A video production brief is the most important document in any production project. It is also the one most often skipped, rushed, or written after the shoot is already booked.
A good brief does not just describe what you want to make. It explains why you are making it, who it is for, and how you will know if it worked. Without those answers, a production team cannot make decisions that serve your goals. They can only execute the instructions they are given and hope it works.
Here is what a complete video production brief should include.
Project overview
The overview is a short paragraph that explains what you are making and why. It should be specific enough that a stranger could read it and understand the project without follow-up questions.
A weak overview sounds like this: “We need a company video for our website.”
A strong overview sounds like this: “We need a 90-second brand film for our website homepage that introduces our company to potential enterprise customers who have been referred to us by a sales rep and are doing initial due diligence before agreeing to a demo call.”
The difference in specificity changes every decision that follows.
Business objective
What is this video supposed to accomplish? Not for the video itself, but for your business.
Good answers to this question:
- Convert website visitors into demo requests
- Reduce the number of calls needed to explain our process to new prospects
- Increase close rates on proposals that include video vs. those that do not
- Shorten the sales cycle for deals over a certain contract value
Weak answers:
- Tell our story
- Show what we do
- Increase brand awareness
Vague objectives produce vague videos. Specific objectives produce videos that can be evaluated against real outcomes.
Target audience
Who is watching this video? Be as specific as your data allows.
Include:
- Job title and role
- Company type and size
- Where they are in the buyer journey (awareness, consideration, decision)
- What they already know about you, if anything
- What objections or concerns they are likely to have
A video targeting a CFO evaluating a $500,000 software contract is fundamentally different from a video targeting an IT manager evaluating a project management tool. The tone, the claims, the format, and the pacing all change based on the audience.
Distribution and placement
Where will this video live? A video for a sales follow-up email is produced differently than a video for a trade show booth. The same 90-second brand film may need a different edit for LinkedIn, your website, and a live conference presentation.
List every placement you can anticipate:
- Website pages (specify which pages)
- Email sequences (specify which stages)
- LinkedIn and other social platforms
- Trade show booths or displays
- Internal presentations and sales decks
- Paid media placements
Each distribution context has its own requirements for length, format, subtitles, aspect ratio, and opening hook.
Deliverables
List every file you need at the end of post-production. Do not leave this for after the edit.
A typical deliverable list for a corporate video project might include:
- 90-second hero film (16:9, 1080p, with and without lower thirds)
- 60-second cutdown
- 30-second cutdown for paid media
- 15-second social version (1:1 square crop)
- Subtitled versions of each
If you know you will need cutdowns or alternate formats, the shoot needs to be planned to capture that footage. Footage shot for a single deliverable rarely cuts cleanly into formats it was not designed for.
Key messages
What do you want the viewer to understand, feel, or believe after watching this video that they did not understand, feel, or believe before?
List three to five specific messages, in order of priority. If you can only have the viewer walk away with one thing, what is it?
Good key messages are specific:
- Our implementation process is faster and less disruptive than competitors
- Our customers see measurable results within 90 days
- Our team has direct industry expertise, not just technical expertise
Weak key messages are generic:
- We care about our customers
- We have great people
- We are innovators in our space
Tone and style
How should this video feel? Give your production team concrete direction, not adjectives.
Instead of “professional but approachable,” say: “Think how a senior consultant at a top firm would explain a complex topic to a peer. Direct, confident, no jargon, no fluff.”
If you have reference videos or examples of brands you admire, share them. Even if the style is not exactly what you want, references give a production team something concrete to respond to.
Note any restrictions: brand guidelines, approved vocabulary, topics to avoid, competitor names that should not be mentioned.
Timeline and milestones
When does the final video need to be ready, and why? Working backward from a hard deadline changes what is possible.
A realistic timeline for a single corporate video from brief approval to final delivery is four to six weeks. Multi-deliverable productions and brand films run longer.
If you have a conference, product launch, or campaign activation tied to the video, note that date explicitly. Rush timelines are possible, but they cost more and require compromises.
Budget range
Budget is the constraint that makes everything else possible or impossible. You do not need an exact number, but your production partner needs to know the range they are working within.
A project with a $7,000 budget is produced differently than one with a $35,000 budget. Crew size, shoot days, the number of locations, the level of post-production, and the quality of deliverables all scale with budget.
Sharing a budget range early prevents the most common waste of time in production: a detailed proposal for a project that turns out to be wildly out of scope.
Success metrics
How will you know this video worked?
Define this before production begins, not after. Success metrics might include:
- Demo request rate from the page where the video lives
- Play rate and completion rate on the video itself
- Changes in time-on-page or bounce rate
- Sales team feedback on how prospects respond to the video in outreach
- A/B test results comparing pages with and without the video
Videos without defined success metrics are judged subjectively. Subjective review rounds produce the longest and least productive feedback cycles.
A complete brief takes an hour or two to write. It will save you that time ten times over in reduced revision rounds, reshoots, and scope confusion.
Simplistic Views is a B2B video production company based in Chicago. We help marketing teams develop briefs, plan productions, and create video content that does a specific job. Talk to our team.