The Brand Film Brief Template

Most production briefs are too long, too vague, or both.

The "too long" briefs are usually agency-flavoured: ten pages of moodboard, five pages of brand guidelines, three pages of audience personas, and a deliverable section that boils down to "we want it to feel cinematic." By the time anyone gets to the actual creative direction, the brief has stopped being a working document and started being a deck.

The "too vague" briefs are the opposite. A paragraph of context, a budget number, a deadline, and a hopeful sentence about wanting it to "really capture our brand." Not enough to plan a shoot from. Definitely not enough to know whether it worked.

What sits between those two failure modes is the brief that runs every project I work on. One page. Eight sections. Each one decides something.

I'm publishing it here for anyone who wants a working version they can adapt for their own production work — internal team, external freelancer, agency, or otherwise.

What's in it

The eight sections, in order:

1. The commercial goal. What this content needs to do for the business. Not what it should look like. What outcome it produces.

2. The audience. A specific person, not a demographic. Their role, their priorities, their sources of skepticism.

3. The channel. Where this content lives. Web, paid social, owned email, sales pitches, internal — be specific. The format follows.

4. The single message. One sentence that the audience should remember after watching. If you can't reduce it to a sentence, the brief isn't ready.

5. The proof points. Three to five things that earn the message. Real specifics — numbers, named clients, demonstrable craft, observable behaviour.

6. The tone. Two adjectives, three at most. "Confident, considered, dry" is a tone. "Modern, professional, approachable" is a list of words that mean nothing.

7. The success criteria. How we'll know it worked. Quantitative if possible, qualitative if not. Defined before the shoot, not after the launch.

8. The non-negotiables. Anything that absolutely must or must not be in the final piece. Talent permissions, brand restrictions, legal considerations, sensitive subjects to avoid.

That's the whole thing. One page. Filled in honestly, it's enough to build any brand film around. Filled in vaguely, it surfaces the gaps before you've spent money on production.

Download the template

Download the Brand Film Brief Template (PDF)

It's an editable PDF with the eight sections laid out, plus prompt questions to help you fill in each one. Use it for your next project, internal or external. Send it to me filled in for your next discovery call.

What you do with it

Three suggestions.

Use it before the shoot. Even if you're working with a producer or agency that has their own briefing process, fill this version in for yourself. It'll surface the assumptions and gaps in the project before the production decisions get made.

Use it as a screening tool for partners. When you're choosing between video or photo producers for a project, send them the filled brief and ask what they'd do differently. The good ones will push back on at least one thing. The ones who just nod through every section probably aren't going to challenge the work in production either.

Use it to assess past projects. Pull up the brief from a recent piece of content you commissioned — and compare it to this template. The gaps in your past briefs are the reasons your past content didn't perform.

The brief isn't sexy. It's not gear. It's not visual style. It's not a moodboard. But it's the most consequential decision you make on any production project — and it gets made, or skipped, before anyone shoots a frame.

Want help filling this in for your next project? Map your project →. The first conversation is free, and the brief gets started in that call.