What I do in the 48 hours before a commercial shoot

The frame doesn't get made on the shoot day. It gets made in the two days before it.

Here's the prep workflow I run for every commercial and ad campaign shoot. None of it is glamorous. All of it has, at some point, saved a shoot.

T-48: the shot list, written by hand

The day the creative brief is locked, I sit down with a notebook — paper, not Notion — and write out every frame the campaign needs. By hand. One line per frame.

Doing it by hand forces brevity. "Hero shot, product centered, side lit, 50mm." That's enough. If I can't summarize a frame in one line, the creative concept isn't ready yet — and that's better to discover at T-48 than at T-0.

Then I number them in the order we'll shoot them — not the order they'll appear in the campaign. The order I shoot is determined by the light, the talent's availability, and which setups I can tear down without disturbing the next one. Never by what the brand wants to use first.

T-24: the gear pull and the test frame

The day before, I pull every piece of gear I'll need — and one of every key piece as backup. Two camera bodies. Two of every critical lens. Spare strobe heads. Twice as many batteries as I think I need.

Then I shoot a test frame. Just one. Of anything — a coffee cup on a table, my dog, doesn't matter. The point is to confirm:

• Every camera body fires
• Every lens AF works
• Every strobe triggers
• The card slot writes
• The tether software talks to the laptop

If any of those fail, I have 24 hours to fix it. Discovering a dead strobe at 6am on the shoot day is a different kind of stress.

T-12: the location and the timeline

The night before, I drive to the location if I can. Even if I've shot there before. I want to see today's light — where the sun is at the shoot hour, what's parked outside the window, whether the building next door is still being renovated.

Then I write the timeline. By hour. Including:

• Talent arrival and hair/makeup buffer (always 25% longer than they tell you)
• Setup time per look
• Lunch (non-negotiable, written on the call sheet)
• The "buffer hour" at the end — for the frame the brand will only ask for once we're packing up

T-0: trust the prep, don't improvise

On the shoot day, the worst thing I can do is start improvising the plan. The plan was made by a calmer version of me with more information and more sleep. I trust that person.

What I do improvise is the frames inside the plan. The shot list says "hero shot, product centered, side lit." It doesn't say where the light has to be soft, or whether to shoot 50mm or 85mm, or whether the talent looks better at three-quarter or full profile. Those decisions happen in the room.

The discipline is in the structure. The art is inside it.