Case Study 2: The Whole Paper Trail — Pre-Producing a Documentary Short From Scratch
Where Case Study 1 took apart a famous scene to show that the film is won in pre-production, this one builds the pre-production itself, from nothing, for a real small project — and shows you every document it produces. Follow along and, better, do it in parallel for your own Project 2. This is a pre-production walkthrough: one idea taken all the way to a complete treatment, recce, script, storyboard, shot list, schedule, and budget, with every artifact on the page. No footage is shot here. That is the point — everything below happens before the camera comes out, at the table where the video is actually won.
The brief
Make a 3-minute documentary short about a volunteer-run community garden — the kind of piece the reader is building as Project 2. One person shooting (you), a helper who can hold a mic for the interview, a phone or a borrowed camera, and free editing software. No budget to speak of. The subject: the garden and the volunteers who keep it going, told through one short interview and a lot of B-roll of the place and the work.
We choose a community garden deliberately. It is ordinary and everywhere — most towns have one — so any reader can find the equivalent. It is visual: hands in soil, green against brick, seedlings, tools, weather, people. It has a story buried in it (food, community, patience, a small green resistance to a paved world) waiting to be found. And it is exactly the shape of Project 2: a talking-head interview plus B-roll. If we can pre-produce this cleanly, you can pre-produce yours.
The whole walkthrough obeys the chapter's one law: fix it in pre, not in post. Watch how much we solve on paper, for free.
Step 1 — The sentence, then the treatment
Before any document, one line of what it is about — the discipline from Chapter 1. Not "a video about a community garden" (a topic) but a story: "On a lot that could have been a parking garage, a handful of neighbors grow food, and something harder to name, out of the dirt." That sentence already carries a tone — patient, communal, a little defiant — and it will drive every choice that follows.
Now we expand the sentence into a treatment, answering the six questions. This is the cheapest prototype we will make: a paragraph we can show the garden's coordinator to confirm we understand the place, and that we can read back to ourselves to catch a missing ending.
FIGURE CS2.1 — Treatment: "Common Ground" (a 3-minute documentary short)
LOGLINE On a vacant lot that developers wanted, a handful of neighbors grow food — and a kind
of community that a paved world keeps trying to pave over.
AUDIENCE Locals, community-food and urban-green folks, and anyone who's ever wanted a place to
belong. Warm, not preachy — a human story, not an issue explainer.
FORMAT ~3:00, 16:9, for the garden's website and a local short-doc night; a 9:16 teaser later.
TONE Patient, earthy, hopeful. The pace of a growing season, not a news package. Soft light,
natural sound, room to breathe.
SO WHAT The viewer should feel the quiet pull of the place and want to find (or start) one near
them — ideally, to show up with their hands on a Saturday.
THE VIDEO
We open at dawn on the lot before anyone arrives — dew, quiet, a hand-painted sign, the city waking
behind the fence. In voice, one volunteer tells us, not their biography, but why they keep coming
back. Over B-roll of the season's work — planting, watering, weeding, a child with a trowel — we
learn what the garden is really growing. A Saturday workday fills the lot with people and small
talk. We end at dusk, the tools put away, one volunteer locking the gate, the plants left to grow
in the dark — a small, stubborn argument that some things are worth tending.
That half-page did enormous work before we owned a single tool. It fixed the length (3:00), the structure (a day, dawn to dusk, with a Saturday workday as the crowded middle), the light (dawn and dusk, soft — Chapter 13), the sound (natural, quiet enough for an interview — Chapter 15), and the emotional target (show up on a Saturday). Everything downstream is now checked against this. If a shot doesn't serve "patient, earthy, hopeful," it's off the list.
Step 2 — The recce, before anything else
You cannot plan shots for a place you haven't stood in. So before the shot list, we scout. We go at the times we intend to shoot — once at dawn, once on a Saturday when the volunteers are there — because light and sound and crowds change by the hour. The phone is the whole scouting kit: camera, voice memo, compass, notes.
We walk the five domains and write them down:
FIGURE CS2.2 — Recce notes: the community garden (five domains)
PICTURE Best backgrounds: the raised beds against the brick wall (texture, depth); the painted
sign; the tool shed. Avoid: the chain-link fence + parked cars on the north side (ugly,
reads "parking lot"). Room for a wide, a reverse, and low detail angles among the beds.
