How to plan B-roll from your script (without drawing a storyboard)

The most expensive sentence in a script is “we’ll figure it out in the edit.”

I’ve been on the receiving end of it for 7+ years and over a thousand edited videos. It means hours scrubbing through footage looking for a shot that was never filmed, then settling for something close enough. A B-roll plan fixes that before the camera comes out, and you don’t need to draw a storyboard to make one. You need your script and one extra column.

Here is the method I use to plan B-roll from a script, and a worked example from four lines to a capture list.

Write what the viewer sees next to each line

Put the script in a table, or in a two-column layout. Left: the line, word for word. Right: what’s on screen while it plays.

Be specific enough that someone else could film or find it. “Coffee shot” doesn’t help. “Close-up of milk being poured into a cup, top-down, morning light” does. If the visual is you talking to camera, write that too. Not every line needs B-roll, but every line needs a decision.

Do this after the script is mostly done, not before. Visuals planned against a draft that keeps changing get thrown away. If you’re still writing, how to write a video script covers that stage.

The six kinds of B-roll

When I’m stuck on a line, I run through these categories. One of them almost always fits.

• Illustrative (literal). You say “receipt,” we see a receipt. Simple and clear, and dull when it’s the only kind you use.
• Contextual. Shows where or when: a street, a building, the weather. It sets the scene without illustrating a specific word.
• Process / hands. Someone doing the thing: grinding, typing, assembling. This is the most useful category for tutorials and the easiest to film yourself.
• Screen. Screen recordings, app UI, a website, a spreadsheet. Essential for anything digital.
• Archive / stock. Footage you didn’t shoot. Good for things you can’t film: other countries, history, scale.
• Graphic / text. Numbers, lists, diagrams, quotes. If the line contains a figure the viewer should remember, it often belongs on screen as text.

A video that mixes three or four of these looks planned. A video that uses only one looks like a slideshow.

The “no visual” test: rewrite the line

If you can’t write anything in the visual column for a line, don’t reach for a generic stock clip yet. Look at the line first.

Lines with no visual are usually abstract: “This changes everything,” “It’s more complicated than that,” “There are a lot of factors.” They’re hard to show because they don’t say anything concrete. Rewrite them until they name something. “There are a lot of factors” becomes “Price, distance and habit all pushed me toward the café.” Now you have three things to show.

This test improves the script as much as the edit. Vague lines are weak on the page, too.

How much B-roll per minute

There’s no correct number. It’s a style choice, and what matters is cut rhythm: how often the picture changes.

A calm talking-head channel can hold on the presenter for long stretches and cut away only to show something. A fast faceless channel might change the picture with almost every sentence, because the visuals are the only thing holding attention. Neither is wrong.

The practical way to set yours: pick a video in your niche whose pacing you like, watch one minute, and count the visual changes. Then look at how many lines are in a minute of your script. That tells you roughly how many rows need their own visual, and how many can share one.

Turn the visual column into a capture list

Your visual column is in story order. That’s the wrong order to film in.

Copy every visual you need to capture into a separate list and group it by location or setup: everything on the kitchen counter, everything at the desk, everything outside. Then film each group in one go, regardless of where the shots land in the video. You set up lights and camera once per location instead of five times. That list is your B-roll shot list, and it’s also what I mean when I talk about video production planning.

Label each item:

• Must-have: the line doesn’t work without it.
• Nice-to-have: improves the edit, but there’s a fallback.

When you run out of time or light, you know what to skip.

Where stock footage fits

Stock fills gaps you can’t film: other places, big-scale shots, things that happened in the past. Pexels and Pixabay are free to use, but each has its own license terms, so read them and check each clip before you rely on it.

Don’t rip clips from other YouTube videos as B-roll. If you’re using someone’s footage to comment on it, whether that counts as fair use is a legal judgment. Keep clips short and transformative, credit the source, and check YouTube’s own guidance on copyright and fair use.

My rule: plan your own footage first, mark stock as the fallback in the plan, not the default.

A worked example: four lines to a capture list

Script for a short video, “What I actually spent on coffee last month”:

The same plan as a capture list, grouped by where I’ll film it:

Kitchen counter (one setup, top-down camera)

• Receipts spread across the table (must-have)
• Grinding beans, close-up (must-have)
• Steaming milk, close-up (must-have)
• Pouring into cup, close-up (must-have)

Café (one morning trip)

• Exterior, wide, people going in (must-have; stock exterior as fallback)
• Hand taking cup at the counter (nice-to-have; ask first)

Desk (screen recording)

• Spreadsheet scroll to the totals (must-have)

Edit (built, not filmed)

• Cost-per-cup text card (must-have)

Two filming sessions, one recording, one graphic. Nothing left for “figure it out in the edit.” If someone else is cutting the video, this table is also most of what they need from you. More on that in handing a script to your video editor.

How I do this in Syntale

This two-column habit is why I built Syntale. Scripts are split into scenes, and each scene has its B-roll plan sitting next to the words, with its own duration, so you see the visual decision and the timing in the same place as the line. When the plan is ready, share the project for comments and approval, then export a PDF your editor can cut from. If you want the visual side laid out as a table first, the storyboard template for YouTube is a good start, or Start for free.

FAQ

What is a B-roll plan?

A B-roll plan lists what the viewer sees during each line of your script, where that footage comes from, and how important it is. It’s usually a column next to the script, later turned into a shot list for filming.

How much B-roll do I need?

It depends on your style and cut rhythm, not a fixed ratio. Count the visual changes in one minute of a video you like and plan your script to match.

Can I plan B-roll after recording?

You can, but you’re limited to what you already shot plus stock. Planning before you record lets you film the exact shots each line needs and group them by location, which saves time on set and in the edit.