When beginning work on any video or media production project, you should ask yourself the following questions:

1) Who is my audience? 

2) What am I trying to convey? 

3) How long will this take to shoot?

4) Cost 

5) What equipment do I need to film? 

6) Locations 

7) Crew 

8) Actors 

9) Distribution

These questions will help with planning. Additionally, the decisions that you decide on will affect the look and feel of your film. But most importantly, these questions will determine the story that you will tell.

If you are telling a story about college-aged students at a university and your audience is the same age as your characters, you may want to choose locations or showcase activities in your film that your audience will relate and connect to.

Conversely, if you plan an elaborate scene like a scene at a busy park and cannot secure the extras necessary to make the park or a store look completely full, you may need to be creative with the angles that you choose so that the audience believes that this was a busy park or store.