Digital Home Thoughts: Neil's Random Video Tip #5: Make a Shot List

I know, you're saying "man, what kind of whacked vacation did this guy go on? A shot list? Is he insane?". But wait! Hear me out!

I'm not talking about a crazy detailed list of shots with actors, camera positions, etc. On our trip we had a crumpled piece of paper from a notepad that lived in the pocket of my shorts. It was really valuable as a reminder of things we wanted to take video of. When we were out driving around and saw something funny or worthwile to tape, we wrote it down so we could come back later and do it.

This was really helpful at preventing the camcorder from invading our vacation. Not only could we enjoy a ton of non-camera time, when we did set out to use the camcorder we had a nice list of the things we wanted to video, and could even start piecing together in our head how the final product might look when we got home. It also helped keep track of the b-roll (tip 1) we wanted to get.