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Making your own video can seem a little overwhelming at first, but it helps to become familiar with the three main stages involved in creating a video. Whether it’s a simple YouTube tutorial or a Best Picture winner, most videos follow the same three steps. In this article, we will provide an overview of:

1. Pre-Production: The planning stage. How can you best prepare to shoot your video?
2. Production: Shooting your video. What do you need to do know about camera, lighting, and audio equipment to best execute your vision?
3. Post-Production: Editing your video. How do you put all the final pieces together to present your final video?

Having some familiarity with each of these stages before diving in will help you create your own video content.

Pre-Production is all about sitting down and planning how to make your video. Photo by Flickr user Eelke.

Pre-Production

Let’s say you want to throw a big dinner party. The dinner party doesn’t just happen, it requires planning. You have to pick a time and a place, send out invitations, and maybe even pick a theme (if you want to get fancy). You have to decide what food you want to serve, find some recipes, get all your ingredients together, and make sure you have enough time prepare everything on the day of the party. There’s a lot of planning to be done before you even turn on the oven!

That’s what the pre-production phase is for video. It’s checking your recipes and writing out your shopping list. This is the planning phase. This is when you want to ask yourself “What am I making?” and “How am I going to make it?”

Pre-Production can be as simple as deciding “I want to do a video blog post talking about why I started dancing.” Or it might be as complex as to involve scripting, storyboarding, and shot lists. Maybe this video is just going to be you talking into a smartphone’s camera. Or maybe you’ve written a scene, and you need two actors and a location to bring the story to life. Those videos will have different needs, and require different amounts of pre-production.

You might also want to ask yourself where is this video going to live? Will it be broadcast in a theater or viewed online? It’s important to consider the end goal now, so that you know how to shoot your video during the production process. Pre-Production is you should take the time to make sure you have all your ducks in a row.

Here are a couple of things to consider during Pre-Production:

• Script: Does your video have a script? Does it need one?
• Storyboard: What do you want your video to look like? How can you plan that out now?
• Shot list: How many types of shots will you need to get for your video? What’s the best order to shoot them in?
• Location: Where are you shooting your video?
• Gear: What are you using to shoot your video?
• Cast: Who do you need in front of the camera?
• Crew: Who do you need behind the camera?
• Final Video Specifications: Where will people see your video – on TV? On Social Media? Does the final platform your video will be exhibited on already list recommended specifications for video?
• Budget: How much money do you have to make this video?

Lights, camera, action! Production is when it's time to shoot your video. 

Production

You have a vision, and you’re prepared to execute it. It’s time to shoot your video! Now, how do you do that? Below are a couple of simple and advanced techniques when it comes to choosing your camera, lighting, and audio equipment. Some of this equipment you might already have on hand, some you might be looking to purchase. Most equipment is also available to rent for a cheaper fee than purchasing.   

It is also important to remember that with production, ideally you’ll capture more footage than you need to use. If you’re doing a simple tutorial video, maybe you’ll run through the tutorial a few times, so that you can use the best take. If you’re filming a scene, you might want your actors to run through their parts a few times so that you have a couple of different options to pick from when it’s time to edit. You can never capture too much footage – the Oscar-winning film Mad Max: Fury Road, which has a run time of 2 hours, was cut together from 480 hours worth of footage.

Camera

If you want to shoot video, you’re going to need a camera. The production field has come a long way since the film cameras of the late 1800s, and there are tons of options available now when it comes to recording your content.

Smartphones, such as those developed by Apple, Google, and Samsung, are all equipped with video capabilities (left). Compact cameras and camcorders (right) offer a more dedicated recording device. 

Simple

In this day and age, many people actually have a high-quality recording device in their pocket: a smartphone. If you have a smartphone with a built-in camera, then you might be all ready to go. Camera phones can be a great option for shooting everything from a social media video to a full film. In fact, director Sean Baker’s 2015 feature film, Tangerine, was shot entirely using smartphones. So if you already own a smartphone, don’t discount that as a tool for shooting your video.

There are a few things that it’s important to keep in mind when shooting with a smartphone. One is storage capacity – check to see how much space is left on your phone before you start shooting, keeping in mind that video can take up a lot of storage.

Smartphones also require good light to capture video. In lower-light settings, the picture can start to look grainy. And even though smartphones can zoom in on images, you probably don’t want to use that feature when capturing video, as it will produce a pixelated, lower-quality image. Instead, just physically move your smartphone to frame your shot. 

The next step up from a smartphone is a dedicated camera such as a camcorder or compact camera, otherwise known as a point-and-shoot. Point-and-shoots are named for their simplicity – you the point the camera at what you want to capture, and shoot it. Camcorders operate in a similar way. While there is a wide price range for cameras, there are camcorders and point-and-shoots available for less than $500.

