TALECRAFTERS
THE ARMOURY

SYNTHETIC MEDIA PRODUCTION BRIEF TEMPLATE

The six paragraphs a generative brief needs and a normal one does not

Format
Fillable template, PDF and on this page
Length
7 sections
Gate
None
Licence
Use it, commercially

A generative production brief is a conventional brief plus six things. Miss them and the studio produces something reasonable that is wrong in a way nobody can articulate until shot thirty.

Fill this in before you approach anybody. It is also the fastest way to find out whether the studio you are talking to knows what it is doing: if they do not ask about sections three and four unprompted, they have not priced the hard part.

DOWNLOAD THE PDF

No email, no form. The whole thing is on this page too.

HOW TO USE IT
  1. 01Fill sections 1 and 2 yourself. They are the commercial brief and you already know them.
  2. 02Sections 3 to 6 are the generative-specific parts. Answer them even where the answer is "none", because "none" is a cheaper brief and the studio needs to know.
  3. 03Send the whole thing. A studio that quotes from this will give you a date rather than a range.

1. The commercial brief

What is this for · The campaign, the launch, the moment

Objective, as a number if one exists · Not "awareness"

Audience, in one sentence a stranger could act on

Deadline · Is this a launch date or a preference?

Budget range, or the number above which this stops being worth doing

2. Deliverables

ASSETPLACEMENTRATIODURATIONQUANTITY
     
     
     
     
     

Cutdowns are cheaper when they are planned as part of the shoot than when they are cropped afterwards. List them here even if they feel like a detail.

3. What must not change

The most valuable section in this document

Everything named here becomes a lock the studio builds before generating anything, and a test every frame is measured against. Anything not named here, the studio has to guess at, and it will guess conservatively, which costs you money.

Products that must be exactly correct · Silhouette, label, proportion, colour

People who must be recognisable · Named, and whether they are real

Brand elements that are fixed · Colour values, logo lockup, typeface

Exact wording that must appear

REFERENCE MATERIAL YOU CAN SUPPLY

  • Packaging dieline or label artwork at print resolution
  • Photographs of the actual product, any quality, from three angles
  • Existing brand photography that got approved
  • Existing work that was rejected internally, and why
  • Brand guidelines, fonts, colour values

The rejected work is the most useful item on that list. It tells a studio where your organisation’s real threshold is, which no moodboard does.

4. The cost drivers

Answer honestly. These are what move the quote.

TICK EVERYTHING THAT APPLIES

  • A shot requires readable printed text in frame (packaging, signage, a screen, a certification mark)
  • One face or product has to recur across more than nine assets
  • The work spans more than one lighting environment
  • A real person’s likeness or voice is involved
  • A claim in the asset requires substantiation (health, finance, environmental, comparative)
  • The assets will run in the EU
  • We want the master plates and trained identities handed over at the end

If readable text is required, which shots and what does it say

If a face recurs, across how many assets and over what period

5. Compliance and disclosure

Territories the work will run in

Platforms and their AI-content policies

Claims that need legal sign-off, and who signs them

Disclosure position agreed · On-asset label, metadata, both

Decide this here, not at delivery. A disclosure discovered late means re-exporting every asset, and sometimes recomposing the frame to make room for a label.

6. Approval

Who signs off the brief · A person, not a department

Who signs off the final output · A person, with authority to say no

Any other stakeholder who can stop this, and at what stage

A generative pipeline can produce a hundred assets faster than a committee can review three. Two named moments with one named person is the structure that works.

7. What you should get back

Check the proposal against this before signing

  • A date, not a range
  • The named pipeline the work runs through
  • The control gates, and what each one tests
  • The expected acceptance rate on the hardest shot in the brief
  • A credit ceiling per asset, and what happens when a batch reaches it
  • The disclosure position, per placement
  • A list of what you keep at the end, including plates and trained identities
LICENCE

Free to use, copy, adapt and put your own name on. No attribution required, though a link back is appreciated. Published by TaleCrafters, talecrafters.studio.

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