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Produce3 min read

The pre-filming checklist: batteries, storage, mic, light, frame

By Chris and Corey · · Updated

Five minutes of checks before you film beats discovering a dead mic in the edit. The five things to confirm before you hit record, every time.

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ProduceLinked task: Prep the setup · step 13 of the 47
Flat illustration of a checklist.

Almost every ruined shoot fails on something small and preventable: a flat battery, a full card, a microphone that was never plugged in. None of it is a skill problem. It is a checklist problem, and the fix is a two-minute run through the same five things before every film session.

These failures earn a permanent slot because they are invisible until the worst possible moment. The mic looked on. The card looked fine. You find out it was not when you sit down to edit and the audio is your camera's tinny built-in track, and the only fix is to film the whole thing again.

The five checks, every time

  1. 1
    Batteries. Camera and mic, both charged, with a spare or a cable in reach. Wireless mics die silently and at the worst moment.
  2. 2
    Storage. Card in, space on it, formatted. "Card full" mid-take is a momentum killer you can delete in advance.
  3. 3
    Mic. Connected, on, and levels moving when you talk. Record ten seconds and play it back before the real take. Always.
  4. 4
    Light. Enough of it, on your face, not behind you. A window behind you turns you into a silhouette.
  5. 5
    Frame. Headroom right, eyeline level, background tidy, nothing growing out of your head.
The ten-second test take is the most important one. Record, play it back, watch and listen. Most shoot disasters announce themselves in those ten seconds, while they are still free to fix.

Build it once, reuse it forever

Your setup is probably the same most weeks: same room, same camera, same spot. So the checklist is the same too. Write it once, stick it where you film, and run it on autopilot. The five minutes does not slow you down. It removes the single biggest source of re-shoots, which is the thing that actually slows you down.

If your kit changes shoot to shoot, the list gets one line longer, not abandoned. If the kit passes this check every week and the videos are still quiet, the honest next question is whether spending money would help, and better camera gear is rarely the upgrade that moves the numbers. The principle holds: confirm the boring physical things before you commit a performance to them.

The frame is part of the kit check

Technical readiness is not only batteries and cards. A clean frame is part of being set up: level eyeline, a bit of headroom, a background that is not fighting you for attention. It costs nothing to glance at and it is another thing you cannot fix once the footage exists. Tidy the shot before you fill the card with it.

Where Chewbr fits

Prep the setup is step 13 of the 47, the first Produce step, sitting between a finished plan and the first real take. It is deliberately separated from filming so the boring checks happen with a clear head, before the pressure of performing starts and small things get skipped.

Keep reading

Kit sorted, you are ready to roll: shooting A-roll, two takes of the hook. The moment you wrap, back the footage up before anything else touches it.