Putting together a team and studio to shoot video and stills for your ecommerce business and build clever animations that will grab shoppers attention can be expensive. At KittyKat, we have worked to make that process as efficient as possible.
And it all starts with a great shot list. Between all of the social media placements and the storefronts on Amazon, Shopify or other stores or marketplaces, you need a lot of visuals to promote and sell your product online.
The shot list makes sure you are capturing all the variations you need while also prompting your creative team to go that extra mile and come up with additional shots that inspire them.
Start by listing all of the individual products you need to capture and all of the groupings. You may have 5 different SKUs for your cosmetic line and some may want to be grouped together as a family or a complete solution. Add any notation on different angles, settings or variations. You may want to capture a ¾ top-down view, often called an isometrics view, as well as a bold dead-on shot. At KittyKat, we always add one more shot per product - a bright shot against a specific background. This makes it easier and quicker for us to make new image variations via our Assisted Artificial Intelligence(™) process.
These days, it is not enough to have static photography. Video and animation catches people's attention whether they are browsing your storefront or thumbing through their social feed.Each video clip or short animation needs a description of the action. Do you need a hand unscrewing a cap and a finger dipping into the product? Do you need a stop motion of placing the coffee capsule in the machine?
For products to look great in all 15+ placements on Facebook and Instagram, you will need to shoot with several aspect ratios in mind. The extreme vertical size of Stories is quite different from the wide format in the feed. That doesn't mean you need to shoot 15 different elements. Usually 2-3 will do. Your storefront may require different sizes as will any marketplace you are on such as Amazon.
“Your original aspect ratio is important for both technical and aesthetic reasons. The proportional relationship between the width and height makes a difference in the final presentation…If you crop your pictures in post-processing, it will make it so you cut information out of your pictures. Instead of cutting those pixels out of your image, setting your aspect ratios ahead of time allows you to get the scene just as you want it while shooting with your camera.”
While you can change file formats for images and video in post production, it only helps to know if you finally need .jpg, .png or something else. Same goes for file sizes. Generally in a shoot, we want to capture the highest quality and largest file format possible. Still, it helps to anticipate the final file size targets for your visuals.
Here’s a great cheat sheet for image sizes for all of the major social media platforms. And one for video, as well.
List all the shots that may require a model or demo of the product. We call these lifestyle shots and they help demonstrate your product in action. That video of the finger dipping into the moisturizer? You will need a hand model for that. That beautiful handbag will look more relatable in the arms of a person like your customer. Add any notes about the environment the shot should be taking place in - outside in a park, in a living room or limbo. In your project brief (see our Tips on a Great Project Brief, you will have identified your customer. That helps to inform whatever models you may need for your lifestyle shots.
It’s great to have a very detailed list of shots. It’s also great to challenge your creative team with shooting a few additional shots that they come up with beyond the list. The team gets inspired and can show off some great visual ideas that you may not have thought of. These are the mystery shots and you cannot actually list them. All you can do is discuss it with your creative team and let them know you can’t wait to see their ideas.
Shot lists are logistical blueprints to get the final shots you really need to fuel your business. It always pays to have a solid shot list to ensure your time and effort on shoot day is spent wisely.
Interested in working with KittyKat? Schedule a call with us and we’ll map out the shot list, from what you need and how we can shoot it. This also includes all the details and services we can provide to match your goals for the visuals from the shoot with us.