Unlike with mirrorless or DSLR cameras, there’s no worrying about lenses with smartphones, camcorders, or point-and-shoots. All of these camera options are user-friendly and don’t require much extra work beyond putting the camera on a tripod, framing a shot, and hitting record.

Mirrorless cameras and DSLR cameras are much pricier, but offer more sophisticated control over the shot through built-in settings and different lens options.

Intermediate

If you want higher-quality video and more control over your picture, you will probably want to look into a mirrorless camera or a digital single-lens reflex camera (otherwise known as a DSLR).

While these cameras do come with an automatic setting, the real advantage to them is the sophisticated control they give the user, allowing the user to independently adjust things like aperture, ISO, white balance, and focus. Doing a little bit of research and becoming more familiar with these technical aspects will help you to fully take advantage of all that these cameras can offer you.

Another advantage to these cameras is lens options. Unlike a smartphone or point a shoot, when you buy a mirrorless or DSLR camera, you’re usually buying the camera body and will need to purchase at least one lens to be able to actually shoot anything. These cameras come with a variety of different lens options, all of which offer another level of control over your picture.

DSLRs are a much pricier option, with camera bodies costing anywhere between $500 to $2000, and lenses running around a similar price.

Lighting Equipment

Unfortunately, it’s actually not as simple as point the camera and shoot the picture. In order to capture the best possible video, it’s important to light the scene.

A good place to start with lighting is to understand three-point lighting. Even if you’re not working with a full lighting kit and your set up is just yourself and a window, having a familiarity with this standard set up will help inform your lighting choices and production set up. 

Three-point lighting is the go-to method for lighting a scene. It involves using three lights (called a key light, fill light, and back light) to light a subject while also minimizing background shadows. The key light provides the most direct light on the subject. The fill light also shines on the subject, usually in a way that “fills in” the rest of the subject, eliminating hard shadows that the key light might leave. And the back light illuminates the subject from behind, helping to separate them from the background.

Simple

One of the most accessible forms of lighting is natural light, or daylight. It’s free, and if used efficiently can offer good, even coverage. To see an example of how daylight can be used, just look at the difference between taking a photo with someone who has a window behind them (or is backlit) versus someone who has a window in front of them.

In the first photo, the man is backlit. In the second photo, he is front lit. The only difference is the position of the camera. Photo by Tasnia Habib. 

If you’re shooting in a home, you can also compliment daylight by being strategic about where you shoot. In front of windows offers good coverage. Shooting in wide open rooms with light colored walls also helps to reflect or bounce light. You can also use lighting already available in your home, such as ceiling lights, floor lamps, and desk lamps, to provide even more coverage, or act as improvised key lights. Simple materials that you have on hand, such as poster boards or aluminum foil, can also function as reflectors or bounce boards.

Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki won the Academy Award for his work on 2015’s The Revenant, which used natural light when filming. Never underestimate the power of natural light!

Another popular, cost-efficient lighting option is the ring light.

A ring light mounted on a stand (left), and a woman demonstrating how to use a ring light (right).

The aptly named ring light is a light in the shape of ring, usually designed for the camera to sit in the center. It provides easy lighting for close-up shots, making it particularly well suited for any straight-to-camera pieces and a popular option for vloggers. Ring lights are also on the cheaper side when it comes to lighting equipment, running anywhere from $15 - $100.

Intermediate

Okay, so you want to be able to shoot independent of daylight and have full, consistent control over your scene’s lighting. You want to get serious and invest in a lighting kit. There are a lot of options and avenues to explore when it comes to putting together a lighting kit, since lights can cost anywhere from a hundred to a couple thousand dollars. 

If you’re putting together a lighting kit for the first time, you’re probably looking at LED or fluorescent lights, since these are the most affordable and easy to use. You might explore other lighting options as well though, such as tungsten lights. These lights all have different pros and cons, from cost, to power usage, to amount of heat emitted. Many places sell beginner lighting kits for video, and these are usually a good starting point.

An LED lighting kit by GVM, a fluorescent lighting kit by impact, a tungsten lighting kit by CAME-TV. Photos from B&H Photo Video. 

Your lighting kit should also include equipment such as lighting modifiers – similar to how most lamps in your home are probably covered by a lampshade to diffuse and direct light, lights for video also use different types of equipment to maximize and control light.

While there are many types of lighting modifiers, such as reflectors, umbrellas, and gels, one of the most common types is the soft box. The soft box is a versatile piece of equipment that goes over the lamp to help diffuse light. They are most often box shaped (hence the name), but come in a variety of shapes and sizes. A good starting soft box will probably be around $100.