SOUND Quiet at dawn — birds, distant traffic (usable). Saturdays are LOUD: chatter, a nearby
playground, occasional leaf blower next door. => Interview must be shot at DAWN, not on
the workday. Recorded 10 sec on the phone; playback confirms the dawn hum is fine.
LIGHT Beds face east — gorgeous soft low light ~6:30–7:30 a.m., then it goes hard by 9. Dusk
light good on the west wall ~7 p.m. Open shade under the one tree if we need to escape sun.
POWER/LOG No outlets (it's a lot) => everything battery; charge overnight. Street parking on the
quiet side. Water spigot on site. Portable restroom a block away. Nowhere covered if it
rains — need a weather plan.
PERMIT/PPL Coordinator says yes, film freely; they'll spread word so volunteers expect us. Kids may
be present Saturday => need parent/guardian releases for any child on camera (Ch.38). A
"we're filming today" sign at the gate covers casual passers-by.
Look at what the scout just prevented. It caught, for free, three shoot-wreckers: the interview cannot be shot on the noisy Saturday (so it moves to dawn), there is no power (so we plan for batteries), and there are kids (so we need releases and a heads-up sign). Every one of those, discovered on the day instead, would have cost us the shoot. Discovered on the recce, they cost a paragraph.
Step 3 — The script: outline for the interview, two-column for the open
Our doc is interview-driven, so most of it uses an outline script — we can't write a volunteer's words, so we plan the beats and questions and let them talk. But the cold open and any narration are scripted, so those get a two-column (A/V) script. We use both, each for the stretch it fits.
First, the outline script — the shape of the story and the questions that will fill it:
FIGURE CS2.3a — Outline script: "Common Ground" (interview body)
BEAT 1 — "Why I keep coming back"
Q: What made you start coming here, and what makes you come back?
B-ROLL: the volunteer arriving, gloves on, morning light; the lot before the crowd.
BEAT 2 — "What we actually do"
Q: Walk me through a Saturday. What does the garden need from you?
B-ROLL: planting, watering, weeding, the workday crowd, hands in soil.
BEAT 3 — "What it really grows"
Q: People think a garden grows vegetables. What else does this place grow?
B-ROLL: neighbors talking across a bed; a kid with a trowel; produce shared out.
BEAT 4 — "Why it matters that it stays"
Q: What would the neighborhood lose if this lot became something else?
B-ROLL: the sign; the fence; the city skyline behind the green; dusk, gate locking.
Notice we are planning the edit here without knowing a single word the volunteer will say. Each beat already has the B-roll that will cover it — which means when we sit down to cut, every soundbite has pictures waiting. Question design (open, specific, quiet) is Chapter 19's craft; here the outline just reserves the slots and guarantees coverage.
Then, the two-column script for the scripted cold open — the first fifteen seconds, before the interview voice comes in:
FIGURE CS2.3b — Two-column (A/V) script: "Common Ground" cold open
VIDEO (what we see) | AUDIO (what we hear)
---------------------------------------------+-------------------------------------------------
1. Black. | Room tone: dawn birds, faint city hum. (2 sec)
2. CU — dew on a leaf; a hand-painted sign | MUSIC IN: soft, single instrument, warm.
reading the garden's name comes into focus.|
3. WIDE — the empty lot at dawn, beds in low | VO (volunteer): "Everybody thought this'd be a
gold light; the city waking behind it. | parking garage."
4. DETAILS — a locked gate opening; boots on | VO (volunteer): "We put our hands in the dirt
soil; the first watering can filling. | instead." (MUSIC settles under)
Cut to interview + beats (see outline). | —
Filling both columns forced the audio plan into the open: we need clean dawn room tone, one warm music track, and the volunteer's opening lines recorded as voice-over at the interview so we can lay them over the pretty empty-lot B-roll. That is a paper edit of the first fifteen seconds, built before the shoot.
Step 4 — Storyboard only the moments that need it
We do not storyboard the interview — a talking head needs no comic strip. We board only the two designed moments: the cold open and the closing. Stick figures and boxes; the point is the framing and the cut, not the art.
FIGURE CS2.4 — Storyboard: the cold open (frames left→right = cut order)
16:9 frames. S = subject; · = thirds intersection; ☀ = dawn light.
