How to brief an AV team — what we actually need to know

Most client briefs are too short and too vague. That is not a complaint — clients are busy, and the briefing process feels like overhead. But the brief is what determines whether the production team builds the right show, and the cost of getting it wrong is much larger than the cost of writing two extra paragraphs.

Here is what an AV production team actually needs to know to do their job well.

The venue, in concrete terms

Not just the name of the venue. We need the exact room, the floor plan if you have one, the ceiling height, the load-in path, the existing power, the loading dock hours, the union rules if any, the rigging policy. If you do not know these, your venue contact does, and asking them takes ten minutes.

If we have to ask for any of this twice, that is a flag that we will lose hours scrambling in the week of the show.

The program, by minute

Not "a 2-hour event with a keynote and a panel." Something like:

• 6:00 PM: doors open, music
• 6:30 PM: MC welcome
• 6:40 PM: keynote speaker, 25 minutes
• 7:05 PM: panel discussion, 35 minutes
• 7:40 PM: break, 15 minutes
• 7:55 PM: awards segment, 30 minutes
• 8:25 PM: closing remarks
• 8:30 PM: reception music

That level of detail tells us what we are programming. The two-line version does not.

The talkers, by name and behavior

Not "five speakers." Something like:

• Keynote, Jane Doe, experienced presenter, will use slides, no demo, prefers a lavalier
• Panel, four panelists plus moderator, seated, casual format, expects audience Q&A
• MC, in-house, will use a handheld, scripted intros

When we know who is speaking and how, we can plan mic count, mic type, and mic positions in advance instead of improvising at sound check.

What "good" looks like to the client

This is the question most clients skip. We need to know how you will judge the production. Some clients care most about the photos. Some care most about the livestream. Some care most about how the room feels in person. Some care most about how short the program runs.

Tell us. We will optimize for it, and we will tell you the tradeoffs of doing so.

The constraints

We need to know:

• The budget, or at least the range
• The non-negotiables, like a specific moving fixture brand, a particular livestream platform, or a video that has to play full quality
• Anything that has gone wrong at past events that we should specifically avoid

That last bullet is gold. Clients who have been burned by a specific failure mode will tell us to "make sure the slides do not freeze" — and we will plan around it instead of stumbling into it ourselves.

The decision-making chain

The single largest source of stress on a production team is unclear decision-making on the day of the show. We need to know:

• Who at the client makes program decisions when we need to change something live
• Who approves cue changes
• Who handles the budget if a change costs money
• How to reach each of them by phone during the show

If we have to ask the client what to do every time something needs deciding, the show slows down and the experience suffers. If we know who decides, we move fast.

What we will do with this information

The brief becomes our internal planning doc. It is what the audio team plans mic types from. It is what the video team plans camera positions from. It is what the lighting team plans cues from. It is what the producer uses to build the run-of-show.

A bad brief becomes a series of assumptions that may or may not match the client's intent. A good brief becomes a plan that the entire team executes confidently. The format takes maybe an hour to write. The payoff is a show that does what the client expected.