7 Ways to Use AI for Pre-Production in Video Projects
Pre-production essentially lays the foundations upon which you build your ideal video/visual project. It’s where you hammer out your vision, verify that your ideas can be actualized without going over budget, plan out exactly how you’ll tackle production for maximum efficiency, and check that your sponsors and/or partners are on the same page. Skipping pre-production raises the risks of unpleasant surprises, unexpected costs, and irritating adjustments or changes.
But unfortunately, pre-production also demands a lot of time and effort, so much so that some video creators admit that they prefer to wing it than to have to slog through preproduction. If you’re heavily into the creative process, you might feel that pre-production tasks slow you down or hold you back from the creative flow.
But artificial intelligence (AI) is driving change in many facets of video work. There are many fears and anxieties floating around the arrival of AI and generative AI (GenAI) in video production, like that it’ll flatten creative storytelling, take over jobs, and remove the variety of expression that makes video such a joy to mankind.
There are so many amazing ways that Generative AI can be used to save time and reduce friction, so creators and storytellers can focus explicitly on this. It will be interesting to see how these tools evolve and are utilized by the industry at large.
Far from taking away creativity, AI can remove the pre-production friction that can slow creativity down. To back up this claim, we’ve gathered seven ways that you can use AI to improve pre-production workflows. Cover photo by Ron Lach.
1 – Set Project Goals and Scope
The first step of pre-production is to outline your brief and scope your project. You need to decide what type of video production you’re working on (shortform, longform, social, branded, a documentary), how long the video will be, and the video format and quality. You’d be amazed at how often creators and sponsors have different assumptions here, so it’s important to clarify intentions on all sides.
Alongside this, determine your resources. Check on the constraints that could affect your project, particularly budgetary but also any relating to timelines or actor availability. Once you’ve pulled this all together, you need to run it past whoever has the final say, long before you actually get to the final edit and discover that the CEO hates your video format choices.
And that’s where AI can help. AI tools can turn your thoughts into an organized proposition and clearly laid-out pitch, and then make it easy to share pitch decks, request feedback, and collaborate with decision-makers. When they fully understand the proposal, you’re more likely to avoid budget overruns, scope creep, or other difficulties further down the line.
2 – Visualize Your Ideas
Video is a visual medium, so it’s recommended to ideate visually instead of muddying the creative process with text. This is why storyboarding is such an important step to help you picture the shots you want and plan how you’ll tell your story.
With LTX Studio, an AI-powered web app from Lightricks, you can turn your ideas into rich pitch decks, effortlessly develop mood boards and color palettes, and produce moving storyboards complete with plot synopses and scene-by-scene breakdowns. Begin with a rough idea for characters, and watch them develop into multi-dimensional visual character profiles.
If you’ve already written a script, however rough, LTX Studio can transform it into a first shot video in seconds. Then you can tweak various elements, adjust themes and plot points, and even change camera angles and facial expressions. AI empowers you to turn your creativity into video, getting you over that frustration that you can’t actualize your vision.
3 – Experiment More
AI takes away all the barriers to creative experimentation and ideation. It’s highly responsive to your vision and ideas, allowing you to produce storyboards, character profiles, and mood boards faster and with less effort than ever before.
You can take your wildest ideas and run with them just to see where they end up, without worrying about running out of budget or time.
There’s nothing restricting the number of iterations you can try out, and there’s no sunk-time cost forcing you to follow on with an idea that isn’t working out. Once these constraints have disappeared, the sky’s the limit when it comes to creativity. Experiment, tweak, and discard as much as you like. AI gives your creativity free rein.
4 – Simplify Shot Management
Detailed shooting schedules and shot lists can be the difference between smooth, efficient production and a project that lurches from crisis to crisis. Instead of spending ages searching your scripts for props, costumes, etc., use an AI tool like Filmustage.
The AI can scan your script or storyboard, and break it down into a clear shot list that identifies the elements involved in every scene. You’ll get a detailed breakdown of the cast members, props, locations, VFX, costumes, and more that are needed for each scene.
AI identifies scenes that need more safety measures, checks that your copywriting is clear for use, and creates a table that tells everyone involved where they need to be and what they’ll be doing. Some tools adjust the shoot scheduling table in real time, to give you the flexibility to respond to changing circumstances.
5 – Make Better Production Decisions
Filmmakers across the world are starting to use generative AI to help them come up with better answers to common, challenging production questions. Issues like lighting, video style, and the type of shot can have a real impact on your final video, but making the decisions can be a real headache. You often need to try things out on location, which adds time and cost to production.
But with GenAI, you can experiment with different possibilities from your studio or office before you start shooting, without any limitations of time or budget. You can see the outcomes of every option and compare them until you hit on the best approach.
This way, when you head out to shoot you’ll already know what type of lighting you need, which microphone will work the best, and so forth. It can save you a day or more while the crew test your cameras and all your other gear.
6 – Cast With Greater Ease
Casting decisions can make or break videos, but while sometimes you’ll hit on the perfect match for your characters, it’s usually harder to feel confident about your casting. AI can help by analyzing actor databases to pull together a shortlist of actors that match your roles, based on your criteria. You can even use it to create those criteria for you, by scanning your scripts and storyboards and then summarizing the requirements.
Additionally, AI can serve as another, objective casting agent. It can evaluate subtle nuances in an actor’s facial expressions, tone of voice, and body language, to provide a comprehensive assessment.
This can be transformative for small video creators, but even large film corporations are using AI. Warner Brothers recently used Cinelytic to help with its casting decisions, trusting its predictive analytics to point it to the best match for leading roles. The AI engine can analyze past casting decisions for similar roles, and identify patterns that bring success.
7 – Scout Locations
Your choice of location can significantly impact the final video, affecting the mood, atmosphere, realism, and more.
Related: Photography Locations Near Me: 5 Ways to Find Spots for Photo Shoots
If you make a bad call, you can end up wasting a lot of time and money trying to correct it, sometimes even reshooting the entire video. But it also takes time and money to scout out video locations and check that they meet your needs.
Here too, GenAI gives you the freedom to experiment with different places without cost. Tinker with various possibilities and consider their pros and cons until you’ve made a decision, or at least narrowed down your options enough that you won’t be site testing loads of places when it’s time to shoot.
Bringing AI into Pre-Production Opens up New Worlds for Video Creators
As AI becomes the norm for video pre-production, even the sky is no limit to creative expression. Freed from many of the expensive and tedious tasks, video creators are discovering that AI empowers them to give their creative abilities free rein. Save time on the planning and organizing, so you can focus on the actual shoot.
Read next: The Smart Approach to Photo Editing- Using AI with a Human Touch
This post was written by Val Razo. Val Razo is a freelance SMM consultant who works with SMBs on establishing strong social media presence. She also writes for digital marketing blogs to get in touch with like-minded people. Read her latest guest posts on Twitter.
