How an ad film gets made: from brief to broadcast, stage by stage

Thirty seconds of television can take six weeks to make, and most of those weeks happen before anyone picks up a camera. For a brand commissioning its first ad film, the process can look opaque — a lot of meetings, then a very long day, then more waiting.

It is actually a sequence with clear gates, and knowing them tells you where your approvals matter, where changes are cheap, and where they get expensive.

1. The brief

Everything starts with a written brief, and a good one answers five things:

• The objective. Launch, awareness, a specific offer, a change of perception.
• The audience. Who has to be moved, and what they currently believe.
• The media plan. Where it will run decides everything downstream: TV, YouTube pre-roll, Instagram and cinema want different durations, aspect ratios and pacing.
• The mandatories. Logo, pack shot, tagline, legal supers, disclaimers, the phone number.
• The budget and the date. Both, honestly. A brief without a budget produces a treatment that cannot be made.

2. Treatment and script

The production house responds with a treatment: the idea, the tone, the look — often with reference images and a written walkthrough — and a script. Once the idea is chosen, a storyboard lays out the film shot by shot.

This is the cheapest place to change your mind. Changing a storyboard costs an afternoon. Changing the same thing on the shoot day costs the day.

3. Pre-production and the PPM

Pre-production turns the storyboard into a plan: casting, locations, wardrobe, props, crew, equipment, schedule and permissions. It ends with the pre-production meeting (PPM), where brand, agency and production sign off every element — who is cast, what they wear, where it is shot, how each scene will look.

The PPM is the line that matters most for budget. Changes after the PPM cost money, because people, places and things have now been booked against it. If something is bothering you, say it before the PPM, not on set.

4. The shoot

Usually one to three days for a commercial. The brand’s representative on set approves takes as they happen, particularly the pack shot and any product claims shown on screen. The director and cinematographer are working to the storyboard; the producer is working to the clock.

A good shoot also gathers what the edit will need beyond the main film: cut-down versions, vertical framings and alternative endings, because reshooting any of them later means rebuilding the whole day.

5. The offline edit

The offline is where the story is built from the footage — the cut, the pacing, the performance choices — at working quality. This is where you review and give feedback, usually in one or two rounds agreed in the contract.

Judge the offline on story and pacing, not polish. The colour and sound are unfinished on purpose.

6. The online: grade, VFX, sound

Once the cut is locked, the online finishes it: colour grading, visual effects, graphics and supers, a licensed music track or original score, sound design, voiceover and the final mix. Broadcasters specify technical delivery standards, including loudness, so ask each channel for its delivery spec before the mix rather than after.

7. Deliverables

A single “ad film” is usually a set of files:

• The master at its full duration.
• Cut-downs — 20, 15, 10 and 6 seconds are common — for different placements.
• Aspect ratios — 16:9 for TV and YouTube, 9:16 for Reels and Shorts, 1:1 or 4:5 for feeds.
• Subtitled versions for silent autoplay, and language versions where needed.

Agree the full list at the brief. It shapes what is shot, not just what is exported.

Claims and compliance

An ad is a public claim, and in India the Advertising Standards Council of India’s code expects claims to be truthful and capable of substantiation. ASCI also publishes guidelines on disclaimers — their legibility, language and time on screen — and a super that flashes past too quickly to read invites complaints.

Property ads have an extra layer: the RERA registration number and authority website are mandatory, and Odisha requires the number to be audible in video. We cover that in real estate video and RERA rules in Odisha.

Where timelines slip

• Late mandatories. A legal super or a pack-shot change arriving after the online means re-finishing every version.
• Script changes after the PPM. The most expensive change in the process.
• Approval chains. Every additional approver adds days. Name one decision-maker per stage.

Where we fit

As an ad film production house in Bhubaneswar, we script, shoot and grade in-house, framing every placement at the shoot rather than cropping after it. It sits within our wider commercial video production services across Odisha — and if budget is the first question, start with what a corporate video actually costs.