CraftHow the work gets made
How to brief a brand film
Neon Frame Creative
5 min read
A brand film brief is one page, and its job is to prevent the second shoot day.
Every line on that page closes off a conversation that would otherwise happen on set, with a crew standing around while it is had. Who is this for. What are they meant to do afterwards. Which of the three things the founder wants to say is the one we are actually filming. These are not creative questions. They are decisions, and decisions are cheap on a Tuesday afternoon and expensive at day rate.
The reason the page is enough is that ninety seconds holds one idea. Not one message with four supporting points. One idea. Most of the work of a brief is choosing it, and a brief that runs to three pages is nearly always a brief in which the choice has been postponed.
Why this is not a shot list
A photoshoot brief is a list of pictures. You can brief a photoshoot by naming the frames you need and the order you need them in, and the day will deliver them. A film does not work like that, because a film has three things a photograph does not: a running order, a sound track, and someone talking. All three are decided before the first frame is shot. If the brief leaves them open, the shoot captures material rather than a film, and the film gets found in the edit, if it is there at all. Usually it is nearly there, which is how you end up back on location picking up the piece that was never planned.
So the page is not about what to shoot. It is about what the viewer should think at the end, and what has to be settled for that to happen.
The page
Who it is for, and where they will watch it. One audience, one place. A buyer on a phone in a feed does not watch the same film as a board on a projector. The place sets the length, the first three seconds and whether sound can be assumed. If the answer is "everyone, everywhere", the brief is not finished.
The one thing they should think or do afterwards. A sentence. "Book a call." "Trust the people." "This is a serious company." The whole film is in service of that sentence, and anything that does not serve it is cut before it is shot.
The single idea. The one argument the film makes. Not the list of services, not the history, not the values. If the founder has three things to say, this is where two of them are parked for a second film. We would rather make one thing you remember than three you scroll past.
Who is on camera, and whether they have done it before. Names, roles, and an honest note on experience. A first-timer needs a different day: more set-up time, a conversation rather than a script, a second camera so the edit can cut around the restarts. None of that is a problem if it is known. All of it is a problem at ten in the morning.
Where and when, with access and light. The room, the date, who holds the key, which direction the windows face and what the building sounds like at that hour. A location visit answers most of this. A line on the brief answers the rest, and stops a crew arriving to find the boardroom double-booked and the air conditioning audible.
What already exists. The identity, the typeface, any previous film, the stills library, the house colour. A brand film sits inside a brand, and the edit has to know what it is sitting inside before the first cut, not when the client sees the titles.
What it must not be. Two reference films you are avoiding, with a word on why. This is more useful than two you admire, because a film you admire tends to become the film you get, with your logo on the end. The ones you reject tell the studio where the edges are.
Who signs off, and in how many rounds. One name and a number. Two rounds is the right number for a film under three minutes. A sign-off chain of four people with no agreed rounds is how a film ends up released in month five with nobody quite happy.
What the missing line costs
[FACT: composite example, marked as such until a real one replaces it.] Picture a founder film for a food business, shot in a working kitchen on a Thursday. The brief covered the audience, the idea and the location. It did not say who was on camera, so the founder brought two colleagues on the day, and the one with the best story had never been filmed and dried up under lights. It did not name the sign-off, so the first cut went to three people with three views on the opening. Second shoot day, two extra edit rounds, and a film released seven weeks later than planned. Every one of those costs sits on a line that was blank on the page.
That is the test for each heading on the page. Not "is this interesting" but "what happens on the day if it is empty".
Fill it in before you send it
A founder video is the most common brand film we are asked for, and the brief for it is the one most often skipped, on the grounds that the founder knows what they want to say. They usually do. What they do not usually know is which of the things they want to say is the film, and that is the one line the page exists to force.
Send the page to the video team with every line filled in, and you get a treatment back: the running order, the sound, who says what, and the day it takes. If a line is still blank, send it anyway and say so. A blank line we know about is a conversation. A blank line we find out about on set is a reshoot.
Fill in the page here
Eight lines, then your details. A blank line is fine if you say so in it.
Asked about this one
Asked and answered
- How long should a brand film brief be?
- One page. A ninety-second film holds one idea, and a brief longer than a page is usually a sign that the idea has not been chosen yet.
- Should I send reference films with the brief?
- Send two you do not want it to look like. A film you admire tends to become the film you get, with your logo on the end.
- What is the difference between briefing a film and briefing a photoshoot?
- A photoshoot brief is a shot list. A film has a running order, a sound track and someone talking, and all three are decided before the first frame, so the brief has to settle them.