Have you ever finished filming a wedding, sat down in the editing room, and wondered "There were so many more shots I could've captured", us too. We know the better prepared you are for a wedding, the better your final product will be. Luckily for us wedding videographers, we are able to utilize the internet and the world wide web, to create amazing shot lists for us to utilize for our weddings gigs.
Creating shot lists has greatly helped us at Diam Weddings capture some of our most beautiful scenes, as well as find inspiration for new ideas. In this blog, I'll lay out our process for creating shot lists so you too can create some amazing shot lists and produce you're best wedding videos.
#1 Inspiration
One of my favorite things about filmmaking and the internet is that finding inspiration has never been easier. To create shot lists you need to find frames and images you want to base your next film off of. Sites like Frame Set, and Unsplash are great resources to find inspiration for your wedding videos. Simply searching 'weddings' on either of the sites brings up thousands of images, and stills showcasing every shot you can think of. Wedding ceremonies at night, middle of the day, morning, in a forest, in a desert, big weddings, small weddings, anything you can think of, you can find it.
My favorite site to use is Frameset. Frameset has the utmost customization within its filters so you can really hone in on the shots you're looking for. Looking for wedding shots filmed with a 21mm lens, Frame Set has a filter for that. Filters aside, we now have the sites needed to find our inspiration, but how are we going to organize this so you can make sure you're getting the same shots throughout the wedding?
On Frameset you're able to create a 'Set' where you can add images/frames you find on the website. I like to create a set for each wedding I'm filming to make sure I'm organized. Once you have all of your frames in a Set, you'll be able to view all of your frames without having to search for the projects individually. Now, you can end here with all of your inspiration in one folder, but I like to take it one more step, enter Milanote.
#2 Shot List
It is my personal belief every wedding videographer should be using Milanote. Milanote is an easy-to-use tool where you can organize your ideas and projects. I use this site for everything from pre-production to production, and sometimes even post-production! Milanote even has templates for storyboards, shot lists, mood boards, and more. In the same way I like to make new Sets for each wedding on Frame Set, I like to make new 'Boards' on Milanote for each wedding I'm doing. Now that you've made a new board, and clicked on the shot list template on Milanote, go back to Frameset and start bringing your images into your Milanote board. As shown in the picture below, I like to separate images/frames based on shot type (wide, medium, close), as well as who is in the frame (bride, groom, etc.). You can also stack images so you don't need a thousand columns!
After adding all of the inspirational frames you found to each of your columns, you are all set. There are a lot more ways to customize each column so play around with it and find what you like!
Now that we have Frame Set ready, Milanote is all organized how do we utilize this throughout our shoots?
#3 Utilization
Now that you have all of your inspiration, and it is all organized it's time to figure out how to utilize it. The most efficient strategy we have is to download the Milanote app on your mobile device. This way you'll be able to periodically check to make sure you're getting all of the shots you put into the project, and it can help you if you run out of ideas. You can also print the Milanote project out if you'd prefer to have a physical copy.
There are so many different ways you can create a shot list before your next wedding. Taking the time to look through, and find inspiration, then organizing it will only increase your confidence during your next shoot.
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