Planning a Shoot

Most bad videos were ruined before anyone pressed record. The camera was fine. The person holding it just did not know what the video was for, so they shot a little of everything and nothing they needed. Planning fixes that, and for a three-minute piece it takes about twenty minutes with a pen.

One sentence of purpose, one destination

Write a single sentence that finishes "When this video ends, the viewer will know..." Then write where it will run. Those two lines decide almost every choice that follows.

Notice what the destination already settled. Two orientations means you will shoot both, or shoot one with room to crop (lesson 2 covers that). Ninety seconds means you get maybe four sentences of interview and a handful of pictures. And the article embed means the horizontal version can be a little slower.

If you cannot write the purpose sentence, you are not ready to shoot. Go report some more.

Script, interview, or both

A scripted piece is written first, word for word, then recorded as narration over pictures (or read to camera). An interview piece is built from what other people say, with your questions cut out. Most good short news videos mix them.

The road bond explainer gets a script. The farmer whose well went dry gets an interview. The water rate story above probably gets a short narrated open with the numbers, then one resident and one board member.

Even for an interview piece, write your questions down and write the two or three sentences you hope to hear. You will not get those exact words. But knowing what you need tells you when you have it, and when to ask again. Interview technique itself lives in the Journalism module; here the point is that the plan names who you need on camera before you go.

Scripts for video run short. Spoken narration lands at around 150 words a minute for most people, so a 90-second piece holds roughly 200 words of narration, less if interview clips take some of the time. Read your script aloud with a stopwatch. Every first draft is too long.

The shot list

A shot list is the plan for the edit, written before the shoot. Group it by location so you are not driving back across town for one shot. For each line, note the shot size and why you need it.

Shoot more than the list. The AV craft chapter When to cut, and why most cuts fail suggests about three times the B-roll you think you need, and that is about right. Every cut in an interview needs a picture to hide it. Lesson 5 covers what those pictures should be.

Release forms

A release form is a signed note from a person saying you may use their image and voice. People ask whether every person in a news video needs one. The general answer is no, and the reason matters.

The legal claim a release protects against is usually right of publicity or misappropriation. Those are state-law claims about using someone's name or likeness for a commercial purpose without consent, like putting their face in an ad. The Digital Media Law Project's guide explains that news and commentary on matters of public interest generally fall under a newsworthiness exception, which many courts treat as a First Amendment protection. The details vary by state, and the exception has limits: a photo unrelated to the story can look like an ad in disguise.

So the working rule:

• News or commentary, public matter, person shown in connection with the story: a release is not generally required. Getting a simple on-camera "yes, you can use this" at the start of an interview is still good practice and costs nothing.
• Ad, promotion, fundraising video, anything selling something: get a signed release from every identifiable person. The Political Ads module goes further on this.
• Minors: get a parent or guardian's signature whenever a child is identifiable and featured, whatever the purpose.
• Private property featured in an ad: a property release from the owner.

A release can be one paragraph: names, date, what the footage is for, where it may appear, signatures. Keep a photo of each signed form with the footage.

Filming in public places, and permits

In the United States, what is plainly visible from a public street, sidewalk or park is generally fair to film. That includes buildings, people in public, and government officials doing their jobs. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press notes that the First Amendment generally protects recording officials performing their duties in public, subject to reasonable time, place and manner limits. Police can still order you back from an active scene; distance is a reasonable restriction, confiscating your phone is a different matter.

Private property is the owner's call. A store owner can tell you to stop filming inside the store and leave. They cannot generally stop you filming the storefront from the public sidewalk.

Sound has its own rule. Federal law (18 U.S.C. 2511(2)(d)) lets you record a conversation you are part of. About 11 states, per the RCFP, require every party's consent for at least some private conversations, among them California, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Washington. An interview with a visible camera and a clip-on mic is consent by any sensible reading. Secretly recording a private conversation in an all-party state is the thing to avoid.

Permits are about crowding and gear on public land. A city or county usually wants a permit when you block a sidewalk, set up tripods and lights in a park, close a road, or bring a big crew. One person with a phone on a public sidewalk rarely needs one, but rules are local, so check the city's website for "film permit" before a bigger shoot.

National parks changed in 2025. The EXPLORE Act, Public Law 118-234, signed January 4, 2025, means the National Park Service generally does not require a permit or fee for groups of eight or fewer using hand-carried gear in areas open to the public, as long as they do not need exclusive use of a site, do not harm park resources or other visitors, and are not likely to add administrative costs for the park. The NPS says commercial crews, content creators, students and news media are treated the same. Larger shoots still need a permit and fees. Individual park pages have local details.