Commercials are our bread and butter here at Mi Media Productions. It is the work we love most and the part of production where we really get to flex our creative muscle alongside the agencies and brands we partner with. We get asked a lot about what actually happens behind the scenes once a project lands in our inbox, so I wanted to walk through our process from the very first brief all the way to the final pitch deck.

Whether you are an established agency looking for a production partner or a newer agency just starting to move into commercial work, this is exactly how we approach it.

It Starts With the Brief

Every project begins with a brief from the agency, and no two briefs ever look the same. Sometimes a brief is extremely specific about the creative direction and exactly how the agency wants the project executed. In that case our job is to figure out all the logistics and bring that specific vision to life as the production company.

Other times a brief is more of a list of talking points the commercial needs to cover, and we are the ones coming up with the full creative campaign from scratch.

We genuinely love both versions of this process. Whether we are executing someone else’s specific vision or building the creative concept from the ground up, it is our favorite part of what we do.

Building the Treatment

Once we have the brief, we get to work on a pitch deck, or what is commonly called a treatment. This is where we lay out the general direction of the project, our creative take, and our overall execution plan.

No matter what the project is, we always build storyboards as part of this process. This is genuinely one of the most exciting parts of pre-production for us. It is the moment where the script starts to become something visual. You can read a script a dozen times, but seeing it broken down frame by frame in a storyboard is when the creative really starts to come alive.

Casting, Locations, and the Details That Make a Commercial Pop

After we nail down the core creative direction, we move into the details. Casting selections. Location selections. Prop planning. Set dressing. This is where we build out the full picture of how the project is actually going to come together on set.

This stage matters more than people sometimes realize. Early in the pitch process we are usually talking in broader strokes, tone, mood boards, general direction. But this is the phase where the specifics actually take shape. All of these smaller pieces are what give a commercial its own unique flavor and make it stand out. It is an extremely important part of our process and one we take seriously on every single project.

Introducing the Team

Once the creative direction and the production details are locked in, we put together information on who we are as Mi Media Productions, the crew we plan to bring on board, and any specialty skill sets we will be utilizing for that specific project.

All of this comes together into one complete pitch deck that we send over to the agency. From there, the agency and their client review the options and select the treatment they want to move forward with.

Not Every Treatment Gets Selected, and That Is Okay

Here is something we think is important to be honest about. We build a lot of treatments here at Mi Media Productions, and not all of them get picked. That is simply the nature of this business.

If you are a newer agency just stepping into the commercial space and you have a project in mind, please reach out to us. It is completely okay if a treatment does not get selected in the end. We understand that is part of the process. What matters to us is the opportunity to put our creative perspective on a project, even before it goes live. We genuinely enjoy the challenge of it, and every treatment we build, selected or not, makes us better at what we do.

Every Treatment Respects Budget and Timeline

Building a strong treatment takes real work, which is why we do have a minimum threshold for the projects we take on in this process. But no matter the size of the project, every treatment we create is built to fall within the agency’s budget and timeline from the start.

This is something we take pride in at Mi Media Productions. We are not just creatives. We are producers who have spent time on the execution side of production. That means we have a strong working knowledge of what things actually cost and how decisions affect a timeline. We build that knowledge directly into every treatment so that nothing falls outside of expectations once a project moves into production. It keeps everything moving efficiently once we are greenlit and on set.

Let’s Build Something Together

That is an overview of how we approach treatments and pitches when onboarding a new commercial project at Mi Media Productions. If you would like to see one of our treatments firsthand, or if you have a project you are thinking through and want to talk about how we would approach it, reach out to us directly. We would love to walk through it with you. You can also watch the video for more info.

Mi Media Productions is based in Miami and works with creative agencies and brands across South Florida and beyond.

Contact us today to start the conversation about your next commercial project.

Topics covered: commercial video production process, creative treatment and pitch deck, production company for agencies, storyboard development, casting and location selection, full service commercial production Miami, Mi Media Productions, video production company Miami.