, I'm going to spec three days. Traditionally someone's going to say, I can knock this down in a day, and I tell you, I'm not going to do that, and here's why: we usually have scheduling conflict, and we use, I want to prepare for the worst.

22:06 and now I'm going here, DaVinci Resolve color grading, using, uh, Relight, using the new depth finder. It's awesome. Just adding a hint, because, because, you know, I just wanted a hair light because of this scenario. We couldn't add a hair light specifically where I wanted it, so I can add it in post, and tested it first. Please, please, anytime someone says fix it in post, if you can't test it, if you haven't tested it that you can fix in post, it's not, not, not an option. Just do it right the first time. But of course, you know, if you're running a little light and you've tested it and it's good, okay, then I can understand.

23:10 environment, and be able, oh, you know, you're going to say it that way, okay, we're going to change the camera angles and we're going to move things around because it feels better, because you're prepared. So I pray right now that you learn to live in peace through preparedness, and you learn to not only walk and exude the peace that God gave you, because he's the Alpha and the Omega. He created everything. He is, he knows the beginning from the end, the end from the beginning, and I can tell you he is fully prepared for every eventual scenario you have. Free will, he knows exactly what choice you're going to make even if you don't, and he's prepared for it. It's why grace and mercy exists, because he knows that we are flawed human beings, and sometimes we have harsher shadows and lights than we should, and we make mistakes. He knows that some of us make mistakes the day before yesterday or whatever, you know, we all make mistakes, but God the Father prepared, and he gave us peace, and that peace that passes all understanding. And if we tune into the Holy Spirit, and I pray you tune into the Holy Spirit, I pray that you tune in, and then you listen to your client, you listen, you let wisdom and understanding be your guide, and that stress

24:10 lives off you, in Jesus my name I pray, amen. Be blessed. This is the Create Podcast, it's a pleasure to have you here. Don't forget to like, share, comment, send us to someone that you know that's being a creative. Please understand, I have lots of years of experience and I have a lot of things to dive into, and who knows, maybe something that you have a problem with, I have a solution for. See you right here next time on the Create Podcast. Don't forget to like, share, comment, all those wonderful things, and let me know that you're enjoying this content. You be blessed, and you be at peace.