A client recently came to me with all the pieces of a jigsaw.

They knew what they wanted their video to achieve. They knew the audience they needed to reach. They had key messages, people they wanted involved, potential locations, deadlines and plenty of information about their business.

All the pieces were there. Our first creative briefing session was about laying them out on the table. My job from there? To start visualising the picture on the box. That, to me, is what good pre-production is really about.

Pre-production isn’t just planning the shoot

When people think about video production, understandably they tend to picture the visible parts. Cameras. Lights. Crew. Interviews. Locations. Editing. But by the time a camera comes out of its case, a huge number of decisions should already have been made.

Pre-production is where we work out what we’re actually trying to communicate, who we’re communicating with and how we’re going to do it effectively. It’s also where we start making decisions about what doesn’t need to be in the video. And that can be just as important.

Turning a lot of information into a clear message

One of the most common challenges I’m given isn’t a lack of information. It’s too much of it.

A business might have dozens of things it wants to communicate in a two-minute brand video. A safety video might need to take detailed procedures and turn them into something clear, concise and memorable. An event might run for three days, but the final highlights video needs to capture the experience in a couple of minutes.

That’s where the jigsaw analogy becomes useful.

You can’t force every piece into the same space simply because you have it. We need to understand which pieces are essential to the picture we’re trying to create.

• What does the audience actually need to know?
• What do we want them to think, feel or do after watching?
• What’s essential?
• What’s useful but ultimately a distraction?
• And what might make perfect sense internally, but mean very little to the person watching?

Those decisions start in pre-production.

Seeing the whole picture

This is also why I don’t see my role as simply being the person who turns up to produce a video. Yes, the technical side matters. You need the right equipment, the right people and the experience to capture everything properly. But equipment can’t see the picture on the box.

A camera can’t tell you whether an interview question is going to uncover the story you actually need. A lens can’t decide that a particular piece of information is distracting from the main message. And the latest piece of production gear isn’t going to tell you that the tone you’ve chosen isn’t right for your audience.

Those decisions come from understanding the bigger picture.

Pre-production shapes what happens on the day

Once we understand the picture we’re trying to build, the practical production decisions become much easier.

• What crew do we need?
• Who should we interview?
• What should we ask them?
• Which locations will help tell the story?
• What needs to be captured?
• How much time do we realistically need?
• Are there sensitivities we need to consider?
• What could go wrong, and how do we prepare for it?

For some productions I might need to bring together a larger specialist crew. For others, keeping things small and unobtrusive will produce a much better result. There’s no single production formula. The approach should be determined by the outcome, rather than trying to make the outcome fit a predetermined way of shooting.

And the jigsaw continues in the edit

Pre-production also has a huge influence on what happens after filming.

Take interviews.

We might record hours of conversation to create a video that’s only a couple of minutes long. The edit isn’t simply about shortening those interviews.

It’s about finding the pieces. That sentence which expresses an idea perfectly. The genuine reaction that says more than another paragraph could. The soundbite that connects two parts of the story. The moment that gives the video some humanity.

Those pieces then need to be combined with visuals, music, pacing, graphics and everything else in a way that feels cohesive. If we’ve done the thinking properly at the beginning, we know what we’re looking for. We can make decisions based on the picture we’re trying to create, rather than simply assembling whatever we happen to have captured.

Good pre-production makes production more efficient

There’s another, less glamorous reason all this matters. Efficiency.

Production days cost money. Crew cost money. Locations can cost money. And everyone’s time is valuable. Good pre-production means arriving on the day with a clear purpose. It doesn’t mean everything has to be rigidly scripted or that there’s no room for something unexpected to happen. Quite the opposite.

When the fundamentals are sorted, there’s often more freedom to recognise and capture those unexpected moments because we’re not trying to solve basic problems that should have been addressed weeks earlier.

The same applies in post-production. A clear direction means we’re not trying to force pieces into places where they obviously don’t fit.

The calm part of video production

Perhaps this is why my approach to production tends to be fairly calm and understated.

I like to do the thinking early. Listen. Ask questions. Understand the audience. Challenge something when it needs challenging. Bring in the right people. Anticipate the potential problems. And keep coming back to the outcome we’re trying to achieve. Because ultimately, clients aren’t coming to me just because they need someone with the right camera or editing software. They’re coming with a collection of pieces and an outcome they need to achieve.

My job is to help them see how those pieces fit together — and then bring the right people, thinking and production experience together to build the picture. And that process starts long before we press record.