Social media video brief template

Social video is the format where the gap between what the client says and what the producer has to make is widest. The client says "a video for social". The producer hears four aspect ratios, three duration ceilings, two sound defaults and a set of safe areas, multiplied by however many languages are involved. Nobody is wrong; the brief just has not translated one into the other. That translation is what this template does.

Placements are deliverables

Instagram Reels, Stories, TikTok, the Meta feed, LinkedIn, YouTube pre-roll: each is a placement with its own specification, and the specification is not a matter of opinion. Reels and TikTok are 9:16 at 1080 by 1920, sound on. The Meta feed is 4:5 and plays silent by default, so it needs captions. LinkedIn is the same. YouTube is 16:9. Pick the placements and the brief writes those specifications out, along with the count of deliverables they add up to, because three placements briefed as one video is a threefold deliverable count nobody priced.

Which cut leads

When placements span more than one ratio, one of them is the hero and the rest are adapted from it. This is not a detail. A 9:16 hero re-framed to 16:9 is a different film from a 16:9 hero cropped to 9:16, and the difference is usually a shoot decision about how the frame is composed. Decide it in the brief and the shoot is planned for it. Decide it afterwards and something has to be re-shot.

Sound off is the default in a feed

Most social video is watched silent, in a feed, with the thumb ready to scroll. That decides three things at once: captions are mandatory, the first two seconds have to work without sound, and anything that depends on a voiceover to make sense will not make sense. If the brief says there is a voiceover, it should also say what the film looks like with the sound off.

Versions multiply

Two languages doubles the subtitle files and means the text layers have to be kept separate in the edit. Three placements in two languages is seven deliverables including the master. The arithmetic is simple and it is almost never done in the brief, which is why this template does it as you tap.

Technique decides the budget

A social set can be a motion-graphics treatment of existing footage, a 2D animation, or a shoot. The cost range across those three is roughly four to one, and "not sure yet" is an honest answer that should be recorded as an open question rather than silently resolved to the cheapest reading.

The one thing that must not be got wrong

On social it is usually a brand rule that the platform makes hard: the logo that must survive the Reels interface overlay, the product that must be readable at thumbnail size. Put it at the top, in a box.