A script tells you what the video says. A shot list tells you what has to be on camera for the video to exist. Teams that skip the second document arrive at the shoot with a script, improvise for two hours, and discover in the edit that they are missing the one shot that makes the argument work.
The shot list is not a production document for large crews. Its value is highest for the smallest setups, because that is where nobody is going to remember the plan on your behalf.
What a shot list is for
It answers three questions in advance: what is on screen, where it is shot, and what has to be true before you can move on. Having those written down turns filming from a creative exercise into a checklist, which is what you want — the creative decisions were made when the script was written.
It also protects the edit. Most footage problems are not quality problems; they are coverage problems. You have the wide shot and not the detail, or the demonstration without the result. A shot list written from the script surfaces those gaps at a desk, which is a much cheaper place to find them.
Start from the script, not the location
The instinct is to plan by where you will be standing. Resist it. Work through the script line by line and ask what the viewer needs to see while this sentence is being heard. Some sentences need a shot; some need none, because the narration can carry them alone.
This produces a list organised like the video rather than like the room. Location grouping comes later, as an optimisation, and it is a decision about order rather than about content — if it changes what you shoot, you have let the schedule edit the video.
Mark the sentences that need nothing. A video where every line has footage is usually visually busy and harder to watch than one where the camera rests and lets a point land.
One line per shot
Each row in the shot list should describe a single shot, short enough to read at a glance on location. If the description needs a paragraph, it is two shots.
Describe the framing and the content, not the feeling. "Medium shot, hands importing a CSV into the tool" is shootable. "Dynamic shot conveying productivity" is not, and it is the kind of description that produces fifteen minutes of discussion in the middle of a session. Mood belongs in a separate note if you need it, but the line that goes on location should be an instruction.
Number the shots in script order and keep the numbers stable. When the edit happens, being able to say "shot 14 is too soft" is worth the thirty seconds of numbering.
The four columns
Four columns are enough, and more than four starts to go unread.
- Number and script reference. Which lines of the script this shot covers.
- Framing. Wide, medium, close, screen capture, overhead. Enough to set up without thinking.
- Subject and action. What is physically in the frame and what happens in it.
- Notes. Props, lighting, whether audio is captured here, and anything that has to be prepared in advance.
Add a fifth column only if you are shooting with a second person who needs to know who does what. Otherwise the notes column absorbs it, and the document stays short enough to hold in one hand.
Grouping by setup
Once the list is written, sort a copy by setup — by camera position and lighting rather than by script order. Moving the camera is the expensive action on a small shoot, so shooting everything from one position before moving is worth more time than any efficiency gained by filming in order.
Keep the script order visible when you re-sort, since you will still want to work through the content coherently for the narration. A practical compromise is to group by scene or by section rather than by individual shot, which captures most of the saving without fragmenting the session.
For screen recordings, the grouping is by application and by state. Changing the state of a demo account is the equivalent of moving a tripod: do every shot that needs the same state before changing it.
Coverage for editing
Plan two extra shots for any sequence that matters. The first is a wide or establishing shot, which gives the editor somewhere to start and somewhere to return. The second is a detail shot of the specific thing the narration names, because that is the shot you will want at the moment the point lands.
Shoot the ending twice with different framing, even if you are sure you know how it should look. Endings are the hardest part of an edit, and having a second option costs thirty seconds on set and saves a reshoot.
Record a few seconds of room tone and a minute of silent footage of the main setting. Both are cheap, and both are the kind of thing that turns an uneditable cut into a finished one.
What to cut before you film
Read the shot list against the script and look for shots that exist to illustrate a sentence that did not need illustrating. These are the shots that make a video feel long, and cutting them before filming saves both the shoot time and the edit time.
The test is whether the shot adds information the narration does not already carry. A shot of someone typing while the narration says "type the keyword" adds nothing. A shot of the interface showing which field rejects the input adds something the narration cannot.
Cutting at this stage is unusually cheap, because nothing has been invested yet. A shot removed at the desk costs nothing; the same shot removed after filming costs the time you spent filming it and the discipline to leave it out of the edit.
A pre-shoot check
Five minutes before you start, walk the list and confirm four things. Every line of the script is covered by at least one shot or explicitly marked as needing none. Every setup appears once in the grouped order rather than scattered. Every prop and account state needed for the first third of the shoot is ready. And the two optional coverage shots are on the list, so they happen rather than being remembered at the end when the light has changed.
That is the whole value of the document: it moves the questions you would otherwise ask at 4pm, when you are tired and the light is going, to a desk at 9am when you are neither.