What I Wish Agencies Knew Before They Brief a Director Like Me

The agency producer who sent it to me had been doing this for twenty years. She knew that the brief was the first conversation in a partnership, not a procurement document. The honesty in that final sentence was a gift. It told me what I was actually walking into. I made the spot. The brand ended up loving it. Two of my favorite working relationships came out of that production. None of it would have happened if the brief had been written to be approved instead of to be made.

I direct commercials and music videos in addition to documentary and narrative film. The commercial work isn’t a side practice. It’s a parallel one, drawing from the same craft and asking the same questions, applied to a different container. The agencies I’ve worked with successfully understood that briefing me well requires a slightly different document than briefing a traditional commercial director. This is some of what I’d want any agency planning to brief a director with documentary instincts to know, before the first call.

Documentary craft is not a visual style

The shorthand “documentary-style commercial” usually means handheld camera, natural light, real people, or real-feeling people instead of polished talent. Agencies sometimes order documentary-style commercials and receive what’s essentially a polished commercial with handheld jitter added in post.

That’s not what documentary craft does. What documentary craft does is treat the brief as a research problem before treating it as an execution problem. It asks what’s actually true about this product, this artist, this campaign, this audience, before it asks what the spot should look like. The aesthetic is downstream of the question. If the question is interesting, the aesthetic emerges from the answer. If the question is boring, no amount of handheld can save the spot.

I’m proud of commercial work that came from briefs where the agency was willing to let me ask the question before they had decided the answer. I’m less proud of work that came from briefs where the answer was already locked, and my job was to make it look more interesting than it was. The first kind of brief is rare. It’s also where the actual creative work lives.

Every brief has a shadow

There’s the written brief, which describes the spot the team is allowed to make. There’s the unwritten brief, which describes the spot the team actually wants to make. The unwritten one is usually closer to the truth. It’s what the creative director would say if the constraints were softer, the budget bigger, and the brand more confident. The written brief is the unwritten brief minus the political risks the agency has already negotiated away.

When I get a brief, I read the written version first. Then I ask the agency to walk me through the unwritten one. Most agencies are surprised by the question. Some are uncomfortable with it. The agencies that thrive in this conversation are the ones who recognize that the unwritten brief is where the spot actually wants to live, and that finding a way to honor it within the written brief is the director’s job.

I’m not trying to override the agency. I’m not trying to skip the brand. I’m trying to find the version of the spot where everyone gets what they actually wanted, including the brand, which is rarely served well by playing it safe. Brands that take swings, even small ones, build audience equity. Brands that play it safe build awareness without affection. The unwritten brief is where the swing usually lives.

Three things I need from an agency partner

I work best with agencies who treat the director as a creative partner, not an execution vendor. Three things make that partnership work.

Editorial honesty, first. I need to know what the brand has actually said, not the agency’s interpretation of what the brand might accept. If the brand will not approve a particular casting choice, I want to know that early, not after we’ve built a treatment around it. If the brand has a redline I need to design around, I’d rather know on day one than discover it in the agency review.

Creative latitude, second. The reason to hire a director with documentary instincts is to get a film that documentary instincts produce. If the agency has already locked the spot in pre-production, my contribution is reduced to execution, and the agency might as well hire a different kind of director who’ll deliver execution more efficiently. I’m not the most efficient choice for a fully locked spot. I’m a useful choice when the brand and the agency want the spot to discover something during production that they couldn’t have written into the script.

Producer trust, third. The agency producer is the person who makes or breaks the production. Producers who understand documentary methodology, who can hold space for a longer subject interview when something interesting is happening, who push back on agency timelines when the timeline is incompatible with the work, are the producers I want to work with. Producers who treat documentary methodology as overhead are the ones who eventually clip the footage that would have been the spot.

What good briefs share

The agencies that brief me well share a few habits.

They give me the audience first, and the message second. The audience is the constraint that determines everything else. A spot for music video commissioners is a different spot than a spot for marketing executives, even if the product is identical. Naming the audience precisely lets me design the work for that audience instead of for a generic viewer who doesn’t exist.

They share the strategic context the brand has not made public. Why is the brand doing this campaign now. What did the last campaign do well, and what did it not. What is the brand quietly worried about. This context never appears in the spot itself, but it changes what the spot needs to communicate.

They’re honest about budget. Budget honesty is the single most underrated form of agency-director communication. A director who knows the real budget can make real choices. A director who’s told the budget is generous and then discovers it isn’t loses trust in the agency at the moment that trust is most needed.

Where to find the work

If you’re an agency thinking about briefing me, the /commercial-director/ page is the most efficient single artifact for evaluating fit. It has the portfolio, the sub-services breakdown, and answers to the questions agencies most often ask before the first call. The /documentary-filmmaker/ page covers the documentary work that informs how I approach commercial briefs, which often turns out to be relevant context. The /director-los-angeles/ page is the broader directing practice, including narrative work.

The reel at /epk/ is the most efficient single artifact for evaluating fit. Two minutes will tell you more about whether the partnership will work than any treatment document I could write.

I’m represented by United Talent Agency for commercial and music video work. Direct agency inquiries are also welcome through /inquiries/. Both routes reach my representation appropriately and get a response within one business day.

If you watch the reel and think the work might fit your campaign, the next step is the brief. If the brief is honest about what the brand actually wants, what the agency can actually approve, and what the budget can actually support, the partnership starts on the right foot. The agencies I’ve worked with successfully knew that. The ones I declined to work with usually didn’t.