When a brand video falls flat, it’s rarely the camera quality or editing software that’s to blame. It’s the planning. Or rather, the lack of it.
We’ve produced hundreds of brand videos over the past decade, and the pattern is clear: the shoots that run smoothly, stay on budget, and deliver exceptional results are the ones where 80% of the work happened before anyone yelled “action.” The chaotic ones? They’re usually winging it, hoping creativity will magically appear on set.
Brand video production isn’t about showing up with expensive gear and hoping for the best. It’s a methodical process that transforms strategic objectives into compelling visual narratives. Whether you’re creating a 30-second social cut or a comprehensive brand story, the pre-production phase determines whether you’ll capture something genuinely impactful or waste everyone’s time filming content that never sees the light of day.
This isn’t theory. These are the exact steps we follow at Milkable when planning shoots for clients who need their brand videos to actually perform. The brands that follow this framework get usable footage, stay within budget, and create videos that resonate with their audience. The ones that skip steps end up with expensive B-roll that doesn’t tell their story.
Here’s what kills most brand videos before they’re even filmed: no one can articulate why the video exists.
“We need a brand video” isn’t a strategy. It’s a wish. And wishes don’t translate into shot lists, scripts, or measurable outcomes.
Before you book a single crew member or scout a location, answer this question with brutal specificity: what business problem does this brand video shoot solve? Not what you want to say, but what your audience needs to understand, feel, or do after watching.
We recently worked with a Melbourne-based skincare company that initially wanted “something showcasing our products and values.” That’s not a brief; it’s a vague direction that could result in anything. After proper discovery, we identified their real challenge: their premium pricing seemed unjustified to potential customers who didn’t understand their unique formulation process. The video’s purpose became clear: to demonstrate the rigorous science and rare ingredients behind each product to justify the price point and differentiate from mass-market alternatives.
That clarity changed everything. The shot list focused on close-ups of ingredients, the formulation lab, and quality control processes. The script emphasised expertise and precision. The final video increased product page conversion rates by 34% because it addressed the exact barrier preventing purchases.
Your video’s purpose should be specific enough that you can measure whether it succeeded. “Increase brand awareness” is too vague. “Reduce the bounce rate on our services page by showing how our process works” is measurable. “Generate qualified leads for our B2B offering by demonstrating real client results” gives you a target.
This strategic clarity dictates every subsequent decision: who appears on camera, what locations you need, what story structure works, even what time of day you shoot. Skip this step, and you’ll make dozens of arbitrary creative decisions that might look good but don’t serve your business objectives.
Once you know why the video exists, you need a document that translates that purpose into actionable creative direction. This is your creative brief, and it’s the single most important piece of paper in your entire production process.
A proper creative brief for video production planning isn’t a mood board or a collection of reference videos you like. It’s a strategic document that answers these questions:
Target Audience: Who specifically are you talking to? “General consumers” won’t cut it. Are you speaking to CFOs at mid-sized manufacturing companies, or 25-year-old urban professionals interested in sustainable fashion? The more specific, the better. This determines everything from the language you use to the visual style that will resonate.
Core Message: If viewers remember only one thing from your brand video shoot, what should it be? Distil your entire video down to a single sentence. This becomes your North Star when you’re making editing decisions or deciding whether a particular shot serves the story.
Desired Emotional Response: How should viewers feel while watching and after? Inspired? Reassured? Energised? Curious? This isn’t fluffy marketing speak; it directly impacts music selection, pacing, colour grading, and whether you shoot handheld or on a tripod.
Call to Action: What do you want viewers to do next? Visit a specific page? Book a consultation? Remember your brand when they’re ready to purchase? The CTA shapes your video’s final moments and determines whether you need graphics, text overlays, or a specific closing shot.
Visual Style and Tone: This is where reference videos become useful. But don’t just collect videos you think look cool. Find 3-4 examples that match the tone, pacing, and visual approach appropriate for your audience and message. A luxury property developer needs a different visual language than a youth-focused activewear brand.
Technical Specifications: Where will this video live? A 16:9 landscape video for your website homepage requires different planning than a 9:16 vertical video for Instagram Stories or a 1:1 square format for LinkedIn feeds. Knowing your delivery formats before you shoot means you can frame shots appropriately and avoid expensive reshoots.
We keep our creative briefs to two pages maximum. If you can’t fit the essential strategic and creative direction into two pages, you haven’t clarified your thinking enough. This document gets shared with every crew member, reviewed before each shoot day, and referenced during post-production when making editing choices.
Think of your creative brief as your video’s DNA. Everything that follows should be traceable back to decisions outlined in this document.
