AI video for a small business in Singapore: what to make first

Three videos earn their keep before anything else: a fifteen- to thirty-second product spot that shows the thing working, a forty-five- to ninety-second founder story, and vertical cut-downs of both for social. Brand films, event recaps and animations are later purchases, worth making once those three are doing their job. Shoot vertical first and compose for the other formats in the shot list; commission the footage where the product has to be exact, and keep captions and cut-downs in-house.

A brand film assumes the audience already knows who you are and wants to hear about your values. A small business usually needs the two steps before that: show the product, and show the person behind it.

Those two are also the cheapest to make well, because they need few shots and no cast. A brand film made too early is the most expensive way to say nothing specific.

Fifteen to thirty seconds, four shots: the product, a detail that proves it is real, the product in use, and one line carrying the offer. Vertical, because that is where it will be watched.

The part that decides whether it works is accuracy. Labels, embossing and small text are where generated footage drifts, so hold the product still in the frames where it has to be believed, and show the label once at a size the film can defend.

Forty-five to ninety seconds, and it answers a question a product shot cannot: why this exists, and why you. For a maker, a chef, a clinic or a studio, that is the differentiator — and in Singapore it is often the difference between being compared on price and not being compared at all.

It needs fewer hero shots than people expect. Most of it is one person talking, which is the cheapest kind of footage to get right and the easiest to make look wrong if the sound is not honest.

One shoot should give you vertical, square and 16:9. That is a composition decision made in the shot list, not a crop fixed at the end — keep the subject centred and the detail reachable, and the other formats are free.

This is also the part worth keeping in-house. Captions, cut-downs and simple social edits change weekly, and paying someone else to re-cut the same footage every month is a poor use of a small budget.

Commission the footage where the product has to be exact, the lighting has to be clean, and the logo is in focus. That is the part where a mistake is visible to every customer.

Keep the rest: captions, formats, posting, and the simpler social pieces. Those are habits rather than productions, and they get better with volume.

The product or service in one sentence, who it is for, where the video will run, which formats you need, and the date it has to be live. Add anything that must not change — the label, the colour, the wording of the offer.

A brief with those six things in it can be quoted accurately. A brief without them produces a quote that changes twice, which is how most small video projects go wrong before a single shot is made.

The order is the advice here, not the formats. A brand film made before anyone knows what you sell is the most expensive way to say nothing specific, and small budgets usually find that out after the invoice.

Product accuracy is where generated footage fails in public — labels, caps and small text drift — so the frames where the product has to be believed are worth planning deliberately, rather than hoping the model gets them right.