The Playbook · TIMELINE
How long a business video really takes, job by job
A captioned short from your phone ships today. A scripted thirty-second explainer takes about a week. A 3D scene or a tested batch of ads takes a month, and the difference is rarely the editing. Here are honest timelines by job, what stretches each, and how to plan a season so something new is running every month.
What ships in a day?
A vertical short of a job you just finished, shot on a phone, captioned, posted. The proof is the footage; the edit is minutes. If you send me the clip in the morning, it is cut in three formats by evening. This is the video most small businesses should make weekly and most make never. Nobody expects it to look like a film, and a real crew on a real job beats stock footage every time.
What takes a week?
A scripted explainer under a minute. Day one is the script, and that day is mostly you telling me what the customer needs to believe. Then the animation or the shoot, the edit, the captions, the three formats, one round of changes. The week is a week because the script goes back and forth, not because the animation is slow.
Why the week is mostly the script
Every hour spent on the script saves a day in the edit. A video that starts without one gets rewritten in the timeline, which is the most expensive place to rewrite anything.
What takes a month?
A real-time 3D scene built into a website, like the playable court on my homepage. A product animation that has to be right from every angle. A batch of ten short ads with small spend behind each, because the testing itself takes calendar time: one week to run, then kill eight, iterate two, scale one. The AI ads play is that schedule.
What stretches every timeline?
Three things. Script approval that sits in an inbox. Footage or photos that live on someone's old phone. And revisions with no definition, where a change to one word reopens the whole edit. Fix those three up front and the timelines above hold. The questions play has the two questions that settle revisions before they start.
How do you plan a season?
One short a week from your own phone, one scripted piece a quarter, and a tested ad batch when there is an offer worth spending on. Care after launch is $149, $349, or $749 a month on the plans page. The video service page lists what each kind of piece includes, and the person cutting it is the person who answers the phone.
What else do owners ask?
Can a video be done the same day?
A captioned short from footage you already have, yes. Anything scripted needs the script first, and the script needs you.
Why does the timeline wait on me?
Because the message is yours. The script, the footage and the approval come from the business, and a video made without them is generic and gets switched off.
How long before a video pays for itself?
A short that sends one extra customer to the phone has paid for the afternoon it took. A tested ad batch pays when one of the ten wins, which is the point of testing ten.
Your move. Call or text (847) 387-0244, or price your build in six taps and I call you with the exact number.
← All plays · Free tools: cost calculator, busywork calculator & site audit · Price my build
Your move