How to Write a Video Brief

A good video brief will ensure your video project gets off to a positive start. In the long run, it can save you time and money, and help deliver the video that you want as smoothly as possible.

This may seem obvious, but you’d be surprised how often organisations can overlook defining their audience and purpose before embarking on a video project. It’s probably the most important thing to be clear on with your production company and is vital in making sure your video project is on track.

Sometimes it’s a very simple answer. For example, “we want to sell products to middle income working women aged between 30 and 40”.

At other times, it can be much more complex and nuanced; such as, “we want to inspire wealthy people to donate to our Arts charity, and we need to reassure them that their money will be effectively spent and that they will be creating an enduring legacy of benefit to the wider community”.

Nevertheless, whether simple or complex, this clarification is vital to enable your video production team to do their very best in delivering the video that will delight both you and your boss!

A collaborative discussion with a good video production company can help you sharpen your sense of direction here and highlight considerations that specifically relate to video.

You can be provisional about many other elements in your brief, but a well defined audience and purpose will set the compass points that will keep your video on track.

Here at Blue Sky, clients often come to us with rather fixed ideas about the format of their video. “We want it to be 2 minutes in length”, “We want an animated sequence”, “We would like to use voice-over” are the sorts of things we regularly hear.

All these requests may be perfectly good ideas, but you will need to review them with your video production team. Through experience, they may well suggest a better approach given your aims. If you share your ideas in your brief, but show a readiness to be flexible in collaborative discussions, you will get the best results.

Obviously, you will need to state the key messages that you wish to communicate in your video, but it’s worth remembering that a really useful video brief – doesn’t mean long and complicated. We’re not talking about generating numerous sides of closely typed A4 that will keep you late at the office.

Nor is it a good idea to paste into your brief extensive extracts from your five-year development plan or annual review. Documents like these are meant to be comprehensive, but video is generally a short form medium, so you will have to be selective and succinct in your messaging. Think about it – what you have read so far in this blog post would take over two minutes to voice comfortably in a video – and this is not much more than a side of A4.

Of course, where the moving image is used without speech, then a lot of ideas can be covered very quickly – the old adage ‘a picture paints a thousand words’ is as true as ever, so if you want to communicate a lot in a short amount of time, it’s a good idea to think about what might be shown through just imagery and music.

Experienced video producers will know what is best voiced and what is best left to imagery alone, so expect to be adaptable about this. But if you have any ideas on where imagery might carry the messages – then it’s a good starting point to list them in your brief.

For example – in a 6 second sequence of imagery, you could convincingly imply that your staff are happy, your customers are happy, and that you operate in a safe and attractive working environment, without ever having anyone actually say this.

On the other hand of course, too little information can also be a problem, so avoid vague descriptions when identifying your messages. Stating that one of your key messages is ‘health’ or ‘The Government’ will not be enough to enable your production team to develop a treatment or script for your video.

If you are too brief or vague then your producers are going to have to spend more time exploring your messaging with you before they can get on with actually making your video.

Good video producers are more than happy to do this, but scant briefs can cause unnecessary delays, confusion and false starts for your team.

An effective approach is to think what you would SAY to someone if you were put on the spot to sum up the position or offering of your organisation rather than what you would write in On the other hand, too little information can also be a problem, so avoid vague descriptions when identifying your messages. Stating that one of your key messages is ‘health’ or ‘The Government’ will not be enough to enable your production team to develop a treatment or script for your video.

If you are too brief or vague then your producers are going to have to spend more time exploring your messaging with you before they can get on with actually making your video.

Good video producers are more than happy to do this, but scant briefs can cause unnecessary delays, confusion and false starts for your team.

An effective approach is to think what you would SAY to someone if you were put on the spot to sum up the position or offering of your organisation rather than what you would write in a report. This will bring you closer to matching your thoughts to the time constraints of video. a report. This will bring you closer to matching your thoughts to the time constraints of video.

Some budget holders believe that it’s better not to reveal your budget, because if you do suppliers will just massage their proposal figures up to your maximum budget and you won’t get the best deal. This may occasionally prove true with inexperienced or sloppy suppliers, but this tactic is soon exposed with a bit of close questioning on process, expertise and technology. On the other hand, there are many compelling benefits in being transparent about your budget.

Imagine going into an estate agents to buy a four-bedroom house, but you decide not to reveal your budget. How would negotiations unfold?

Firstly, a lot of time would be wasted while you were shown properties that were either beyond your means – or below your expectations. Just as with house buying, when it comes to video production the possibilities are endless and a 2-minute video can cost anything from £500 to £20,000 upwards depending on a host of production choices.

Not revealing your budget can result in unrealistic and unaffordable proposals landing on your desk or conversely – proposals that aren’t ambitious enough. When this happens, you will have missed the opportunity to gather the most meaningful proposals because production companies are forced to guess your budget.

If you give an indication of spend, an experienced video production company will produce a realistic achievable proposal with a range of carefully explained options at the upper, middle and lower end of your budget. This puts you fully in control of how to get best value for your money.

Include any hard facts that absolutely must be expressed in your video. Again – be very selective about these and keep them as succinct as possible. These might include things like the number of people that work for you, the percentage sales growth achieved by your company or the number of people turning to your charity for support.

Double check your facts and get them approved by senior management.

Knowing about vital facts early on means they will be integrated smoothly and intelligently into your video right from the start, rather than squeezed in as an after thought.

Although most people claim to be rational in their decisions, the vast majority of psychological research suggests that this is far from the truth.

Numerous neuromarketing studies prove that your audience will largely be driven by an emotional response in their decision making, even if they profess to be totally logical and rational.

With this in mind, it’s important you give some thought to how you want your audience to feel when they watch your video. Responses can be many and varied including – pride, joy, sympathy, confidence, desire, urgency, intrigue, hope – to name just a few.

The effect of imagery, music and voice in video is incredibly powerful in evoking emotion in your audience, so think carefully about the emotional impact you want to achieve.

There are lots of possibilities when it comes to how, when and where your video will be seen and these choices can affect the best approach to take in the filming and editing of your video. So it’s important for your production company to be aware of any specific plans you have for the release of your video. By sharing your thoughts on this, an experienced video producer will also be able to suggest valuable screening and distribution tactics you may not even have thought of.

For example, a video that is played at a conference to a live audience of hundreds of people, will need more powerful music than might have been chosen for just personal viewing on a mobile device.
Similarly, a video destined for distribution on a variety of social media platforms, as well as your website, could be best released in a few different versions of varying length. This might be a six second teaser for Instagram, a 30 second version for Twitter and the full length 2-minute version for your website. Again, knowing this intention from the outset can shape the production process to the best effect.

Ultimately, a successful video production project comes down to being clear about what you want to achieve through your video combined with open collaborative discussions with your production company.

A good video production brief will support these two principles, ensuring you end up with the right video production company, the right video and a rewarding return on your investment.