You Probably Shouldn't Commission a Video Yet

Most organisations that come to us with a video brief have already made the most important decision before we've had a single conversation.

They've decided the format.

They know they need a two-minute film for the website. Or a series of stakeholder interviews for the consultation process. Or a documentary for the funding acquittal. The brief is formed, the budget is allocated, and they're looking for someone to execute it.

Sometimes the brief is right. Often it isn't. And the problem with commissioning production before the narrative work is done is that a well-made film built on the wrong story is still the wrong story. It just looks more expensive.

The brief isn't the starting point

Here's what usually happens in the lead-up to a video commission.

Someone in the organisation recognises that a communication challenge exists. A community consultation is coming. A program needs to demonstrate impact. An organisational change needs to land with staff. The instinct is correct: this situation requires storytelling. So a brief gets written.

The brief describes the format, the audience, the key messages, the timeline, and the budget. It gets approved. It goes to market.

What it rarely contains is the answer to the most important question: what does the audience need to feel, and whose story will make them feel it?

That question sounds simple. It isn't. Answering it properly requires a conversation about the gap between what the organisation knows about itself and what its audiences currently believe. It requires identifying the real human stories inside the situation, not just the approved messages around it. It requires the kind of editorial thinking that most briefs skip entirely because it's harder to put in a document than a word count and a delivery date.

When that thinking hasn't happened, production fills the gap with assumptions. The result is a film that looks right, hits the brief, and doesn't move anyone.

Strategy is not a phase that precedes production

The instinct to separate strategy from execution is understandable. Brief the thinking, then brief the making. Clean handoff, clear accountability.

The problem is that in documentary storytelling, the thinking and the making are the same thing. The decisions that determine whether a film builds genuine trust — whose voice carries the story, what they're given permission to say, how the organisation's reality is framed against its public position — can't be made in a document and handed to a production company to implement. They have to be worked through with someone who understands both the communications challenge and the craft of finding truth on camera.

A production company that receives a locked brief and executes it is a supplier. That's a legitimate service. But it's not the work that changes how communities feel about an infrastructure project, or how policymakers respond to an advocacy film, or how staff make sense of an organisational change.

That work starts earlier and goes deeper.

What the right starting point looks like

Before any production conversation begins, the most useful thing an organisation can do is get clear on three things.

What is the gap between what your audiences currently believe about you and what's actually true? Not the polished version of the truth. The real version — the one that, if your audiences saw it clearly and honestly, would shift their understanding in the direction you need.

Whose lived experience, told honestly, closes that gap most effectively? This is almost never a senior executive. It's usually someone closer to the situation — a community member, a frontline worker, a program participant — someone whose experience carries the weight of proof.

What does your organisation need to show that it isn't currently showing? This is the hardest question. The answer often involves something that has been managed rather than communicated. Complex situations almost always contain a more compelling story than the one currently being told.

When these three questions have clear answers, a production brief writes itself. Until they do, the most sophisticated production in the world will underperform.

A half day that saves a lot of wasted production budget

The Narrative Brief exists because we kept seeing the same pattern. Organisations arriving with a brief, a budget, and a deadline, having skipped the thinking that would have made the production actually work.

It's a half-day working session where we go deep on the situation before anything is commissioned. We work through the gap, the voices, the story that needs to be told and why. You leave with a written Narrative Direction Document your team can act on — something you can put in front of your executive team without modification or translation.

If you're planning a production and you're not yet certain you've answered those three questions, that's the right place to start.