How to Brief a Video Production Company (Template Included)
The single document that determines whether your project runs smoothly or falls apart — and most clients never write it properly.
Here is something most production companies won't tell you directly: the quality of your brief has more influence on the final video than almost any creative decision made during production.
A strong brief gives a production team everything they need to make good decisions — on location, in the edit suite, when unexpected things happen on shoot day. A weak brief creates ambiguity at every stage, which leads to misaligned expectations, costly revisions, and a final product that nobody is quite happy with.
The good news is that writing a good brief is not complicated. It just requires you to answer a specific set of questions honestly and in enough detail. This post walks you through exactly what those questions are — and gives you a ready-to-use template at the end.
Why Most Briefs Fail
Most client briefs fail for one of three reasons.
They're too vague. "We want something modern and professional that tells our brand story" is not a brief. It contains no information that a director or producer can actually use to make decisions. Every production company will interpret it differently, which means every quote and every proposal you receive will be based on a different assumption about what you actually need.
They focus on the output, not the problem. A brief that says "we want a two-minute brand film" is describing a deliverable. A useful brief says "we need something that helps potential clients understand what makes us different from competitors, because we consistently lose deals at the proposal stage." One of these gives a production company something meaningful to solve. The other just describes a product format.
They're incomplete on the practical details. Budget, deadline, and usage rights are not afterthoughts — they are fundamental inputs that shape every creative and logistical decision. A brief without these is not really a brief at all.
The Eight Things Every Brief Needs
1. About Your Business
The production team needs to understand your company before they can tell your story. This section should cover:
What your company does, in plain language
How long you've been operating
Your main products or services
What makes you different from competitors
Your current brand positioning — how do you see yourselves, and how do you want to be seen?
Don't assume the production company already knows your industry or your business. Even if they've worked in your sector before, write this section as if you're explaining it to someone with no context.
2. The Objective
This is the most important section of the brief — and the most commonly skipped.
What specific problem is this video solving? What should be different in your business after someone watches it?
Good answers to this question sound like:
"We need to convert more website visitors into enquiries. Currently people land on our homepage and leave without getting in touch."
"We're entering a new market segment and need to establish credibility with a more corporate audience than our current clients."
"Our sales team spends too much time explaining what we do in first meetings. We want a video that does that work for them."
Weak answers sound like:
"We want to raise brand awareness."
"We want to look more professional."
"Our competitors have videos so we need one too."
Push yourself to be specific. The more clearly you can articulate the problem, the more purposefully the production team can design a solution.
3. Your Target Audience
Describe the specific person who will watch this video. Not a demographic category — a real type of person with real concerns.
Cover:
Who they are (job title, life stage, context)
What they care about when making a decision in your category
What objections or doubts they typically have
What they currently think or feel about your brand, if anything
Where they will be watching — phone, desktop, TV screen, trade show display?
A video made for a 45-year-old procurement manager at a manufacturing company watching on a laptop is a fundamentally different piece of work from a video made for a 28-year-old consumer discovering a brand on Instagram. Same budget, completely different approach.
4. Key Messages
What are the two or three things your audience absolutely must take away from this video? Not ten things — two or three.
This forces a useful discipline. If you can't narrow it down, it usually means you haven't yet decided what this video is really for.
Also consider: is there anything your brand should never say, show, or be associated with? Knowing the boundaries is as useful as knowing the direction.
5. Tone and Style
Describe how you want the video to feel. Some useful pairs of opposites to work through:
Formal or casual?
Serious or playful?
Aspirational or grounded and real?
Fast-paced and energetic or calm and considered?
Narrator-led or observational?
People-focused or product-focused?
Reference examples are extremely valuable here. Find three to five videos — from any industry, not necessarily your own — that have the tone, pace, or visual style you're drawn to. Even if the content is completely different from yours, showing a production team "something like this" saves hours of misaligned assumptions.
Be specific about what you like about each reference: the colour palette, the pacing, the music style, the way it was shot. "I like how this one feels warm and human" is more useful than just sharing a link.
6. Practical Requirements
This section covers the hard constraints that shape the entire production:
Length: How long should the final video be? If you're not sure, what platform is it for? (Instagram Reels: under 60 seconds. Website hero: 60–90 seconds. Brand film: 2–4 minutes.)
Deliverables: Do you need multiple versions — a 60-second cut, a 15-second cut, a square format for Instagram? Specify everything upfront.
Deadline: When do you need the finished video? Work backwards from this date to understand what pre-production timeline is realistic.
Language and subtitles: Will this need subtitles? In which languages?
Music: Do you have a preference for original composition, licensed tracks, or royalty-free music?
7. Budget
State your budget clearly and honestly. This is the part most clients are reluctant to do — but it is genuinely one of the most useful things you can include.
A production company that knows your budget can design the best possible production within it. Without a budget, they're guessing — which means they'll either over-propose (and shock you with the quote) or under-propose (and deliver something that doesn't meet your expectations).
If you genuinely don't know what to budget, say so and ask for a tiered proposal showing what's possible at different investment levels. That's a legitimate starting point.
8. Decision-Making and Approvals
Production timelines are frequently delayed not by the production company but by the client's internal approval process. Be honest about this upfront:
Who has final sign-off on the video?
How many people are involved in the approval process?
Are there any internal review stages that need to be built into the timeline?
If five people need to approve the final edit, that needs to be in the brief — not discovered after the first cut is delivered.
The Brief Template
Copy and paste this into a document, fill it in, and send it to any production company you approach. A completed version of this template will get you better proposals, more accurate quotes, and a smoother production process.
VIDEO PRODUCTION BRIEF
Project name:
Date:
Contact name and role:
1. About our business
What we do:
How long we've been operating:
Our main products or services:
What makes us different from competitors:
How we currently position our brand:
2. Objective
What specific problem is this video solving?
What should be different after someone watches it?
Where does this video sit in our marketing or sales process?
3. Target audience
Who is the primary viewer of this video?
What do they care about when making a decision in our category?
What doubts or objections do they typically have?
Where and how will they watch this video?
4. Key messages
The two or three things our audience must take away:
Things our brand should never say or be associated with:
5. Tone and style
How should this video feel? (circle or describe): Formal / Casual · Serious / Playful · Aspirational / Real · Fast / Calm
Reference videos we like and why:
6. Practical requirements
Desired length:
Platforms and formats needed:
Deadline for final delivery:
Languages and subtitles required:
Music preference (original / licensed / royalty-free / no preference):
Any other deliverables (social cuts, behind-the-scenes, stills):
7. Budget
Our budget for this project is approximately:
(If unsure, please provide a tiered proposal at Rp 30M / Rp 75M / Rp 150M)
8. Approvals
Who has final sign-off on the video:
Other stakeholders involved in approval:
Any internal review stages we should plan for:
Additional context, references, or anything else we should know:
End of template.
One Final Thought
A brief is a conversation starter, not a legal contract. Don't let the pursuit of a perfect brief stop you from reaching out. Fill in what you know, be honest about what you don't, and a good production company will help you work through the gaps in an initial conversation.
The goal is simply to make sure that by the time production begins, everyone is working from the same understanding of what success looks like.
If you'd like to talk through your brief before it's fully formed, we're happy to do that. Sometimes the most useful thing is a 30-minute conversation before anything is written down.
