This week’s Future of TV Briefing looks at creator Grace Wells’s full production process, from initial brief to final delivery.
Picture the stereotypical sponsored video produced by a creator. You may be imagining someone holding up a product to their camera, hand behind the product to prevent their camera’s autofocus from blurring out said product, reciting a script about the product’s role in their everyday life and thanking the brand for partnering with them on this video.
Grace Wells (@gracewellsphoto) disproves that stereotype.
A creator who has attracted millions of followers across TikTok and Instagram, Wells represents how creator-produced branded videos have leveled up in production value. She spends, on average, 100 hours producing videos for brands and knocks out two to three branded videos per month. During Digiday’s recent Creator Strategies virtual event, she broke down her full production process, from initial brief to final delivery.
“It’s a very time-intensive process. I’m very big on pre-production, and that’s a question that I get a lot: is how much planning actually goes into these. There’s a lot of hours before I even get into the studio to film,” Wells said.
The first step in that process is joining a briefing call with the brand. Other creators may be satisfied with receiving a one-sheet telling them what the client is looking for. But Wells wants to have a conversation to understand the brand’s objective, its target audience and whether the video she is producing is meant to be tied to a larger marketing effort in case there are pre-existing brand assets or visual elements to incorporate.
“Because ultimately, I’m trying to create an asset that feels equally like me and like the brand, and that can be kind of a delicate balance to strike sometimes. Depending on how fleshed out the brief is and how much other content is being…