---
name: plan-a-video-series
category: media
description: Design a coherent video series with a specific audience promise, repeatable episode format, production system, release cadence, accessibility, rights, and a tested pilot. Use when starting a recurring educational, documentary, interview, product, or entertainment series rather than producing one standalone video.
---

# plan-a-video-series

Make the series repeatable before multiplying episodes. Prove one format can deliver value within the
available research, recording, editing, review, and distribution capacity.

## Inputs

- Name the audience, series promise, host or creator, channels, season length, budget, and rights owner.
- Gather audience questions, available expertise, equipment, locations, contributors, and platform constraints.
- Define consent, release, copyright, accessibility, safety, and sponsorship rules.

## Procedure

1. Write the repeatable promise: each episode helps this audience experience, understand, or do this.
2. Research adjacent series and identify the distinct subject, access, voice, format, or evidence this one can sustain.
3. Choose a season question and an episode map that progresses without requiring a fixed viewing order unless intentional.
4. Define episode length, segments, opening, visual grammar, audio standard, captions, credits, and call to action.
5. Estimate time and cost for research, booking, script, recording, edit, review, captions, thumbnail, publish, and distribution.
6. Create templates for brief, release, shot or asset list, edit review, caption check, description, and archive.
7. Identify rights, privacy, contributor, location, safety, and fact-checking requirements per episode.
8. Produce one pilot using the complete system and record actual effort plus failure points.
9. Test the pilot with representative viewers for comprehension, interest, pacing, accessibility, and promise.
10. Revise the format and choose a cadence the measured production capacity can sustain.
11. Greenlight only the next small set of episodes, with owners and stop conditions.

## Boundaries

Do not publish people, locations, private material, music, clips, or trademarks without appropriate permission.
Never commit to a cadence that requires hidden unpaid labor or skips captions and review.

## Done

- A series bible defines audience promise, season arc, episode format, visual and audio rules, rights, and accessibility
- A production model records owner, actual pilot effort, cost, dependencies, and sustainable cadence
- A complete pilot is tested with representative viewers and revised from observed evidence
- The first release set has approved briefs, permissions, owners, dates, and explicit continuation criteria

Then use video-script, record-clean-audio, captions-and-subtitles, and publish-to-youtube for production.