Video brief template

Most video briefs fail before the first frame is cut, and they fail on arithmetic rather than creativity. A brief that says "a short film for social" has not said how many films. Instagram Reels, Stories, the Meta feed and YouTube are four aspect ratios. Two languages doubles that. A producer who prices one master and three adaptations, and then discovers it was supposed to be nine, has to reopen the budget conversation on the day the client wanted a first cut.

So the first job of a video brief is to establish the deliverable count, and the way to do that is to name every placement. Each placement carries its own specification: ratio, pixel dimensions, maximum duration, codec, whether sound is on by default, and the safe areas the platform's own interface covers. None of that needs to be written by the person briefing. It is a lookup, and this page does the lookup as you tap.

Format before length

The second job is to name the hero. When placements span more than one ratio, one of them has to be the master and the rest adaptations of it. 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. Deciding this in the brief costs one tap. Deciding it after the shoot costs a reshoot.

Technique is the biggest fork

Live action, 2D, 3D and motion graphics on existing material are not points on a scale. They are different productions with different crews, and the cost range between them is roughly four to one. A brief that leaves the technique open is not wrong, but it should say so plainly, so the designer knows they are being asked to propose rather than execute. This template records "not sure yet" as an open question rather than pretending it is an answer.

Sound decides more than people expect

Whether there is a voice decides whether there is a script, and a script has to be written by someone. Whether there is licensed music decides whether there is a territory and a term to negotiate. Meta feed and LinkedIn play silent by default, so anything running there needs captions, and anything running in more than one language needs its text layers kept separate. The brief should say all of this without the briefer having to know any of it.

What already exists

The list of things the client already has is really a list of things the designer will have to make. Logo files, guidelines, typeface licences, footage, product stills, a music licence, a script: every unticked item is a line in the estimate. Briefs that skip this question produce the phrase "we assumed you had that", which is where budget overruns are born.

Budget, dates, approvals

A budget band is not a commitment; it is a signal about which of the four productions above is on the table. A live date is only useful next to the minimum production window for the chosen technique, so this template calculates the gap and says when it does not fit. And the number of people who must approve, with a named tiebreak, is the single most reliable predictor of how many revision rounds a project will take.

The one thing that must not be got wrong

Every brief has one. It is rarely written down because it feels obvious to the person who knows it. Put it at the top, in a box.