PLANNING ADEQUATE COVERAGE FOR YOUR PRODUCTION

The golden rule of production is

Thou shalt not bore

Generating adequate coverage is the single most important thing you can do to make your projects more compelling.

Consider this:

• 1 hour television doco - shooting ratio of between 20 and 100:1 (ie between 20 and 100 hours of material is shot to produce an hour of completed material)
• Often unrepeated events - cull material to construct program
• 1 hour television drama - shooting ratio of between 10 and 30:1
• Mostly repeated takes of scripted material
• Educational shooting ratio? 2:1 if you are lucky!

It shouldn’t be this way

If you have gone to the effort of developing and organising a production you should allow enough time to gather adequate footage.

Adequate coverage:

• 30min doco - 45 edits
• 30min drama - 60 edits
• 30min educational - at least 30

• Our viewers are sophisticated and are accustomed to watching professionally produced programs
• Editing rhythms feed directly into viewer satisfaction
• You cannot generate any editing rhythms if you do not gather adequate coverage whilst originating your footage

Use the scripting and storyboarding stage of your production process to work out how much coverage you need to effectively communicate your material and maintain your audience’s interest

Rules of thumb:

• If you mention it attempt to SHOW it
• Use shot variety to advantage - alternate between wide, medium and close shots
• Be prepared to repeat actions and video them from different angles and with differing shot sizes to generate adequate coverage.

Remember, if a job’s worth doing it’s worth doing well.

Generating adequate coverage in the production stage of your project will allow you to make creative choices in the next stage of your project - Post-production (editing).