Careful video content planning

By SouthWorks

To succeed as an Adobe Stock video Contributor, you need to create a rich and diverse portfolio of assets that fulfills buyers’ needs throughout the year. At Southworks, we believe that methodical planning is the key to building that portfolio — and we want to share a few best practices to help you determine what to shoot and when to shoot it. 

A great way to maximize the diversity of your stock footage and increase sales is to shoot seasonal content and big life events. Think about evergreen moments that millions of people experience — everything from graduation ceremonies and Pride events to Christmas, Hanukkah, and Diwali.

Using your favorite calendar software, create a dedicated content calendar. Add events like the ones mentioned above as well as other annual holidays and life milestones, and then use the calendar to plan your shoots throughout the year. 

Now that you know what buyers are looking for, build a shot list detailing everything you want to capture. At Southworks, we begin by entering footage requests from the latest call for content into a database, and then we can easily categorize by scene, location, models, and more. We use Notion software, but you can use Evernote, Milanote, Excel, or your own preferred solution. (You can also save inspiring images from TV ads, web searches, and more in Pinterest, an Adobe Creative Cloud Library, or a Dropbox folder so you can refer to them while planning.)

Here are the details we include for every shot in our database:

• Scene — e.g., family watching TV

• Set location — e.g., living room

• Models required — e.g., parents, grandparents, and child

• Props needed — e.g., popcorn in bowls

• Type of shot — e.g., very wide and wide

• Cinematic technique — e.g., gimbal or handheld 

• Examples — e.g., inspirational screenshots

• Priority — e.g., high

Once you have your shot list ready, you’ll be able to prioritize your key shots and keep things flowing from set to set without jumping back and forth. Best of all, when you’re organized, you’ll have more breathing room to improvise and capture unique, unscripted moments.

Timing is critical. You’ll want to upload your content to Adobe Stock two or three months before the big seasonal event or holiday, so start planning your shoot four to five months in advance. This should give you enough time to scout locations, hire models, run your shoot, do your post-production work, create keywords, and upload your footage.

If you plan your content with care, you’ll continue to strengthen your portfolio and improve your sales opportunities year after year.