Video brief template: what to ask a client before you quote
Most video brief templates you can download are written for the client to fill in, which is optimistic. What actually arrives is two sentences in an email and a deadline. So this is the video brief template from the other side of the table: the ten things we ask before quoting a commercial job, what a usable answer looks like, and the three answers that decide whether this is a half day or two days. Copy it, put it in your own words, send it back to the client as the thing you are quoting against.
Why the brief is the document that sets your price
Every job we have lost money on was underpriced at the brief stage, not at the shoot. Nobody sets fire to a budget on the day; they agree to something vague in March and discover in April that "a few social versions" meant nine cutdowns in three aspect ratios with subtitles. The brief is where the job is still cheap to change. Ten minutes of specific questions there is worth more than any amount of heroics later.
The template: ten things to pin down
- 1. The film in one sentence. What it is and what it is for, in a line you could both say out loud. If neither of you can write it, the job is not ready to quote.
- 2. Audience and where it plays. Website homepage, paid social, a conference screen, an internal all-hands. Where it plays changes the length, the pacing and whether it has to work with the sound off.
- 3. Deliverables, itemised. The most important line on the sheet. Count, duration, aspect ratio, subtitles or not, and whether there are stills. "One 2 min film 16:9, three 30s cutdowns 9:16 with burnt-in subtitles, ten stills" is a brief. "Some content" is a guess.
- 4. The message. Three things maximum that the viewer should come away with. Clients will offer eight. Getting it down to three is part of the work.
- 5. Who is on camera. Names, roles, whether they have done this before, and whether anyone has actually told them they are being filmed. This last one catches us out more than it should.
- 6. Locations and access. Where, whose building, who holds the keys, and whether it is signed off. Anything unresolved here goes on the recce list.
- 7. Brand assets and music. Logos, fonts, colours, any existing footage you are expected to cut in, and who is paying for the music licence. Ask now, not the night before the first cut.
- 8. Dates and the real deadline. Not "end of the month" but the date it goes live, worked backwards through their sign-off rounds. Their approval chain is part of your schedule.
- 9. Budget range. Ask. The worst outcome is a polite non-answer, and you have still learned something.
- 10. Who signs off. One name. Not a department, not "the team". Feedback with no single owner is the most expensive thing in post.
Turning vague answers into usable ones
Clients are not being difficult when they answer loosely; they are describing an outcome, and you need a specification. Your job in the brief conversation is the translation, out loud, until they agree with the specific version.
The three answers that set the length of the day
Once the brief is specific, three of the ten answers do nearly all the work in the quote: how many deliverables, how many locations, and how many people have to be filmed. Everything else is detail. Move any one of those a step to the right and you are not adding minutes to the day, you are adding hours - which is why a job can sound identical to the last one and cost half as much again.
Questions we learned to ask the hard way
- Has anyone told the people being filmed? Turning up to interview a marketing director who found out that morning is a slow start you have paid for.
- How many rounds of feedback are included? Two is normal. Say the number in the brief, or you will be doing round six for free.
- Whose logo goes on the end? Parent company, sub-brand, a partner who has to approve it. This is never a five-minute question.
- Is there existing footage we are expected to use? If yes, ask to see it before quoting, not after.
- What happens if the weather is bad? Agree the fallback in the brief. Deciding on the morning is how you end up filming the exterior in drizzle and reshooting it anyway.
Send it back and get a yes
The last step is the one people skip. Write the brief up in your own words - ten short headings, a page at most - and send it to the client with a line asking them to confirm it is right. Almost nobody objects, and you now have a version of the job you both agreed to, in writing, before any money moved. From there the rest of the paperwork falls out of it: the deliverables list becomes your shot list, the dates become the schedule, and the named signer-off is the person who gets the call sheet.
We used to keep briefs in a folder of documents that slowly stopped matching the shoot. In Cinella the brief details live on the shoot itself, so the call sheet, the kit list and the generated run of day are all built from the same set of facts, and the client sees the confirmed version in their branded portal rather than a forwarded email chain. That is our bias, obviously - we built it because we kept getting this wrong.
The ten questions are yours either way. If you want the paperwork to stop drifting apart, Cinella is £12/month during launch (rising to £15 for new subscribers afterwards; join now and your rate stays £12 for as long as you stay subscribed), with a 14-day free trial and nothing charged if you cancel inside it.