Guides
Videography training: what to cover and when
Videography staff training as a four-week sequence with sign-offs, starting with backup verification and safety before anything creative is taught at all.
What to take away
- Train in an order that puts irreversible risks first. Media handling and safety come before anything creative, because those are the mistakes that cannot be undone.
- Every stage ends with a sign-off by a named person. An unsigned stage is a stage nobody actually taught.
- Four weeks is a realistic first sequence for someone who already knows the craft. Someone learning the craft needs longer and should not be alone on a shoot until week four is complete.
- The point of the plan is not knowledge. It is that you can predict what they will do on a bad day.
Week one: the things that cannot be undone
- Two-copy verified backup demonstrated, then performed unsupervised and checked
- Card handlingformat in camera, never reuse a card that threw an error, never format before verification
- Naming convention learned and applied to a real project folder
- Cable, stand and sandbag discipline shown on an actual setup
- Rigging and elevated mounting rulealways checked by a second person
- What to do when something goes wrong, and who to call, written down and understood
- Long-day practicalitiesbreaks, hydration, heat and cold, and when to say a day has gone too far
Sign-off: they have backed up a real shoot day with you watching and got it right without prompting.
Week One Non-Negotiables
- Two-copy verified backup demonstrated
- Card handlingformat in camera
- Naming convention applied to folder
- Cable, stand, sandbag discipline
- Rigging checked by second person
- Escalation contacts written down
Nothing creative happens in week one. That is deliberate.
The job involves setting up, operating, monitoring, maintaining, and troubleshooting equipment in settings that change job to job, as the Bureau of Labor Statistics description of broadcast, sound, and video technicians records. The habits that survive that variability must be built before anything else sits on top.
Week two: the kit as a system
- Which bodies, lenses, batteries, cards and chargers belong to which kit
- Matching two camerasframe rate, picture profile, white balance, shutter
- Audio pathprimary microphone, second independent path, monitoring on headphones
- Room tone recorded on every setup, without being asked
- Timecode or clap discipline, so the edit always has something to lock to
- Packing to the written gear list, and counting back into cases at wrap
- The asset registerwhat it is, and how a borrowed or moved item gets recorded
Sign-off: they have packed, run and wrapped a two-camera setup with no missing item and no mismatch.
Week Two Kit System Checks
- Kit contentsbodies, lenses, batteries, cards
- Two cameras matchedrate, profile, balance
- Audioprimary, second path, headphones
- Room tone on every setup
- Timecode or clap discipline
- Gear list packed and counted at wrap
The systems reasoning behind all of it is in the camera, audio and lighting setup guide, and the specific contents of a working kit are in the kit checklist for a first shoot.
Week three: the pipeline and the brief
- The stages a project moves through, and what closes each one
- How to read a deliverable schedule and what hitting it means
- Where hours are logged, and the habit of logging them the same day
- What a revision round is, when it opens and what closes it
- Music and rightsnothing reaches a client cut until a named person has approved the license
- Client contact ruleswhat they may agree to, and what must be escalated
- How to hand a project over so someone else can open it cold
Sign-off: they have delivered a real project to spec, with every version and ratio, on the date, without rescue.
Project Pipeline Stages
- Brief and schedule agreed
- Shoot day completed and backed up
- Edit and revision rounds closed
- Music license approved by named person
- Client delivery to spec on date
- Handover so another can open cold
The music rule is worth teaching as a principle rather than a list. A track can carry more than one right, held by different parties, so a subscription is not automatically permission for a client's use. Nobody drops music into a client cut on their own judgment.
Week four: working alone, with a net
- Runs a shoot with you present and silent
- Handles one client conversation with you in the room, then debriefs
- Delivers a project reviewed by someone other than themselves before it goes out
- Identifies one thing in the system that is wrong or unclear, and says so
That last line matters more than it looks. A new person is the only one who can still see what is confusing, and the window closes fast.
Week Four Supervised Independence
- Runs shoot with you present and silent
- Handles one client conversation, debriefs
- Delivers project reviewed by someone else
- Identifies one wrong or unclear system item
Sign-off: you would be comfortable if they ran the same shoot next week without you.
What to give them in writing on day one
- The gear list and the kit contents
- The backup and verification rule, on one page
- The naming convention
- The pipeline stages and who owns each
- The escalation rule and the phone numbers
- Their hours, how they record them, and how they are paid
Time records start on day one, not when someone remembers. Irregular hours are the hardest thing in this business to reconstruct later, and the Department of Labor publishes compliance assistance for new and small businesses covering wage and hour obligations that make those records necessary rather than optional.
Treat every new person the same way through this sequence. The EEOC publishes guidance for small employers on nondiscrimination in employment, and a written, consistent onboarding is how a company with no human resources function actually achieves consistency.
Reviewing the plan against reality
After each hire, ask what they got wrong in month two and trace it back to the week it should have been taught. Then fix that week. A training plan that never changes is a plan nobody is reading. A written daily operations checklist keeps each week's sign-off from depending on whoever happened to teach it.
Pay reviews belong on a separate schedule, anchored outside your own guesswork. The Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics tables publish estimates by occupation, state and metropolitan area, which is a reasonable external reference before you add burden and the hours nobody bills.
Common questions
Is four weeks enough?
For someone who already shoots or edits professionally, usually. For a career changer, treat the four weeks as the first module and expect several months before unsupervised client work. Do not compress week one for anyone.
Who signs off?
A named person, ideally not the owner alone once the company has more than a few people. Sign-off by whoever will rely on the skill is more honest than sign-off by whoever taught it.
What if someone resists the checklist?
That is information. Resistance to media verification in particular is the strongest early signal you will get, and it is worth acting on before a shoot day rather than after one.
Should new hires attend client meetings?
Understanding what the client asked for and why stops a technically correct edit from missing the point.
The role map and the order of hiring that sits behind this plan is in hiring and training a crew. The selection process that precedes it is in hiring a shooter or editor who shows up.
