Most briefs we receive are two paragraphs and a deadline. We can quote from that, but the quote will be wide, cautious, and probably wrong, because half of it is guesswork about what you actually want. A good brief takes about forty minutes to write and routinely saves a five-figure swing on the proposal that comes back.
Here's what goes in one. Take it, put it in a doc, fill it in.
The eleven lines
- What is this for. One sentence. A launch, a rebrand, a recruitment push, a trade show loop. Not "a video."
- Who watches it and where. A buyer scrolling Instagram is not a board member in a boardroom. This single answer changes the length, the pacing, the sound design, and the price.
- What should happen after they watch. Enquire, register, visit, remember. If the honest answer is "the CEO wants one," say so. We'll build to that instead of pretending there's a funnel.
- The one thing it must say. If a viewer remembers a single sentence, what is it?
- What's true. The proof points, the numbers, the things nobody else can claim. Films with nothing specific in them are the ones that end up looking like everyone else's.
- Deliverables. Master length, plus the cutdowns and aspect ratios you need. "One film" and "one film plus eight social versions" are different productions.
- Where it runs. Paid social, YouTube pre-roll, a lobby screen, a billboard, broadcast. Each has technical requirements that need to be known before the shoot, not after.
- Deadline, and what it's tied to. A launch event is a real deadline. "End of Q1" usually isn't. Say which one you have.
- Budget. More on this below.
- Who approves it, and who else has an opinion. Name them. Approval chains are the main reason productions run late.
- What you don't want. Often more useful than what you do. Three examples of work you dislike, with a word on why, is one of the fastest ways to get a treatment right first time.
The four everyone leaves out
Budget. The most common objection is that naming a number means you'll be charged it. In practice the opposite happens. Without a number, every production company quotes its own default scope, you get three proposals that can't be compared, and the whole round gets repeated. With a number, you find out what's genuinely achievable at that level and whether it's worth stretching. A range is fine. "Under AED 100,000" is fine.
Usage and duration. Where the footage can run, for how long, and in which markets. This drives talent buyouts and music licensing, and it's the single biggest hidden cost in production. A film licensed for one year of paid social costs meaningfully less than the same film licensed in perpetuity, worldwide.
Existing assets. Brand guidelines, previous footage, a logo animation, product renders, an approved music track. Half of the time there's material sitting on a drive that removes an entire shoot day.
Constraints you think are boring. The building only allows filming on Fridays. The regional MD has to be in it. Legal needs two weeks. The product doesn't exist yet and has to be a render. These are not footnotes, they're the shape of the production.
Why "surprise us" costs money
Creative freedom sounds generous and functions as a trap. With no constraints, the treatment that comes back is a coin flip against whatever's actually in your head, and the round of revisions that follows is where the schedule goes. Constraints are the useful part of a brief. They're what makes the first attempt land.
The same applies to "make it go viral." Nobody can sell you that. What we can build is a film a specific person watches to the end, which is the only thing that has ever produced the other one.
How to send it
A single document beats a thread. If you have references, put them in the doc with a line on what you like about each — the pacing, the grade, the way it opens. "Like this one" without the why is close to useless.
Then send it to two or three companies, not eight. A serious production company puts real hours into a treatment, and a shortlist of three gets you better thinking than a cattle call of eight.
What you should get back
Within about five working days: a treatment, a shot list, a schedule with real dates, and a fixed price with the scope written next to it. If a quote arrives with no treatment attached, you're being sold a day rate rather than an idea.
If you've got a brief in this shape, send it over. We'll come back inside a business day with a treatment, suggested dates, and a fixed price — or a straight no if we're not the right fit for it.