Plan it properly and one day on set can keep your social channels and YouTube busy for weeks. Here’s how to structure it.
Most businesses know they should be posting video every week. Very few have time to film every week. The answer is batching: plan a month of content, then capture all of it in one well-organised shoot day.
It’s the approach I recommend to most businesses I work with on a monthly basis. Here’s how to make the day count.
The shoot day is only as good as the list you bring to it. Before anything else, decide what the month needs to say.
The questions customers always ask, behind the scenes, results and proof, your opinions on your industry.
Give each one a working title before the shoot. If you wouldn’t click it, rethink it. I explain why in why your YouTube videos aren’t getting views.
Which are long-form YouTube videos, and which are short vertical clips for Reels, TikTok and Shorts.
You don’t need a word-for-word script. A few bullet points per video usually work better: they keep you on track without making you sound like you’re reading.
Group everything by location and set-up, not by video. Moving lights and cameras is what eats a shoot day, so you only want to do it a few times. A running order that works well:
The outfit change matters more than it sounds: it stops the month looking like it was all filmed on one day.
Shoot at a high resolution and leave room around the subject, so one clip can be cropped to vertical for Reels and Shorts as well as used in a widescreen YouTube edit.
Frame the widescreen shot with space either side, and the vertical crop is already there.
Capture more B-roll than feels necessary. It’s what gives the editor something to cut to, and it’s a big part of keeping people watching.
Being on camera for a full day is tiring. Schedule breaks, keep water and food nearby, and film the most important pieces early, while energy is high.
Having someone behind the camera who can prompt you, ask questions and tell you honestly when a take didn’t land makes a huge difference to how natural you come across.
The same thinking applies after the shoot. Edit the long-form videos first, then cut the short clips from the same footage. Write titles, thumbnails and captions together, then schedule the month so it goes out steadily rather than all at once.
The exact numbers depend on the plan and how much you want to say, but the principle holds.
One organised day beats four rushed ones.
Planning, filming and editing monthly shoot days is a big part of what I do for businesses in Bristol, the South West and beyond. See my services or start a project and we’ll plan your first month together.
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