I’ve been shooting a lot of digital video with my D7000. Maybe more than I’ve been shooting stills, but very little of it has ended up actually finished.

Right now I have footage from a wedding I attended months ago, footage of shoes I made for a trailer concept shot before the wedding, and interviews I recorded two weeks ago at a photography worksop.

I like the footage. The shoes stuff has some interesting angles and camera movements. The wedding stuff shows of what you can do with a DSLR. The interviews are very pretty.

All of it is important to me. Shoes stuff was a new website I wanted to do. Wedding are good friends of the family. Interviews are related to someone I’d like to work with.

So why is the only thing I’ve published this 2 minute video about how to make Ramen Noodles?

Because when I load all the other project’s footage into Final Cut and start looking at it, I’m lost about where to start.

All the footage is there, and it looks nice, but I don’t know what order to put things in. There may or may not be everything I need. So I get a feeling of overwhelm and move on to something I can do right now.

What made this Ramen Noodle video different so I get it done in a week?

Because I preplanned it and actually shot what I needed knowing how I would use it.

Preproduction make editing so much easier. I could lay down the footage quickly. I knew what to cut and what to use. Then it was on to other things, like audio and titles.

Doing titles took the most time, but even that wasn’t that much time. I had figure out how to do some stuff which meant moving to Motion and figuring it out, which slowed me down. (BTW: I still prefer After Effects to Motion, but the Motion integration is so easy)

Then it was done and I could figure out how to do the uploading right. All the video formats and uploading methods are just complicated. It is the most confusing part of the process and no one has made it easy, not even Apple.

In the beginning of any new endeavor you have a lot to learn. Those learning moments are going to take some time. Preplanning – wether of a video or a photoshoot – is something you can do to make things go smoother.

In the future I’ll make behind the scenes how to stuff to give y’all some learn’n.

Since this week’s episode is going to be a day late, I thought I’d post this video I recently made. It isn’t about model photography, but it will give you insight into how I think when setting up lighting and how to improvise to get what you want.