Decide Before You Shoot
Lock the viewer, the angle and the opening before a single frame is captured
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 78%
The mechanism front-loads three decisions that most creators postpone. First, name one viewer, because a piece aimed at a podcast host is a different piece from one aimed at a casual social-media scroller. Second, choose an angle that is native to you rather than the obvious one everyone else will take, which usually means telling it from your own perspective. Third, define the story spine explicitly: a beginning, a reason the viewer should care, and a clear resolution. Only then do you commit to a single opening and shoot. The failure mode this replaces is recording several versions of everything and expecting the edit to reveal the story. Without those decisions made up front, you get a well-shot record of events instead of a narrative, and no amount of editing recovers a point of view that was never chosen.
Origin
Extracted from The Jasmine Star Show, where Jasmine works through the decision with her husband and business partner J.D. while planning a 60-second documentary, referencing an earlier video that failed because it documented rather than told a story.
Core principles
- 01Who the viewer is changes what the story is
- 02Three possible openings means you have no opening
- 03Documentation is not narrative
- 04A story needs a start, a reason to care and a resolution
- 05Every shot should carry the chosen narrative
How to run it
- 1
Name the one viewer
Write down who is watching. A specific decision-maker, a business-curious audience and a casual scroller each demand a different piece.
Pro tip If you can't pick, write the two versions in a sentence each and see which one you'd actually make.
Watch out Trying to serve all three viewers produces a piece that lands with none.
- 2
Choose the angle nobody else will take
Assume others will cover the obvious story. Find the perspective that is uniquely yours and build from there.
Pro tip Telling it from your own point of view is usually the least crowded lane.
- 3
Write the story spine
State the beginning, the reason the viewer should care, and the resolution in one line each. If any line is missing, you have documentation, not a story.
Watch out A great subject with no resolution still produces a flat piece.
- 4
Commit to a single opening
Reject the alternative openings out loud and pick one. Recording several versions to choose later is a decision deferred, not a decision made.
Pro tip Test candidate hooks against the spine, not against how clever they sound.
Watch out Gimmicky hooks that don't serve the spine will feel off and you'll notice too late.
- 5
Carry the narrative through every shot
Before capturing each shot, check that it advances the chosen story. Shots that only look good become edit-room clutter.
Pro tip Keep the spine written somewhere visible on the shoot.
In the wild
Planning a 60-second piece about The Shop Forward, Jasmine considered three openings: a YouTube-style hook about building a ten-figure business, a charitable angle built on the six million dollars the company had donated, and a gimmicky direct address to the podcast host. All three felt off. She instead committed to an opening about ideas, why so many people have them and so few turn them into a business, and carried that through to the closing point that a business is a series of ideas rather than one great one.
→ The finished piece had a single point of view and a resolution instead of being a well-shot record of a warehouse visit.
Years earlier Jasmine made a video for a company called The Giving Piece. She loved the subject and learned a lot, but the piece lacked a clear point of view. It chronicled what happened rather than carrying a narrative, and the lesson resurfaced when planning this shoot: pick the starting point, commit, and let every shot serve it.
→ The earlier failure became the reason the later piece got its decisions made before the shoot.
Common mistakes
Planning to fix it in post
Shooting three versions of an intro and choosing later means the story was never chosen, and the edit can't invent a point of view that was never captured.
Confusing documentation with narrative
Chronicling everything that happened produces a record, not a story, because there's no reason to care and no resolution.
Leaving the viewer undefined
The same footage tells a different story depending on who's watching, so an unnamed viewer makes every downstream choice arbitrary.
Is it for you?
Best for
Creators and marketers making short narrative video about a person, brand or business.
Not ideal for
Live events or reactive footage where the outcome genuinely cannot be planned in advance.
From the transcript
“Number one, we wanted to make sure who is the viewer? Because if you're telling a story, you have to shape it for who is…”
“the worst thing that you could ever say is, I'm going to fix it in post.”
“A story is a beginning point, a point, a reason why you care or something that happens and an end point, a resolution.”
From the episode
Behind the Scenes of Building a Bold Pitch