How To Write A Brief For Your Film or Video Project
If you’d like a video for your charity, organisation, company or large corporation, the best way to get started is to write a brief and collect quotes from production companies near you.
Our experience tells us that a written brief results in a more successful video. Secondly, there is a fluid and efficient pre-production process, which saves time and creates a clear understanding of the end goal for both teams to work towards.
An ideal workflow may look something like this:
Redscope receive a brief from the client or an initial enquiry.
Redscope send a project brief questionnaire to the client, or email to clarify any details not included in the brief. There may be some back and forth via email or a discovery call.
Redscope provide a quote to the client with our terms and conditions.
The client pays 50% deposit to accept the quote.
Redscope and the client have a meeting or phone call to discuss the project parametres in detail. If the scope has changed slightly, the quote may be adjusted to reflect this.
Depending on whether the client wishes for creative direction or not, we may produce a story-board and ideation to help flesh out the content of the video. Or we receive a storyboard, script and other details from the client for Redscope to review.
We plan the production day/days. We email a timeline which is agreed in advance. The client is sent a run sheet for the day/s and we may have a pre-production meeting to iron any concerns or questions.
Why is a clear brief important?
The obvious reason is so you (the client) receive an accurate quote and an end result that you are happy with. The other reasons are to avoid a project being delayed with indecision and opposing opinions. Production is also incredibly complicated. As a crew, we want to ensure we bring all the right equipment, allocate enough time and capture all the right shots and angles. We plan every element and detail in advance. If the full concept is not properly understood at the beginning, we will be planning a very different shoot day to what you have in mind. (This is very rare, but our biggest fear.)
How to Write A Brief For Your Film or Video Project
Even if you are not sure about what the end result should look like yet, you have no idea what the beginning middle and end of your video are, the first step is to list everything out. Think about things, people and locations you’d like the video to include. This is not set in stone, we are very adaptable. It can developed further or pulled back but the important thing is to write out your must haves.
For example, if you’d like to film an event, start by imaging the day’s agenda, what are key times of the day, who are the people we should include and what is the vibe or emotion you’d like us to capture? If you are trying to sell a product or service, what are the key features and how would you like these to be shown to your target audience. Is the video a hard sales pitch or is it a subtle brand story?
Identifying the key outcomes of your video is the best place to start.
What is the goal of your video?
Where will it be distributed?
How will your target audience watch it?
By answering these questions, you quickly identify why you’re making it and what channels it will be distributed on; which simultaneously answers how long the final video edit should be. How will your target audience watch it? Are they on mobile phones on Instagram (square or portrait) or are they on your website (3 x 30 second explainer videos)?
What are the key dates?
Provide a list of key dates: tender submission date, tender award date, shoot dates (if known) and deadline for all deliverables.
About You/Your Company
Give us the context of your video. Begin the brief with some essential background information about the company, the department and the people involved. If this information is all available on your website, provide a URL.
Describe what you have in mind
Provide an overview of the project. This could just be a few sentences which explain to the reader what you are looking for. Here’s an example:
We’re looking for 3 x case study videos about 3 of our customers to be filmed in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide in November. The films are to be shown at an event in January, we may also use it as evergreen content on the website. Each video will need to be about 2-3 mins long and we expect that each will need to be shot in about 3 or 4 hours, meaning a 3 day shoot (including travel time). The films will include talking head interviews with nice backgrounds in each location, cutaways of the interviewees at work, background music (different for each film) and a few simple graphics showing their job title and company logo.
Who is the target audience?
Be clear the tone and content that your audience will expect from you. If they are teenagers verses older generations. It is important to bear in mind you may have different audiences, so you may need multiple edits of the same content with different tones of voice.
What is the key message of your video?
If you already have plans and ideas regarding structure and stylistic content, include these. With that being said, we are able to use our experience to guide you and perhaps inform some of your decisions. We are flexible to your ideas and outcomes, it is important to bear in mind we may need to adjust your vision with what is practically available and within your budget.
For example:
We thought it would be good for each film to begin with an overview of the problem our customer faced, then we can explain how we can help and the video would finish with information about where they are now and their hopes for the future. We also thought it would be nice if you could use some split screen techniques as this would be in keeping with the look of our brochure. We want the music to be upbeat and happy.
Tell us about your brand
Provide details about branding and styling. This may just be a link to a .pdf of your branding guidelines online. You may also want to create a mood board or look and feel, if you have references of videos you’ve seen and want to emulate, this is useful for us. If you’ve produced videos in the past, let us know if you want the exact same vibe or what you didn’t like about them that you’d like to improve.
Budget
It is helpful to provide a guide or budget to us for your project because you may have amazing and interesting ideas for the content of your video which we will quote accordingly. Then, we find out you only have budget for one day. If you let us know your budget and your ideas, we can help you adjust your ideas or the story of the video to fit the budget, while still being able to meet the desired look, tone and emotion for the video.
For a tender process, it’s usually best to NOT provide details about how much money you have available for the project, assuming one of the tender criteria is cost.
As a guide, the more people in the video, the more variety of shots and the amount of locations on a shoot, these are the biggest variables that increase the cost to your production. The more staff we need to allocate to your project, this also increases the cost. That being said, the return on investment for video is exponential, so if there is a large cost involved - videos will usually pay for themselves quickly.
Would you like to get a quote on a project or video idea you have?
Click here to answer our questionnaire and tell us about your project.