Video Brief Template: The One We Give Our Own Clients

You're about to spend a few thousand pounds on a video. The brief is the one or two page document that decides whether that money does its job. Get it right and every agency you talk to quotes the same project, the quotes come back sharper, and the finished film does what you hired it to do.

Below is the exact template we give our own clients before a project starts. It's free, it's on this page in full, and you don't have to give us your email to use it. Jump straight to the template (or copy the Google Doc if you'd rather work in a document), and if you want your quotes to come back lower, the two short sections before it are worth the read.

What is a video brief (and is it the same as a creative brief)?

A video brief, sometimes called a creative brief, is a one or two page document that tells a production company what you want to achieve, who the video is for, and what you have to spend. That's it. It's not a script and it's not a shot list; those come later, and they're usually the agency's job.

The brief has one purpose: to get everyone quoting and building the same project. Without it, three agencies will quote three different videos, none of the quotes will be comparable, and the important details surface halfway through filming, when they're expensive.

Why a good brief makes your video cheaper

Here's something you only learn from writing the quotes: when a brief doesn't tell us how many people will be on camera, or how many locations we're filming in, we have to price for the worst case. Every unknown gets quoted as risk. That's not an agency being greedy, it's the only way to promise a fixed price on a vague job.

A tight brief removes the padding. It also protects you from the most expensive kind of revision, the "actually, what we really wanted was..." conversation after the edit is done. Ten minutes on this document is genuinely worth hundreds of pounds on the other end.

The template

Nine fields. For each one you get what to write, why the agency needs it, and a filled-in example. The examples all follow one project, an accountancy firm commissioning a homepage video, so you can see how a whole brief hangs together. It's an example project, not a real client's brief.

Prefer to fill it in as a document? Copy the Google Doc version here.

1. Project overview

Two or three sentences: who you are, what you sell, and what you want made. This is the first thing we read, and it sets the context for every other answer.

"We're a 12-person accountancy firm in Stirling working with owner-managed businesses across central Scotland. We want a video for our website homepage that introduces the firm and gets more visitors booking a call with us."

2. Objective

The business result you want, with a number on it if you possibly can. This is the most important field on the page. We design the whole video around this line, and it's how you'll judge whether the video worked.

"Our site gets steady traffic but few enquiries. We want to increase discovery calls booked through the website from around 4 a month to 8."

3. Audience

Who will watch it, and what they need to believe by the end. Not demographics for their own sake; the thing that has to change in their head.

"Owners of businesses turning over £250k to £2m, currently using a cheaper bookkeeper or doing it themselves. By the end they should believe that switching to us is easy and pays for itself."

4. Key message and call to action

One message, one action. If you give a video three messages it delivers none of them. The call to action is what a convinced viewer should do next, stated exactly.

"Message: you've outgrown your bookkeeper, and moving to us is easier than you think. Call to action: book a free 20-minute chat."

5. Tone, style and reference videos

Link two or three videos you like, from anywhere, and say what you like about them. This is the fastest way to align on taste and it routinely saves an entire revision round. Add anything that's off-limits for your brand.

"Straight-talking and warm, not corporate. We like [link] for how natural the founder sounds and [link] for the pace. Our real office and real people, no stock footage."

6. Deliverables and formats

What you actually receive: the main film, any cutdowns, aspect ratios, captions. If you're not sure what you need, say where it'll be used and ask; that's a normal question.

"One 90-second homepage film. Two 30-second vertical cutdowns for LinkedIn. Captions on everything."

7. Where it will run

The channels the video will live on. Formats and length follow from this, and a film built for a homepage is a different edit from one built for a sales email or an event screen.

"Website homepage first. Cutdowns on the firm's LinkedIn page. Possibly in our proposal emails later."

8. Budget

An honest range. This is the field people most want to leave blank, and leaving it blank hurts you most: without a number, one agency quotes £1,500 and another £15,000, and you can't compare either the prices or the thinking behind them. An agency worth hiring uses your range to tell you what's achievable inside it, not to spend all of it.

If you genuinely don't know what to write here, read our guide to what video production costs in the UK first. It has real numbers, including ours.

"£2,000 to £2,500 + VAT."

9. Timeline and decision process

When the video needs to be live, who signs it off, and when you'll choose an agency. The sign-off name matters more than people think: projects stall when the decision-maker first appears at the final cut.

"Live by the end of September. Both partners sign off, and both will be on the kick-off call. We'll choose an agency by 15 August."

That's the whole brief. Copy the Google Doc version and fill it in field by field; it shouldn't take you more than fifteen minutes.

Mistakes that ruin good briefs

• Leaving the budget blank. Covered above, but it's the big one: you'll get quotes you can't compare and every one of them padded against the unknown.
• No decision deadline. "We'll see" briefs drift. Give agencies a date you'll decide by and everyone, including you, takes the project seriously.
• Sending it to ten agencies. You'll drown in proposals and skim all of them. Pick two or three properly instead; our guide to choosing a video production company shows you how to shortlist.
• Briefing the video instead of the outcome. "We want a drone shot of the office" is a shot, not an objective. Brief the result ("more discovery calls") and let the production company earn its fee working out how to get you there.

What happens after you send it

A good agency reads your brief and comes back with questions. That's a sign of quality, not confusion; sharp questions about your audience or your objective mean they're pricing your project rather than reciting a rate card. Then you should get a proposal that mirrors your objective back at you, and a fixed price against a defined scope.

If what comes back is a generic showreel and an open-ended day rate, that tells you something too. We've written about how to judge the responses.

Use it anywhere (that's the point)

The template is yours, and it will work with any production company; nothing in it is Steadyhand-specific. If you'd rather not do the paperwork at all, book a free discovery call and we'll fill it in together on the call. It takes about twenty minutes and you'll leave with a scoped project either way.