What Are The 3 Stages Of Video Production?

If you’ve visited our FAQ page, and we’ll assume that you have, you’d have no doubt seen that we spoke about the process of video production in three stages.

What Are The 3 Stages Of Video Production?


If you’ve visited our FAQ page, and we’ll assume that you have, you’d have no doubt seen that we spoke about the process of video production in three stages.


These three stages are pre-production, production and post-production.


Every professional video you see will go through these stages in some shape or form.


The structure will differ but the process never changes.


Seeing as we’ve already covered this before in a previous article, we’ll keep it as short and as simple as possible!

Pre-production

The simplest way to describe pre-production is the planning stage.


This is where you’ll discuss initial ideas, create storyboards and write scripts.


The most crucial part of this stage is deciding upon a clear goal or objective and defining the target audience of your video. Without these, you really are setting yourself up to fail.


So how long should you spend on planning?


Unfortunately, there is no definitive answer here. It will depend entirely upon the purpose of your project and the type of video that you want to create.


Some projects will spend months in the planning stage, like television productions and high budget commercials. Other projects might only require a week or so of planning, especially if the subject in question can’t really be accurately planned for (think of shoots involving factors that we can’t control - e.g. sports, weather, animals).

Production

The simplest, and only real way, to define this stage is the creation stage.


Whether you’ve opted for a traditional production or an animated video, this is the stage where your ideas will come to life.


If you’ve commissioned a production company or an animation studio to create your video, this stage is going to be really easy for you. You won’t have to do anything besides wait for your masterpiece to be made!


If, on the other hand, you’re creating it yourself, this is where you’ll follow through on all of your previous planning. 


No need to worry here. If you’ve taken the time to map out a solid plan in the pre-production stage, all you have to do here is actually do it.


Simple!

Post-production

The simplest way to define this stage is the editing stage, where all the final tweaks and touches are added to your satisfaction.


Again, if you’ve commissioned a production company, this stage is going to be really easy for you.


All you have to do is wait for them to send you over a draft for your approval. You will get a chance to request changes and discuss the edit through with the team until you are happy with the final video. 


If you’re creating the video yourself, this will be the stage where you edit together the footage you captured from the production stage. Then you can make final tweaks and edits until you’re happy with what you’ve created.

Final thoughts

We’ve very briefly covered the three stages of video production within this article.


You could very easily go into more detail with these stages and break them down further. We’re just providing you with a short general guide to understanding the basic process that all video projects go through.


Out of all three of the stages, we can’t stress enough the importance of building a solid plan in the pre-production stage. If done effectively, it will literally guide you through the production and post-production process with ease. Of course, you always have to expect some issues to arise. That's unfortunately just the nature of video production!