FITNESS DVD PRODUCTION

Wow, it's really not easy to produce  a fitness DVD. There are several things that need to be sorted. I thought the best is to create a little checklist for people who wants to have their own DVD done. These are my tips to get the best result on the day.

1, Find child care

The first and most important thing  is to make sure your child is in good hands. My child is a bit loud and active , for child less people he's a bit too much. I made a mistake with this one as I was trying to find child care in the last minute. I only found one of my single friends that doesn't have a child yet. I ended up getting messages in the middle of shoot asking me to pick my son earlier.
I don't know how hard my son has cried but my friend only said one thing when I got out the car: "Please don't ask me to baby sit again"...one baby sitter minus...

2, Do shopping on time

In this project I was the presenter, producer, and the whole costume department in one. I didn't ming shopping for T-shirts, pant's, yoga mats , even towel and socks. The only thing I forgot is that we are doing exercise. And exercise comes with sweat. I had to go shopping on  production day for extra T-shirts which caused a bit of a rush actually.

3, practice with script

This one is kind of obvious but I still managed to do without script throughout all the practice. I'm from Hungary and I have a foreign ascent in English and sometimes I make grammatical mistakes, too. So I wrote down everythin I'm going to say on my video .....I just didn't practiced it enough.

4, get transportation

Don't just think about yourself , if you want to have your guys at the place on time, make sure you tell them how to get to the studio.

5, Cash

Our landlady didn't accept card payment for hiring and we had to drive to town again. A bit of a pain when you pay for your time anyway.

6, Plan your time well

I though 4 hours will be enough to set the studio and record everything. I was wrong. Setting took 2,5 hour and we couldn't finish all the recording, Unfortunately landlady rejected overtime so we have another go soon.

7, give enough notice to people

At this project I was responsible for organizing for camera people and crew. I jut forget our bad statistics, Call 10 people and 2 will turn up. This time only one came.

8, music and music system

I wanted to record my fitness video without music and get a music score composer later. Our director said it's better to workout on the music and it will keep us motivated, too. It makes sense .

9, Enough space

My fitness video was a very low budget project. I only paid for  studio, clothes and props. I wanted a decent place with decent price. The studio was a nice 650 sq ft but apparently it wasn't big enough for all the setting.

10,  Make up kit

I'm  a hobby make up artist with massive make up kit and basic knowledge for now. Thanks God I brought my whole kit for later corrections, We really needed it because our face became very shiny after a few exercises.

11, Parental permission

I had 2 of my friends helping me on the DVD. They are both Nigerians but one of them is under age. Yesterday her mum told me off because I didn't send content form to her about the project. She said I should ask for proper permission when I work with children. She's right, every day is a school day.

12, Extensions and equipments, setting

As my husband was the main filmmaker on set he needed some help with packing equipment. None of us thought about packing more than 2 extensions. Is it not a big problem? We broke a very expensive light because of short wires.

13, Proof

As a last tip it's always nice to take a picture of people working on the set. Its good for memory and just to proof that you worked with camera. In the hurry we forgot all about that and didn't take any pictures of the setting and the crew.


Hope you learnt something...