I can attest to the fact that the few seconds or minutes it takes to watch a video or look at photos is just a glimpse into the level of work and preparation it takes behind the scenes. I thought it might be fun to take you guys on a journey on how I conduct my photo and video shoots for both a Book of Fables chapter and general photo shoots. 2012 is a year for big plans and I’m hoping to really get my creative juices flowing so that I can start seriously collaborating with some of my friends.

As you can see above, I do my best to list out all the dates I need to hit for my chapters, and list out the idea of the chapter at least 2-3 months in advance. That gives me enough time to make sure I have the correct costume / prop, and if not, enough time to make / buy it. Hmmm… “Sweet Rainbow” is coming up this Friday, I wonder what that is ^_~

Every single Book of Fables chapter is always first sketched out in my sketch book. You might be able to see some familiar chapters above I have two sketch books already filled with makeup looks, but many of my sketches never materialise, so many chapters are rejected (in fact there are a number chapters that are actually filmed, and never make it online as I don’t deem the quality high enough)

I am by no means a master planner, in fact I know many of my close friends will agree that I don’t actually plan enough (one of my resolutions for 2012), but planning is really and truly so essential for a strong execution of any concept and creative project.

This is especially true for videos, I have already started storyboarding a ton of videos I hope to film this year, but as all the ideas are still new and haven’t been filmed yet, I will show you those storyboards on the next post for this series

Costumes are exactly the same, but worse. It’s one thing to draw a costume out in it’s entirety, but you then need to sketch out each individual piece of the costume, whether that be shoes, pants, top, accessories etc. And worse still, it’s important to sketch out how the pieces will be made and fit together. You probably can’t tell, but I have tons of tiny little notes scribbled next to each piece of the outfit to tell me how long I think it will take to make, what sort of colour it should, what sort of fabric I need, how much of it etc.

The next process is sticking little post it notes all over the costumes. If you think I have a lot of makeup, you should see my fabric collection! Unfortunately no matter what costume I am making, I never have every piece I need already in my collection, and so the post it notes tell me what materials I need to buy to complete the costume, how much of it and where I can buy it.

I know this all seems terribly organised for some, but trust me, I could do a lot better. And the reason I wasn’t able to produce any new proper costumes last year was thanks to my lack of planning.

The next post I hope to do on this topic will be around storyboarding for my videos I’m not sure whether I covered everything you guys wanted to know in this post, or whether you would prefer it in video format? But let me know, I’m only happy to accommodate, I want to give you guys a real feel for the work that goes into every video / photo