A video production brief template
a studio can quote from without a second call.

Twelve: background and why now, the objective and the one action, the audience, the key message, the counted deliverables, where it runs, mandatories and brand assets, references, the budget range, the live date with your review windows, the decision-maker, and what you provide. Keep it to what a producer needs to quote. The creative idea is the studio's job, and the reason you are hiring one.

Detailed enough that two studios would quote the same job. That means every version counted with its length and ratio, the number of locations and people on camera, where it will run and for how long, the budget range and when it goes live. Leave the shot ideas out: a studio pricing your storyboard cannot show you a better one.

Yes, as a range. Studios design to a budget, so a range lets them propose the best film for it and show what more money adds, while a budget still to be confirmed gets you three quotes for three different films. Say what the range must cover, such as talent, music licences and locations, and whether media spend sits outside it.

About ten weeks before the live date is a common shape for a short brand film: a week to brief, a week for quotes, three weeks of pre-production, a shoot week, then four weeks for the edit, two rounds of notes and the final versions. Animation, several locations or casting add time. Count back from launch and put your own review days on the schedule.

Because where it runs sets the price: music, stock footage and talent are licensed for specific uses, so a film cleared for organic social cannot simply move into a paid campaign later. Name every place it will run (website, organic social, paid social, TV, cinema, events or internal), for how long and in which countries. State it in the brief; the agreed terms go in the contract.

Usually the location and access to it, the people on camera and their signed release forms, product samples, brand files and one person on set who can make decisions. For an office shoot, add parking, building security and a quiet room for interviews. Give each item an owner and a date: footage of someone without a signed release cannot be used.

A creative brief sets the problem, audience and message for any piece of creative work. A video production brief adds what a studio needs to price and schedule a shoot: counted versions, locations, people on camera, usage, budget and dates. A treatment is the studio's answer, with the idea, tone and look, and its proposal wraps that answer in scope, schedule and price.

The studio works from it, field by field. The deliverables become the deliverables list, the live date becomes the schedule, the references become the treatment and storyboard, and the mandatories become the shot list must-gets. In Storyflow that happens on the same board once you invite the studio's producer: the AI's pre-production plan, shot list and storyboard workflows build from the brief above them, and it drafts a call sheet PDF per shoot day.

Yes, as a first draft you then correct. Paste the notes into Storyflow and the AI's advertising brief workflow lays out the fields on the board, without inventing a figure, name or date you did not give it. Every change it makes can be undone in one click. Set the objective yourself, and the budget range too: those are decisions, not wording.

No. Storyflow holds what comes before the edit. Review the cuts in Frame.io, where notes sit on the exact frame; comments in Storyflow are not timecoded, and there is no approval button or version compare. The contract, deposit and invoices stay in the production company's own tools. Paste the brief's link into the contract so both point at the same scope.

Not during early access. Storyflow is paid-only during early access, with plans from $7.99 a month billed annually ($9.99 monthly). A free plan launches before the end of 2026, and anyone a paid member invites to a board joins free. The production companies reading your brief pay nothing.