The rules every engagement runs on.
A small senior team amplified by AI needs clear decisions. These are the rules behind every project we take, video or image. They keep taste human, approvals visible, and production moving.
Lock taste early, then scale
Taste cannot be automated, but everything else can. In practice that means one sequence: we lock taste with the client early, on a sample, a script, a set of reference sheets, and then let the systems produce at scale. No juniors, no handoffs, no telephone game.
Every principle below exists to protect that sequence.
Every project, same skeleton
Video or image, the gates are the same.
Brief locked
Scope and decision-maker
Sample approved
The exact look, signed off
Production
Silent, with a heartbeat
Two note rounds
Consolidated, one voice
Delivery
Payment releases finals
Approve before we scale
The client signs off the exact look on one cheap piece before we produce a hundred expensive ones. For a film that means the script and key frames lock before full production. For imagery it means one sample per category, approved on the first product, before the batch runs.
Every process we run is this principle in different clothes.
Gates are sacred
Script lock, sample approval, element lock. Once a gate is passed, the decision behind it is closed. Reopening a locked decision is not a revision, it is new work, and it gets quoted as such before it starts.
This protects the client's budget as much as our margin. Nobody silently eats the cost of a moved goalpost.
Two rounds, one voice
Every project gets two consolidated revision rounds, from one named decision-maker. Scattered feedback and committee reviews are how projects die.
Need more than two? Fine. It is quoted first, as an additional round, never discovered on the invoice.
We would rather lose an upsell than surprise an invoice.
Delays are symmetric and visible
If client feedback or assets arrive late, the delivery date moves day for day. If we are the ones running late, the same rule applies to us. Either way, the delay is flagged the moment it happens, never discovered at the deadline.
And during production itself, when there are no approvals scheduled, the client still gets a heartbeat message partway through. Silence is where client anxiety grows.
Money before files, one home per fact
The deposit books the production slot. The final payment releases the final files. Friendly always, flexible on scheduling sometimes, never on that order.
Behind the scenes, the same discipline applies to information: sales truth, project state, files, and money each live in exactly one place. A fact written in the wrong home is a fact lost.
What we say no to
Projects without a named single decision-maker. Work that starts before a deposit. Quick changes to locked decisions without a change order. Scope creep dressed up as a revision round.
And rush timelines that try to compress the approval gates themselves. The build can be compressed. The approvals cannot.
Sound like a studio you can work with?
If this is how you like projects run, we will get along. Fifteen minutes, no pitch, just your brief against our process.
Book a 15 minute call