Here’s where many brands waste money: they either under-resource their shoot and compromise quality, or they bring in a full broadcast crew for video production planning that needs a lean, agile team.
The right team size and composition depend entirely on your video’s complexity, not your budget or ego. A talking-head interview with your CEO needs a different setup than a multi-location product showcase with actors, props, and complex lighting.
For most brand videos, you need these core roles covered:
Director: The person responsible for the creative vision and ensuring every shot serves the story. This isn’t the person operating the camera; it’s the person making moment-to-moment creative decisions about performance, framing, and pacing. On smaller shoots, the director might also produce, but these are distinct skill sets.
Director of Photography (DP): The person who translates the director’s vision into lighting, camera movement, and shot composition. A skilled DP doesn’t just point a camera at things; they understand how different lenses, lighting setups, and camera angles create specific emotional responses.
Producer: The person managing logistics, timeline, budget, and problem-solving. When location permits fall through or talent runs late, the producer handles it so the creative team can focus on capturing great footage. Don’t underestimate this role; a good producer is worth their weight in gold.
Sound Recordist: If your video includes dialogue, interviews, or any audio beyond music, you need dedicated sound recording. The built-in microphone on even expensive cameras produces unusable audio in most environments. Poor audio kills even beautifully shot videos.
Gaffer/Lighting Technician: For anything beyond basic natural light scenarios, you need someone who understands lighting. The difference between amateur and professional video often comes down to lighting quality, not camera specs.
Additional roles depend on your specific needs. Makeup artists for talent who’ll be on camera extensively. Art directors, if you’re building sets or styling products. Production assistants for complex shoots with lots of moving parts. Drone operators for aerial photography shots. The key is matching your team to your actual requirements, not assembling the biggest crew possible.
For our video production projects, we scale teams based on the creative brief. A simple brand message video might need just three people: director/producer, DP, and sound. A comprehensive brand story with multiple locations, talent, and product shots might require eight to ten specialists. Neither approach is inherently better; they serve different needs.
One critical note: hire specialists, not generalists trying to do everything. A DP who’s also trying to record sound and direct talent won’t excel at any of those roles. Budget constraints are real, but quality suffers when you ask one person to handle three jobs simultaneously.
Location scouting isn’t about finding pretty backdrops. It’s about finding spaces that reinforce your brand’s story, accommodate your technical needs, and actually make sense for what you’re filming.
We’ve seen brands fall in love with visually stunning locations that were nightmares to shoot in: terrible acoustics that made dialogue unusable, no power access for lighting, backgrounds so busy they distracted from the subject, or simply spaces that didn’t align with the brand’s positioning.
When evaluating potential locations, consider these practical factors:
Visual Alignment: Does this space reflect your brand’s values and aesthetic? A tech startup positioned around innovation and forward-thinking probably shouldn’t film in a dated office with fluorescent lighting and beige walls. A heritage brand emphasising craftsmanship and tradition needs different visual cues than a disruptive newcomer.
Technical Feasibility: Can you actually shoot there? Check for power access for lighting equipment, clear sightlines for camera movement, and sufficient space for your crew. A gorgeous heritage building with narrow hallways and low ceilings might look fantastic, but it becomes a logistical nightmare.
Audio Environment: Walk the location during a busy time. Listen for ambient noise – air conditioning hum, traffic, nearby restaurants. A location that sounds perfect at 8 am might be unusable at 2 pm when school finishes nearby. If dialogue or interviews are critical, the audio environment is non-negotiable.
Permits and Logistics: Do you need location permits? What are the access times? Can you bring the equipment trucks close, or will you need to carry everything? Is there parking for the crew? A stunning location without practical access wastes your entire shoot day.
Backup Spaces: Scout alternatives. If your primary location has weather or access issues, do you have a backup that maintains your story? Professional location scouting isn’t finding one perfect space – it’s finding options that let you adapt to challenges.
This is where video production planning separates professionals from amateurs. A shot list isn’t a nice-to-have; it’s the difference between a structured shoot and controlled chaos.
Your shot list translates your creative brief and script into specific, actionable shots. For each scene, document: the shot type (wide, medium, close-up), camera movement (static, pan, tracking), talent positioning, props or graphics needed, and technical specifications (lens, frame rate, lighting approach).
Storyboards visualise your shot list. They don’t need to be artwork quality – rough sketches work fine – but they force you to think through every shot’s composition before you’re on set with a crew burning cash by the hour.
We create storyboards not just for the creative team but as communication documents. When your director, DP, and producer are all looking at the same storyboard, there’s no ambiguity about what you’re shooting or why.
Shoot days are expensive. Every hour costs money – crew, equipment rental, location fees, talent. Professional execution on set means planning everything possible in advance so your time on location maximises creative capture rather than problem-solving.
