Most shoot footage never gets used. Plan the edit first.

You've probably seen this happen. A company books a shoot, the day goes well, and a few weeks later there's a shared drive full of polished footage that hardly anyone opens. A handful of clips make it onto social, then the posting dries up and somebody suggests booking another shoot.

Next time round, teams tend to blame the shot list or the crew. Neither helps much, because the footage was rarely the problem. It sits unused because nobody planned how it would be cut for each channel, and because the people in it look like they know they're being filmed. Plan the edit before you plan the day, and run the set so your team can be themselves.

Why does good footage go unused?

Good footage goes unused when there's no plan for turning it into posts. The crew films what looks good on the day, the files come back sorted by camera and time, and someone in marketing has to work out what each clip is for. That job is slow, nobody owns it, and it loses to whatever else is urgent that week.

There's a second reason, and it's harder to fix in the edit. When people are put in front of a camera with a script and a crew watching, they stiffen. You get technically good shots of people who look like they're at a passport photo booth. Those clips feel wrong on a brand's own channels, so they quietly get left out.

Both problems start before anyone picks up a camera. The first is a planning problem and the second is a problem with how the set is run. You can solve both in the week before the shoot.

Build the shot list backwards from the posts

A useful shot list starts from the posts the footage has to feed and works back to the shots. Most shot list templates start the other way, with a mood board and a list of scenes, and that's how you end up with a beautiful wide of the building and nothing for a Tuesday on Instagram.

Work through it in this order:

1. Channels. Write down every place the footage will go: each social channel, the website, sales decks, email, ads.
2. Formats. For each channel, list the formats you'll post: single image, carousel, short vertical video, longer video, banner.
3. Counts. Decide how many of each you need over the period the shoot has to cover. Eight weeks is a sensible default for one day of filming.
4. Shots. Turn every post into a named shot or moment, with the shape it needs. "Founder explaining the new menu, vertical, 30 seconds" is a shot the crew can plan for, while "lifestyle content" gives them nothing to aim at.
5. Cover. Add roughly a third on top for takes that won't work, then mark which shots are must-haves.

The table you end up with is the brief for the crew and the plan for the edit at the same time. It also tells you early if one day is enough.

Frame once, crop for every channel

The same moment usually has to work in several shapes, so film it wide enough to crop each one. LinkedIn's video ad specifications (2026) accept 16:9 horizontal, 1:1 square, 4:5 vertical and 9:16 vertical. Instagram and the website will want their own crops as well.

In practice that means a few habits on the day. Keep the subject near the centre of the frame with space above and around them, so a vertical crop doesn't cut off a head and a horizontal crop doesn't leave them stranded at the edge. Shoot the vertical-first moments, like a person talking straight to camera, in vertical on purpose rather than hoping to crop them later. Leave clean space in a few stills for text, because someone will want a banner. And note the intended shape next to each shot on the list, so the editor isn't guessing which crop you meant.

This is also where the shot list pays off in the edit. Each clip already has a job and a shape against it, so cutting becomes a checklist instead of a search through hundreds of files.

How do you keep people natural on camera?

Give them something real to do. People relax when they're doing work they know, and they freeze when they're asked to perform it. A barista making a drink or a founder talking a colleague through a decision will look like your business, because that is what happens there every day.

A few things make a bigger difference than any camera setting:

• Tasks over lines. Ask people to do the thing, and capture them doing it. If you need someone to speak, ask a question and let them answer in their own words.
• Time to warm up. The first stretch in front of the camera is rarely anyone's best. Plan for that, and put the most important talking shots later in the day.
• A small crew. Every extra person standing around watching makes the set feel like an audition. Keep only who you need in the room.
• The right people first. Start with whoever is most comfortable on camera. Others relax once they've seen it's painless.
• Ask off-camera. For interview shots, have the person look at the interviewer, not the lens, and keep the conversation going between takes.

The planning helps here too. When the crew knows exactly which shots they need, there's less standing about, fewer retakes and a calmer day. The people on camera pick up on that.

What it looked like with DAILY Coffee

DAILY Coffee came to us wanting content that sounded like them, without chasing trends that didn't fit the brand. We spent the first conversations getting to know the business before anything was booked. Then we planned the shoot around the posts it had to feed, and kept the set relaxed enough that the team looked like themselves on camera.

Their co-founder described the result like this:

We came away with a bank of high quality video and visual content that's been easy to use, performs well on social, and accurately represents DAILY Coffee as a brand.

Co-founder, DAILY Coffee

"Easy to use" is the part we'd point to. It's what happens when every clip was planned for a post before it was filmed. The same approach works for a software company filming its team as well as a café, which is why our Brand & Content studio plans shoots for all kinds of organisations. If you want to see how filmed customer stories fit into sales material, our guide to B2B video production covers that side, and sales collateral and video shows what the footage can end up in.

When a planned shoot is the wrong call

A planned shoot isn't the right tool for everything, and we'd rather you knew that before booking one. We sell shoots, which is all the more reason to be straight about it.

If most of your content reacts to what happened this week, a phone and someone on the team who enjoys posting will serve you better. A shoot gives you a bank of content, and a bank goes stale if your feed depends on news. The same goes if you haven't decided which channels you're committing to. Without the channel list, step 1 of the shot list has nothing in it, and you're back to filming whatever looks good.

It's also worth pausing if the brand itself isn't settled. Footage locks in how you look and sound for months. If you're unsure what your brand should feel like, sort that out first; our free brand audit template is a quick way to see where the gaps are before you book anyone.