1 CU / sign (detail) 2 WIDE / establishing 3 DETAIL / the first work
+--------------------------+ +--------------------------+ +--------------------------+
| · · | | · ☀ (low sun) | | · · |
| [ SIGN: dew ] | | [ beds ][ city ] | | (hands + |
| | | empty lot, dawn | | watering can) |
| · · | | · · | | · · |
+--------------------------+ +--------------------------+ +--------------------------+
"Dew on the sign; intimate "The whole lot at dawn, "First hands of the day;
start, name of the place." empty, gold. Establish." the work begins. VO over."
The cut order (detail -> wide -> detail) opens intimate, pulls out to show the place, then
returns to the human hand. Boarding it now means we shoot exactly these three and know they cut.
Boarding those three frames confirmed the open works as an edit — intimate, then wide, then human — and told us precisely which three shots to capture and in what relationship. Everything else in the film is found coverage, which needs a shot list, not a board.
Step 5 — The shot list, built backward from the edit
Now the workhorse. We build the shot list by walking the treatment and outline beat by beat, asking of each, "what will I cut to?" — so the list is coverage, not just heroes. Every row gets a priority, so a short dawn window or a rained-out Saturday still leaves us a cuttable film.
FIGURE CS2.5 — Shot list: "Common Ground" (P: 1 = must-have, 2 = want, 3 = if time)
# SETUP SIZE MOVE SUBJECT / ACTION AUDIO P NOTES
--- -------------- -------- ---------- ------------------------------ ------------- --- ----------------
01 Open (dawn) CU locked Dew on the painted sign room tone 1 Cold-open frame 1
02 Open (dawn) WIDE locked Empty lot, beds, city behind room tone 1 Frame 2; east light
03 Open (dawn) DETAIL locked Gate unlocking; boots on soil nat sound 1 Frame 3
04 Interview MED-CU locked Volunteer, seated, to camera 2-mic 1 DAWN (quiet); off-axis
05 Interview WIDE locked 2-shot safety of the setup same feed 2 Cutaway/scale
06 B-roll: work CU locked Hands planting a seedling nat sound 1 Hero shot (Beat 2)
07 B-roll: work ECU locked Trowel in soil; a seed dropped nat sound 2 Insert; texture
08 B-roll: work MED handheld Watering; can to bed nat sound 1 Matching action
09 B-roll: work DETAIL locked Weeds pulled; dirt on gloves nat sound 2 The labor, shown
10 Workday (Sat) WIDE slow pan The lot full of volunteers ambience 1 The crowded middle
11 Workday (Sat) MED locked Two neighbors talk over a bed nat + dialog 2 Community (Beat 3)
12 Workday (Sat) CU locked A child with a trowel nat sound 1 GET A RELEASE (Ch.38)
13 Workday (Sat) DETAIL locked Produce shared, hand to hand nat sound 2 "What it grows"
14 Close (dusk) MED locked Volunteer locks the gate nat sound 1 Bookends 03
15 Close (dusk) WIDE locked The lot at dusk, plants alone room tone 1 Final image
16 ROOM TONE — — 60 sec dawn + 60 sec workday room tone 1 ALWAYS (Ch.15)
Read the priorities. If the dawn light collapses or the Saturday rains out, we still leave with every "1": the cold-open trio, the interview, the hero hands, the workday wide, the child, the closing bookend, and room tone — a complete, cuttable three minutes. The "2s" make it richer; they are not what the film depends on. That is what a priority column is for.
And notice how the list carries every lesson from Parts I–III forward as a thing not to forget: row 4 remembers the quiet dawn (Chapter 15), the window-of-light timing (Chapter 13), the off-axis eyeline (Chapter 19 preview), and two-mic safety (Chapter 14); rows 10–12 remember the 180-degree-safe framing (Chapter 9) and the child's release (Chapter 38); row 16, as always, is room tone.
⚙️ Settings Box: what the plan commits us to (planned capture settings). These come out of the pre-production above — the plan decides the settings, not the other way around.