Audio Equipment

Most cameras have built-in microphones and will record audio alongside video, and maybe that’s fine for your video! However, even a little bit of extra thought and planning can go a long way in producing better audio, and that extra planning is well worth it. Bad audio will often ruin a video in a way that bad lighting doesn’t – think about it, how much do you enjoy listening to the sound of a static TV?

Recording audio can also seem complicated, but it’s easy if you keep two goals in mind: you want to be able to control your environment, and you want the microphone to be as close to you as possible.

When recording audio, it’s important to consider the environment you’re in. We don’t always notice the sounds around us because we’re so used to them, but take a moment to listen. Is there a fan going? A refrigerator humming? Birds and traffic? A plane overhead? Roommates talking? All of these noises can compete with the actual sound you are trying to record for your video. If you can, do a test recording so that you can listen back to it and see how it sounds.

You will get better audio if you record in a quiet, indoor space. Try to avoid big, empty rooms as they can cause more of an echo. Rooms with rugs or acoustic panels can help absorb sound. If you’re not shooting any video and only recording your voice, then a small space like the inside of a car can actually become a great impromptu sound booth!

So now you know where and how you should record, but what should you use to capture your audio?

Simple

Headphones or earphones with built-in microphones are a great place to start. Wireless earphones are particularly great if you plan to be standing far away from your recording device and can’t rely on its built-in recorder to capture your voice. In general, most other microphones will be better than relying on your camera’s built-in mic.

A lavalier microphone (left), can be clipped to the speaker's clothes. First photo by Flickr user ttexhwby37, second photo by Flickr user Asim Bharwani. 

Another simple solution is to get a lavalier microphone, sometimes called a lapel mic or lav mic. A lav mic is a small microphone that is usually worn under a person’s clothes and clipped somewhere near their neckline and is a great mic for capturing just one or two people talking. They can either record audio into anything with a headphone jack (such as a smartphone or computer), or can be used alongside a professional audio recorder. Lavalier microphones have a wide price range, anywhere from $15 to a couple of hundred dollars for a wireless mic set. However, even investing in a cheap lavalier mic will offer a noticeable improvement in quality over a built-in camera microphone.

Intermediate

If you want to get more advanced with your then you might want to look into a separate audio recorder or field recorder. Audio recorders function for audio the same way cameras function for video; it’s a device dedicated to capturing audio files. They will usually capture audio files to a separate card, such as SD card, and require some amount of post-production work to marry the audio files to the video.

Audio is key! Audio recorders might require a little more work and research to use effectively, but the results will be much clearer than audio captured from a smartphone or set of headphones. Photos from BH Photo Video. 

Audio recorders will usually have their own high quality built-in microphone as well as separate inputs that allow you to connect more microphones. Why would you want to use an audio recorder? Well, even a fancy DSLR camera isn’t going to have much more than an aux input. With an audio recorder you can have two wireless lavalier microphones and a shotgun microphone set up and all recording to the same device.

Audio recorders range in price, with simpler ones ranging anywhere from $100 to $2000.

That's a wrap - time to edit! Professional editing bays can involve many components, such as the one pictured above. Photo by Uwe Schwarze. 

Post-Production

That’s a wrap on shooting! Now you have a bunch of video files on your smartphone, or maybe on a separate card like an SD card. Maybe you even have a separate batch of audio files. What comes next?

Now it’s time to put everything together. If you had a really simple set up – maybe you just plugged a lav mic into your smartphone and recorded a video of yourself talking to the camera – then you might not have much post production at all. Your next step might just be to upload your video!

But if you have an SD card full of .mov files and another SD card with .wav files, then it might be time to dig into more of the post-production process.

Post-production is everything that happens after shooting and is mostly defined by editing, the process by which you assemble all your pieces together to create your final video.

During editing, you’ll figure out how all your pieces will fit together – this is where your script or storyboard is going to be useful. First you’ll have to transfer your files onto whichever device you are using to edit (most likely a computer) and bring them into a program designed for video editing.

A section of the editing timeline from Toy Story 4, edited by Axel Geddes. Photo from . 

Like all stages of the video process, technology has also made editing more accessible. There are many free video editing programs available to download, although most might require a quick tutorial if it’s your first time video editing. There are also more advanced editing programs that will cost more money, but again will offer much more control over your final product.

The editing process can be as simple or as advanced as you want. Remember Mad Max: Fury Road? It took film editor Margaret Sixel three years to assemble that movie. Editing is all about choices, and a the bare minimum will usually involve putting your video and audio together on an editing timeline, but it can also include adding music, graphics, titles, special effects, color correction, and many other things.

When you’re done with your edit, it’s time export your video. This is when you’ll want to check those specs again to make sure you are exporting a video with correct settings.

And congratulations! You’re done! Now you get to roll out the red carpet and premiere your hard work. At least until the next idea strikes you!