How Long A Video Project Actually Takes

Everyone wants the answer to be three weeks. Sometimes it is. More often the production takes three weeks and the project takes seven, and the difference is almost entirely on the client side.

Here is what the schedule really looks like, with the client-side steps left in rather than quietly assumed.

A Single Corporate Film

Realistic total: five to seven weeks from signed scope to final files. Four is possible when approvals are fast and the shoot is simple. Under three usually means something was cut that will be missed.

An Animated Explainer

Four to seven weeks for sixty to ninety seconds of 2D. The script and storyboard stage is longer than clients expect and the animation stage is where changes become expensive, because a change to the script after animation begins is a change to work already made.

An AI Product Shoot

One to two weeks for a batch, and that is the genuine change in this category. Reference capture and art direction take a few days, generation and selection take a few more, and retouching and delivery close it out.

The reason it is fast is that there is no shoot day to schedule around, no location, and no crew availability. The comparison against a real shoot covers where that speed is worth having and where it is not.

What Runs In Parallel And What Cannot

Compressing a schedule is mostly a question of what can happen at the same time, and the honest answer is less than people hope.

Casting, location scouting, permissions and kit booking all run in parallel, which is why pre-production is shorter than the sum of its parts. Legal review of claims can also run alongside the script if you send them the draft rather than waiting for a final.

What cannot run in parallel is anything downstream of a decision that has not been made. The edit cannot start before the shoot. Colour and sound cannot finish before the picture is locked. Versioning cannot start before the master is approved. Each of those is a hard dependency, and no amount of budget removes them.

What Happens If The Date Slips

Worth agreeing before it happens rather than during. Ask the studio what moves if an approval is late: does the delivery date move by the same amount, do they hold the slot, is there a cost to re-booking a crew.

Most delays are recoverable if they are flagged early and expensive if they are flagged late, because the crew, the edit suite and the colourist are all booked against calendar dates. A studio that tells you on day one what a slipped approval costs is one that has run enough projects to know.

The Three Things That Cause Almost Every Delay

1. 01

   Approvers who were not in the brief

   A stakeholder seeing the film for the first time at round two restarts the film, not the round. Name every approver before the script is written and get their availability in writing.

2. 02

   Claims that had not been through legal

   A single unclearable line can mean a reshoot if it is in a piece to camera. Run the claims before the shoot, not before the launch.

3. 03

   Deliverables added after the edit

   The vertical cut, the fifteen second version, the subtitled variant. Each is a new edit, and asked for at the end they arrive at the end.

Working Backwards From A Fixed Date

If the film has to exist for a launch, an event or a quarter end, plan from that date backwards rather than from today forwards. It changes which conversation you have first.

Take the date, subtract a week of contingency, then subtract the delivery stage, the revision window, the edit, the shoot and pre-production. What you are left with is the date the brief has to be signed off, and it is almost always earlier than people expect. For a five to seven week corporate film with one contingency week, a launch on the first of a month means a signed scope roughly two months before.

If that date has already passed, you have three options and only three: reduce the scope, accept a later launch, or pay for compression. Choosing deliberately between them in week one is a much better position than discovering in week five that all three were needed.