Setting Planned value Why the plan chose it Resolution / frame rate 4K (or 1080p), 24 fps Cinematic look for a patient doc; details in Chapter 2 Shutter ~1/50 s (180° at 24 fps) Natural motion for the workday movement (Chapter 5) Interview light Window/dawn key, bounce fill Recce says east beds at 6:30–7:30 (Chapter 13) Audio Lav + shotgun, record room tone Interview must be clean; sound is half the picture (Ch.14–15) Support Tripod for interview + locked shots; handheld for workday energy Stillness for the patient tone; movement for the crowd (Chapter 8) This box exists on paper before the shoot because the treatment, recce, and shot list already decided it. On the day, we set it and work the list.
Step 6 — The schedule: two short windows, not one long day
The recce already told us this can't be one continuous shoot: the interview and dawn shots need the quiet gold of early morning, and the workday only exists on a Saturday. So the schedule is two short windows, each built around its fixed point.
FIGURE CS2.6 — Shoot schedule: "Common Ground" (two windows, crew of two)
WINDOW A — SATURDAY DAWN (the quiet, controllable shots)
TIME BLOCK SHOTS NOTES
06:15 Arrive, set up, batteries — Beat the light + the crowd
06:30 OPEN — dawn light 01, 02, 03 East beds gold ~1 hr only
07:00 INTERVIEW — quiet hour 04, 05 Before volunteers arrive = clean audio
07:45 HERO B-ROLL of the work 06, 07, 08, Volunteer demonstrates, calm, pre-crowd
09
08:15 ROOM TONE (dawn) 16 (part) 60 sec, silent
08:30 BUFFER / review — Watch back the interview; catch gaps
WINDOW B — SAME SATURDAY, MID-MORNING (the crowd) + DUSK (the close)
09:00 WORKDAY as it fills up 10, 11, 12, Real volunteers; releases for kids first!
13
10:30 ROOM TONE (workday) 16 (part) 60 sec of ambient crowd
10:45 Grab missed "2/3" shots (as time) Work the priority list down
19:00 CLOSE — dusk 14, 15 West wall light; bookends the open
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Story order on screen (dawn open -> workday -> dusk close) matches real time here by luck; but we
still shoot the interview and hero B-roll in the QUIET hour, not during the noisy workday.
That schedule is the whole day made calm. The most important, most fragile shots — the interview (needs quiet) and the dawn open (needs the light) — are captured first, while everything is controllable, and the messy, uncontrollable crowd is shot after the film is essentially in the can. The dusk close is a brief return for light we can't fake. Continuity (Chapter 9) is what lets us shoot the hero B-roll at 7:45 and the crowd at 9:00 and cut them into one seamless day.
Step 7 — The budget, in three currencies
Finally, what it costs — in money, time, and favors. Almost nothing is money; almost everything is the other two.
FIGURE CS2.7 — Budget skeleton: "Common Ground"
LINE ITEM MONEY ($) TIME FAVOR / DIY PATH
---------------------- ----------- ---------------- ------------------------------------------
Pre-production 0 ~4 hrs Treatment, recce x2, script, list, schedule
Location 0 — Coordinator's yes (favor — send them the film)
Crew (you + 1) 0 1 Saturday A friend booms; you owe them a shoot day
Talent (volunteers) 0 1 hr interview Favor — screen it at the garden; credit them
Camera + lens 0 — Phone you own, or borrow a body
Audio (lav + shotgun) 0–150 — Borrow, or a starter kit that serves all book
Light 0 — Dawn/dusk window light (Ch.13) — bought nothing
Support (tripod) 0–30 — Cheap tripod
Batteries / charge ~0–40 overnight Charge everything; no power on site (recce!)
Transport ~10 30 min Getting there twice (dawn + dusk)
Food ~30 — Coffee + snacks for you, your boom op, the subject
Releases (printouts) ~2 — Print child + adult releases (Ch.38) — bring pens!
Music license 0–30 — Free/CC track, or a paid library (Ch.38)
Storage / backup ~0–60 — A drive you own; back up 3-2-1 (Ch.37)
Weather contingency — a backup Sat. If it rains, the workday moves a week (plan B)
Contingency (~15%) ~25 buffer blocks Hold it for the thing that breaks
---------------------- ----------- ---------------- ------------------------------------------
TOTAL ~$110–410 ~1.5 days + 3 favors owed (location, boom, volunteers)
The money column is mostly zero because the cost lives in time (a Saturday, plus four hours of planning) and favors (the coordinator's permission, a friend on the boom, the volunteers' hour). The favors are a ledger of debts to repay: screen the finished film at the garden, credit everyone, and turn up next time they need a hand. And two lines — the releases and the music — quietly point ahead to the business and rights chapter (Chapter 38), because even a zero-dollar passion project has legal edges to keep clean.
