Preproduction

Preproduction is everything that happens before the actual production of a project, such as preliminary sketches, ideas, designs, and planning. It’s probably the most crucial stage of any project, and a lot of amateur projects fail because of the lack of good preproduction. (Some projects don’t have any preproduction at all!)

When you plan and organize what you will need to do to complete a project, chances are you’re going to be better prepared for what’s to come. If you skip preproduction and jump right into production because you can’t wait to see the results, you’ll likely encounter unexpected problems and issues you didn’t anticipate. You’ll have to redo a lot of work and lose lots of time or, in the worst-case scenario, you’ll give up.

Good planning allows you to anticipate any possible problems before they actually happen and this way you can prevent them from occurring. If you run into something you don’t know how to do, you can make some quick, basic tests to find a solution before you get far enough into the project to discover that it doesn’t work.

As a result of this preparation, the actual work during production will be a lot faster, easier, and straight to the point, as you’ll already know how to proceed. Keep in mind that even with a good preproduction stage, you will still run into issues. This is how it goes, but at least a lot of those issues will be handled before they become bigger problems, so the more preparation, the better.

There is another important advantage to preproduction: it can motivate you during the production stage. When you think about everything you’ll have to do and then define the process step by step, it suddenly gets easier because you don’t have a big project before you, but instead you have a list of small and manageable tasks. You’ll go through this list, keeping track of your progress, and you’ll always know what you have done so far, what you still need to do, and what may be missing.

There is a popular phrase that sums up preproduction pretty well: “Think twice, work half.” A great result doesn’t come from working harder, but from working more efficiently. You need to think of efficient ways to work. Usually, you’ll discover them only after you’ve done something wrong, but that’s when you learn and gain valuable experience!