Create a shot schedule that sequences shots strategically: group shots by location to minimise setup time, consider light changes throughout the day, and front-load critical shots so if time runs short, you’ve already captured your must-haves.
Conduct a pre-shoot walkthrough with your full creative team. Walk the location, discuss camera positions, test lighting, check audio, and confirm talent positioning. This 30-minute investment prevents hours of wasted time discovering problems during the actual shoot.
Build buffer time into your schedule. A 12-hour shoot plan shouldn’t fill a 12-hour day – it should fit comfortably into 10 hours, giving you flexibility for unexpected challenges without abandoning shots.
Have backup equipment on set: extra batteries, backup drives, spare lamps, replacement cables. Equipment failures happen. Professional production means you’re prepared.
Post-production is where raw footage becomes a finished video. Your edit determines whether viewers experience your story as compelling or confusing, whether they remember your message or forget it by tomorrow.
Backup Everything: Before you touch any footage, create at least two backups. Hard drives fail. Have a clear backup system: primary working drive, backup drive, and ideally, cloud or offsite backup for critical projects.
Create a Post-Production Brief: Your editor needs context. Share the creative brief, explain what you’re trying to achieve, flag the best takes, and provide any specific direction about pacing, tone, or structure. The more context you provide, the closer the first edit will be to your vision.
Provide these essentials:
Set Realistic Timelines: Editing takes time. A simple 60-second cut might need 2-3 days. A complex 3-minute brand story with multiple locations, graphics, and colour grading might need 2-3 weeks. Rushing editing compromises quality.
Structure your review process clearly:
More review rounds don’t improve quality; they often lead to endless tweaking. Set clear parameters: what types of feedback are appropriate at each stage, who provides feedback, and how many revision rounds are included.
For our brand video production work, we’ve found that the most efficient post-production workflows start with clear creative direction and end with decisive feedback. Projects that drag on for months usually suffer from unclear objectives or too many stakeholders providing conflicting feedback.
After your video is complete and deployed, your work isn’t finished. Measuring performance and capturing learnings ensures each video you produce is better than the last.
Track these metrics based on your video’s purpose:
Gather Qualitative Feedback: Numbers tell part of the story. Also collect qualitative feedback: what resonated with viewers, what confused them, what they remember. This insight is invaluable for future projects.
Conduct a Post-Mortem: Gather your team after the project concludes. What worked well? What would you do differently? What unexpected challenges arose? Document these learnings so you don’t repeat mistakes and can replicate successes.
Calculate True ROI: Factor in all costs: pre-production time, crew and equipment, locations, post-production, revisions, and digital marketing distribution. Compare this investment to the results achieved. This honest accounting helps you make better decisions about future video investments.
Repurpose and Extend Value: A single shoot can often produce multiple assets. Can you create shorter social cuts from your main video? Pull out quotes for text-based posts? Create behind-the-scenes content? Extract audio for a podcast? Maximising the value from your production investment extends ROI.
We’ve seen brand videos deliver results far beyond their initial purpose. A client’s product showcase video not only increased e-commerce conversions but became their most effective sales tool, their recruitment asset, and content for multiple campaigns. That extended value was possible because they planned strategically from the start.
After producing brand videos across dozens of industries, the pattern is clear: great brand videos aren’t distinguished by budget or equipment. They’re distinguished by strategic clarity and meticulous planning.
The brand videos that deliver genuine business results start with a clear purpose, translate that purpose into a detailed creative brief, and execute every step of production with that purpose in mind. Every shot, every word, every creative decision serves the strategic objective.
The forgettable brand videos? They’re usually the ones where someone decided “we need a video” without defining why, hired talented people to show up and “make something cool,” and hoped creativity would compensate for lack of strategy.
Brand video production is a craft that combines creative vision with strategic thinking and operational excellence. It’s understanding that the planning phase – seemingly the least exciting part – determines whether you’ll create something genuinely valuable or waste resources on content that doesn’t move your business forward.
When you’re ready to create a brand video that actually performs – one that resonates with your audience, serves your business objectives, and justifies its investment – the work starts long before anyone picks up a camera. It starts with strategy, continues through meticulous planning, and culminates in execution that brings your brand’s story to life in a way that creates genuine impact.
If you’re ready to create a brand video that cuts through the noise and delivers real results, get in touch with our team. We’ll help you plan and execute a shoot that transforms your brand’s story into compelling visual content that drives measurable business outcomes.
We create awesomeness!
Milkable is an award-winning, Australian-based creative agency delivering fresh content for clients across the world. Find out more about our creative, branding, design, film, photography & digital solutions.
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