What to capture in a making-of so it stays useful

Making-Of: How to Organize and Reuse Your Production Assets

A making-of isn't just extra content: it's a set of reusable assets —clips, photos, interviews, permissions— that, well organized, feed sales, social media, case studies, and proposals for months.

The value isn't only in filming it, but in cataloging and retrieving that material when you need it. When well planned, it lets you get more value out of a production you're already making.

What It Should Show

• the initial problem,
• the team at work,
• creative decisions,
• tools,
• moments of collaboration,
• challenges and solutions,
• the final result.

How to Plan It

Before recording, define:

• the goal of the making-of,
• publishing channels,
• permissions for people and locations,
• key moments,
• person responsible for capture,
• final format,
• usage rights.

During Production

Record short clips, B-roll, quick interviews, technical details, and team reactions. Don't wait until the end; the best material appears during the process.

After Recording

Organize the material:

• raw clips,
• usable selection,
• photos,
• audio,
• permissions,
• edited versions,
• thumbnails,
• copy.

Polimake centralizes all this material and finds it months later by project, client, or campaign, without depending on how the folders were named on shoot day.

Reuse

A making-of can become:

• a reel,
• a case study,
• a LinkedIn post,
• a section of a sales proposal,
• a newsletter,
• an internal testimonial,
• employer branding material.

Organization Checklist

After production, save:

• the raw footage folder,
• a short selection,
• approved clips,
• featured images,
• permissions,
• music and licenses,
• the final version,
• the thumbnail,
• the publishing copy.

This order makes it possible to reuse the material months later. Without organization, the making-of ends up as an isolated piece and loses much of its commercial value.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I Need a Professional Camera?

Not always. A phone with good lighting and sound can work if the goal is agile content.

What Permissions Do I Need?

Permissions for people, the location, music, visible brands, and the client if the project isn't public.

When Should I Publish It?

When the project is approved or when the client authorizes showing the process.

To explore this topic further, see Place branding: how to position a city or destination with a real strategy.

Archive the process as campaign material

Relate every clip or photograph to its project, date, people, permission, scene, and intended use. Separate internal, publishable, and pending material. Preserve clean interviews, ambient sound, and vertical shots when they were planned.

A making-of has one specific enemy: six months later nobody remembers which card the good take was on. An indexable DAM solves exactly that. The AI writes the keywords on upload — the literal content and also the tone, the concept, and the context — so you ask for "the client laughing in the workshop" and land on the frame, inside the video. It stops being a folder of leftovers and becomes material available for sales, culture, hiring, and future campaigns.

Upload the raw footage from your last shoot and look for a take with natural search. If you already work with AI, Polimake connects over MCP from ChatGPT or Claude to edit and produce from that same archive.

— Oli Ser, founder of Polimake