Future of TV Briefing: Inside creator Grace Wells’s 100-hour branded video production process

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 sourced for this particular campaign, I decide how many of those pre-existing elements I want to pull into my storyboarding and my ideation process,” said Wells.

Post-briefing call, Wells moves into her pre-production process. This stage can take roughly 30 hours. A pillar of Wells’s pre-production process is storyboarding. Every. Single. Shot. 

“The perspective of the shot. How long that shot is going to last. Is there going to be voiceover or sound effects or text callouts that are happening?” said Wells. 

She has adopted this extensive storyboarding process for two main reasons. First, it allows the brand to literally see what she intends to film and how she plans to edit it all together. Second, it allows Wells to head into filming on solid ground with minimal risk of the brand being dissatisfied when she hands in the final video and asking for reshoots. 

“That can really mess me up and kind of create a domino effect in my workflow,” said Wells.

That domino effect is important to avoid because here’s the most crucial part of Wells’s production process to be aware of: She does everything by herself. That includes making custom newspapers in Photoshop (as she did for this recent video for Bayer), building sets, setting up lighting, prepping and styling food products and, of course, filming. Actually she effectively films two videos because the videos she produces for brands include the product showcase video as well as the behind the scenes of Wells making the product showcase video.

“The bulk of my time is spent on set filming, just because I am one person with two hands,” said Wells. She added, “every time I’m setting up a shot, I’m actually setting up two shots because I have the shot that I’m filming and then I have the behind the scenes that’s happening.”

A perk of filming solo is that it affords Wells the flexibility to film for as long as she wants, to take her time to experiment with shots and even to edit the video as she films it.

“I can film a shot then I can throw it into Premiere and edit it and that might inform decisions that I make about the following shot that I’m going to film,” Wells said.

Unsurprisingly then, post-production is the shortest stage of her process, typically taking around 20 hours to complete. She has her storyboards that effectively serve as a paper edit, so editing the video is a bit like coloring by numbers. 

“Music is the very first thing that I choose, even before I’m storyboarding. So even decisions like that have been made at this point a very long time ago. And so it really is just putting the finishing touches on things,” she said.

This pre-production-heavy process helps Wells to avoid what can often be the bane of any creative client work: revisions.

“If there are any revisions, it’ll be simple things like, ‘Oh, actually let’s change the wording of this text,’ which is a very simple change, or ‘Let’s punch in on this so we can see details a little bit more.’ So I would say generally it’s like maybe three to four rounds of very small changes.”

What we’ve heard

“Exposure as a form of payment and with the intention of cutting into YouTube’s market share and cutting into the amount of views people are getting on YouTube — it’s just gross.”

— Digital strategist and creator Gabriella Zutrau on Instagram not adopting a rev-share program for Features

Numbers to know

13.8 million: Number of pay-TV subscribers that Charter had at the end of Q3 2026.

359%: Percentage increase in daily AI retrieval of YouTube videos that have updated their descriptions.

495 million: Number of daily active users that Snap had at the end of Q3 2026.

21%: Percentage share of Gen Z survey respondents who think influencers rarely or never disclose paid deals.

$2.5 billion: Skydance’s DTC streaming revenue in Q3 2026.

What we’ve covered

Ogilvy and CAA launch partnership to clone celebrity talent for AI ads:

• The WPP agency has inked a partnership with Creative Artists Agency (CAA) to generate AI ads featuring the actors, athletes and high-profile creators on CAA’s roster.
• CAA clients own their digital likenesses, and are able to pick and choose which businesses and markets they’re happy to appear in ads for or formally endorse.

Read more about Ogilvy and CAA’s AI talent partnership here.

How performance metrics are rewriting creator rate cards:

• To ink a creator deal, advertisers are asking for cost per lead, cost per conversion, earned media value and other performance metrics.
• In some cases, some brands are asking for Instagram link clicks and engaged YouTube views up front to determine if a creator is worth the ad spend.

Read more about performance-based creator rate cards here.

Creators see promise in Instagram’s long-form push, but question whether exposure is enough:

• Without a clear ad revenue plan, creators may hesitate to make original content for Instagram, while others see promise in the platform’s discovery tools and new TV app.
• Several of the creator managers and creators Digiday spoke with expressed concerns about the lack of an ad revenue structure for long-form content — especially in comparison to what is widely considered the best platform for earning, YouTube.

Read more about Instagram’s long-form video push here.

Creators had a big year. Christmas still went to the celebrities:

• “Creators are everywhere in marketing these days — everywhere except Christmas ads.”
• “The first batch of festive campaigns, from John Lewis, SharkNinja, Ulta Beauty and Burberry among others, makes little for the industry’s favorite obsession.”

Read more about brands’ celebrity-led holiday ads here.

What we’re reading

Democrats’ potential media probes:

The U.S. midterm elections could spur a reversal in fortune for the media companies that cozied up to the Trump Administration with Democrats taking power and poised to launch investigations into media and tech companies’ dealings, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Fox’s Roku neutrality pledge:

Fox has committed to carry non-Fox content on Roku’s platform for at least three years and not discriminate against non-Fox content in the CTV’s platform search results as part of closing the $22 billion acquisition, according to Variety.

Fox’s streaming leadership reshuffle:

Roku’s content chief Charlie Collier and Tubi CEO Anjali Sud are leaving Fox, with Roku exec Mustafa Ozgen taking the reins as Roku’s CEO and Paul Cheesbrough assuming oversight of Fox’s Digital Platforms organization that houses Roku and Tubi, according to The Wrap.

Disney’s layoff jitters:

Disney tech employees are on edge as the company continues to lay off employees and want answers on the company’s plan for its Character.AI acqui-hire, according to Business Insider.