Planning Video Content with Holly Gillen

Holly Gillen from Holly G Studios has a background in video production and cinematography and she helps people master video content for their businesses and personal brands. In this episode, we talk about pre-planning video content before you hit that record button!

Listen to Episode 22: Planning Video Content with Holly Gillen

Holly and I have been online business buddies for three years or so. She has a background in video production and cinematography, and now she helps people master video content in their businesses, their personal brands and beyond.

Holly describes herself as your ‘goto video gal’, empowering experts and leaders to go from confused to confident, from fearful to fearless, on both sides of the camera. She does this by teaching them the skills they need to create what she calls ‘business cinema’ which is the way Holly describes the next level of videos. It’s video with a plan, a purpose, a system, and a strategy. Not just creating videos just for the sake of creating videos, but actually creating videos that help move your business forward.

Planning video content starts with a plan! So as Holly and I recorded this podcast, it is November 19th, 2018. Already, I am thinking ahead to 2019 and what videos am I going to create starting in January? What am I going to be publishing? You really need to be thinking ahead, especially because it’s super important to remain consistent on your youtube channel and all your associated content that goes along with that.

But it’s easy to fall behind on your video production! Both Holly and I are both guilty of this, but there is no shame in it whatsoever. This is why it is really important to plan ahead and have your content prepared ahead of time so when you have moments in your life that pop up and need your attention, you have a backlog of content prepared and ready to go.

Planning Ahead

One of Holly’s secret Ninja skills is planning and organizing and it’s something She’s been obsessed with since childhood. Shopping for school supplies, like going to the office supply store and rummaging through all the new office supplies, through to having a fresh planner to plan out her dreams and aspirations. Now, involved in video production professionally, it is no exception. It is no surprise that when Holly started her business that she created a whole planning system around video. Preproduction is 60 to 65 percent of the process. If you just nailed that part, the rest of the stuff is easy

Holly created the seven phases of business cinema and this is how She personally plans and teaches people. With respect to planning video content, Holly thinks about the first steps which are primary principles and pre-production; getting clear on the foundations of your content.

Before you even think about picking up your camera, Holly suggests you think about what she calls ‘the four pillars of preproduction’; which are ‘why, who, what and how’. Why am I actually making this video content? Why I’m actually doing what I’m doing? This is super important. Who am I making this content for? If you have a couple of different levels of people that you work with or different target audiences, you need to identify this before you start. What kind of content am I producing? Is it a tutorial, a discussion, a Vlog, or something else? Then lastly, How am I going to do it? Do I need a new camera? Do I have the lighting that I need? Do I have the audio equipment that I need? How much time do I have, and what is the budget can also play a big part at this stage as well. All this is just step one in the process.

The Big Picture

Planning video content also involves strategizing. It’s not about making a video today, It’s part of a bigger picture. It’s part of a bigger strategy. Having a vision for the year. For example, what am I going to be focusing on in January? What am I going to be focusing on in February? Planning this early enough allows you to maximize your time when you have it, and have content prepared and ready to go for when you don’t have the time.

To listen in on the entire conversation with Holly, please listen to episode 22 of the Video Pursuit Podcast in iTunes, or your favorite podcast player.