What the pre-production bought us
Add it up. We have not shot a frame, and yet we have already, on paper and for free:
- Found the story (the treatment's logline) so every shot has a job.
- Prevented three shoot-wreckers on the recce (no power, Saturday noise, kids needing releases).
- Designed the edit before the shoot (the two-column open, the outline beats each pre-covered with B-roll).
- Guaranteed the coverage (a shot list built backward from the cut, with priorities that protect a short day).
- Made the day calm (a schedule that captures the fragile shots in the quiet hour and the crowd after).
- Made the "free" shoot honest (a budget that names the time and favors the money column hides).
Every one of those is a problem that will now not happen on the shoot day or in the edit. That is the entire return on pre-production, and it is why the professional spends more hours at the table than behind the camera. When you shoot Project 2 in Chapters 19 and 20, you will feel this directly: the shoot will be the easy part, precisely because the thinking was done here.
⚠️ Common Mistake: treating pre-production as paperwork to satisfy a teacher. Beginners sometimes fill out a shot list and a schedule because they were told to, then ignore them on the day and "go with the flow." That is worse than not planning — it's the cost of planning with none of the benefit. The documents are not homework; they are tools you use on the day. Tape the shot list to the monitor. Run the schedule off your phone. Cross shots off as you get them. The plan only pays off if you actually shoot from it.
Discussion questions
- The recce moved the interview from the Saturday workday to the quiet dawn. Trace how a sound problem, discovered on the scout, changed the schedule. What would have happened if we'd discovered it on the shoot day instead?
- We built the shot list "backward from the edit." Take one beat of your own Project 2 and list the coverage that beat's cut will need. How is this different from listing "shots that seem cool"?
- The budget's money column is mostly zeros, but the film still costs a lot. In what currencies, and why does naming them matter?
- We storyboarded only two moments (the open and close) and left the rest to the shot list. State the rule that decides what to board and what to merely list.
- Every "1" on the shot list, captured alone, would still make a cuttable film. Look at your own shot list — is that true? If not, your priorities are wrong. Fix them.
- The whole walkthrough spent more effort planning than the shoot itself will take. Why is that ratio a sign of a professional, not an over-thinker?
Your turn
Pre-produce your own Project 2 documentary short exactly as we did here — the full paper trail, in order:
- Write the sentence, then the treatment (six questions, a first and last image).
- Recce the location at the time(s) you'll shoot; fill in all five domains; take reference photos and record ten seconds of the room's sound.
- Script it — an outline script for the interview beats (question + B-roll per beat), and a two-column script for any scripted open or narration.
- Storyboard only the designed moments (an open, a reveal, a close) — stick figures welcome.
- Build the shot list backward from the edit — at least twelve rows, half of them coverage, every row prioritized.
- Schedule the day(s) around your fixed points, fragile shots first, buffer built in.
- Budget it in money, time, and favors — and don't forget food, releases, contingency, and your own time.
Keep all seven documents together. This is the working folder you will shoot Project 2 from. Do it well and the shoot ahead will be the calmest, most productive of your life so far — which is the whole promise of this chapter, and the whole meaning of fix it in pre, not in post.
Key takeaways
- A full pre-production is seven small documents — treatment, recce, script, storyboard, shot list, schedule, budget — and together they win the film before the shoot.
- The treatment finds the story; the sentence and the six questions turn a topic into a plan and a north star.
- The recce prevents shoot-wreckers for free — here, no power, Saturday noise, and kids needing releases, all caught on paper.
- Script the shape, not a real person's words — an outline script for the interview, a two-column script for the scripted open; most docs use both.
- Storyboard only the designed moments; list everything else. The shot list, built backward from the edit and prioritized, is what guarantees the cut has its coverage.
- The schedule makes the day calm by capturing fragile shots (interview, dawn light) in the controllable hour and the crowd after; continuity lets you shoot out of order.
- The budget in three currencies keeps a "free" shoot honest — money, time, favors — and favors are loans to repay.
- You did all of this with a notebook and a phone, before touching a camera. The shoot will be easy because the thinking is done. That is pre-production.