What are The 5 Stages of Video Production?

Following the 5 stages of video production are essential for any video production project to be successful. Breaking production down into these five discrete segments has helped production companies ensure productions big and small are successful and efficient.

The 5 Stages of Video Production

The five stages of video production are strategy and development, pre-production, production and post-production. Each phase is designed to help plan and prepare for the following stages, ensuring the process goes as smoothly as possible. Let’s break down each phase and go into detail about what they entail. 

Strategy and Development

In this stage, the key focus is coming up with the strategy for the video, if you don’t already have one. It’s important to dedicate this time to defining or reiterating the video’s goals, messaging and other guidelines for the content you’re going to create. This stage is easy to overlook, but it’s essential to set the right foundation for the rest of the production process. Making sure that you, your team, and any partners or vendors you’re working with know and understand the underlying strategy, goals and KPIs will help future planning phases go more smoothly.

Stage 2: Pre-Production 

In pre-production, the planned content and goals that were defined in the strategy portion of the video production are made actionable. In this stage, you’ll begin to define budgets and the project’s scope, create scripts and storyboards, develop a timeline for the production and post-production phases that will follow, scout locations and talent, source equipment and more. Basically, this phase is for identifying everything that needs to be created, gathered or otherwise planned for before the actual production phase begins. 

Stage 3: Production

The production stage is where the planning we did in the strategy and pre-production phases comes together and the actual shooting begins. This phase is where you’ll actually set up the locations and equipment, shoot the footage planned for in your storyboard or shot list, have talent perform your script, and otherwise create all the content you’ll need for your final product.

Stage 4: Post-Production

Once the video is shot and production has wrapped, it’s post-production time. Post-production is where the video gets edited into what you see as the final product. Video footage and sound are edited and mixed. Music or voiceovers might be added, and visual effects could be created. Maybe your video needs titles, credits, cards or other text additions. Whatever needs to be done to transform and augment the assets you created in the production phase into your final product will be done in this portion of the process.

Like many other parts of this process, the final steps of the post-production phase are dedicated to preparing for the next phase: distribution. 

Stage 5: Distribution 

Hopefully, a plan for distribution is something you’ve already accounted for, particularly in the strategy or pre-production phase. Distribution is all about sharing your video with the world. Now that you have it, how will people see it? Will it be shown on TV, on your social media accounts, on your website? Whatever your distribution plan, now that the video is completed, you’re ready to set the plan in motion and, hopefully, capture the attention of your intended audience.

The Importance of Video Production Stages

No matter how big or small your project, it’s extremely important to go through these stages in order when producing any kind of video content in order to ensure:

• Timely product delivery

  • Defining all aspects of the project, including the production timeline, will help you produce and complete the video on time. By having these stages completed and outlined as you go through your production, you can eliminate issues that tend to arise and cause delays or a need for excess work or budget created by elements that weren’t planned or accounted for.

• High task and responsibility coordination 

  • Having tasks outlined and knowing who is responsible for completing them helps make sure that everyone has a manageable workload and the completion of their tasks fits into the video’s production timeline.

• Reduced need for editing and revisions

  • With a set plan and strategy, you’ll reduce the need for lots of time spent in post-production trying to make edits or add additional pieces to make sure the video is on tone and message.

• Accurate pricing estimations

  • Planning out and budgeting these different phases of the production process and what time and costs will go into each task and phase will help you stay on budget and accurately estimate what portion of the budget it will take. 

Conclusion 

Staying true to every phase of the video production process is something that we take seriously at Once Films. To partner with us on your next video project, contact us.