What To Consider Before Booking A Shoot

What To Consider Before Booking A Shoot With Studio Blackardt

As a business, high-quality content is crucial for maximising reach and advertising effectively. Whether it’s a photo shoot for a property listing or a video shoot to showcase your latest build project, professional content helps you stand out online.

To get the most out of your content, it’s important to consider a few key factors before booking your shoot.

What’s Your Ultimate Goal? 

What do you want to highlight during the shoot? 

Is there talent we need to consider? If models or your team are on site for the shoot, we should know this before arrival. It’s also essential to ensure everyone involved is on the same page and prepared before our team arrives on site. Doing so enables us to capture everything you want within the allocated time frame.

Time of Day

Options include early morning, mid-morning, midday, afternoon, dusk and night. Each time of day offers different lighting and aesthetics. 

Shot before 9:00 am, morning shoots offer soft lighting and suit most industries.

Midday shoots create harsh lighting and dominant shadows, which look great in construction and landscaping content where specific features and aspects of the project need to be highlighted. 

Afternoon light enhances the vibrancy, accentuating the richness of architectural details and surrounding landscapes. Ideal for a wide variety of industries, the abundance of light makes colours pop, creating a fun atmosphere that truly elevates images.

Dusk shoots are perfect for luxury properties, as the golden hour adds warmth and enhances the natural ambience of the home, highlighting architectural details and textures in a way that a midday shoot can’t achieve. A shoot at dusk allows the property to shine, showcasing the home's interior and exterior features, including the pool and landscaped areas. 

Nighttime is perfect for showcasing cityscapes, skylines, and lit buildings; it offers a unique visual aesthetic that can boost impact. This time of day allows us to use ambient or artificial light to create dramatic visuals using reflections and silhouettes. 

If we’re shooting a property at night (or at dusk), good external lighting is key, as we may struggle to effectively capture the features and details in low light.

Outdoor Elements

You can’t always predict or control outdoor conditions. We wish we could! It’s essential to plan accordingly, especially in Brisbane, where the weather can be unpredictable.

Do you have a wet-weather backup plan? If sunlight is important for your content, consider postponing. 

We can replace gloomy skies in post-production for photos (unfortunately, not for video). We can also proceed if it’s just light rain or grey skies, especially for construction shoots where it’s more about a project update and the team is still onsite working. For interior shoots, postponing due to wet weather is rarely necessary unless you want to utilise natural light. 

Do you need good visibility for drone shots? If you want to include landmarks like the Brisbane CBD, think about whether visibility is good. On gloomy days with extensive cloud cover or fog, it may be best to postpone.

Is it high or low tide? High tide can be better if you want to highlight proximity to the water or lifestyle.

Is it extremely windy? For safety, we can’t operate our drone in high winds. If you'd like drone footage, consider postponing. 

If in doubt, please reach out, as we want to ensure that we can capture your project in the best possible light.

Location And Accessibility

How accessible is the location for our team and their equipment? If we’re shooting at a construction site or building site, we need to know what accessibility looks like to plan accordingly. Some of our equipment can be large and bulky…

Are there any safety restrictions we need to be aware of before we arrive on-site? Do our team members need to wear personal protective equipment (PPE)? Does our team need to complete an induction before they start setting up? Our team needs to know this before arriving to allow enough time to complete it and capture everything in your brief. Our team has access to the relevant PPE, including high-visibility shirts, long clothing, and steel-toe boots; however, we request confirmation in the brief so we can prepare in advance.

Is the shoot in a public space, and have you gained the appropriate permissions for us to film in the area? Private spaces, particularly large shopping centres, building foyers, and tenanted areas, still require special permissions. There should be signage at the entrance of the space stating that a shoot is taking place and that by entering the venue, the general public consents to appear in the content. 

If you’ve booked a drone shoot, can we launch the drone in the area? As a creative content agency, we can obtain special permission to fly in certain areas that personal drones cannot; however, we require adequate time to ensure that the necessary permissions are granted and/or we can arrange our specialised drone pilot. Ok2Fly and OpenSky are two great websites to check for this. We are classified in the commercial excluded category.

Your Creative Content Specialists

Ultimately, our team wants the best outcome for your shoot. We can assist with the booking process and will ask questions about the goal and key details to ensure you’ve booked the best time. 

Connect with us, and let’s chat about your next shoot.