Depends what the asset has to do.

Brands spend serious money on influencers, and for good reason: they bring their own audience and content that feels authentic to it. Some influencer-led campaigns run for a long time.

The difference is purpose, and how much of the brand the content can carry. A produced film puts the brand at the centre of the frame, on broadcast, on a retail screen or across a national campaign. Different job, different content.

Food styling, before anything else. A good food stylist has every trick of the trade for making a dish look delicious. The lighting, the lenses and a lot of decisions about movement are built around their work.

Higgidy came off a 360 degree camera rig doing continuous rotations, with the focus changing mid-shot, moving through plates of salad and into a whirlpool of gravy. Pure Leaf went the other way: locked top-down rig, macro pickups, hot tea poured over ice in slow motion.

There is a longer piece on how to capture taste on screen if you want the detail.

More than the budget suggests, if the creative is built around the constraint rather than apologising for it.

The Higgidy brief asked for the visual pop of a Just Eat ad on a fraction of the money. The answer was custom virtual kitchen backgrounds on an OLED screen, with half-sets and props wrapped around a single actor. He talks us through his flatmates, each with their own tastes and favourite combinations. No location moves, no build, no crowd.

Tell us the number and what it has to achieve and we will tell you what is realistic.

Anywhere from two weeks to three months, depending on what the campaign is trying to achieve. The number of scenes, the cast and the art direction all change how much pre-production time and how many shoot days it needs.

Gousto with Katherine Ryan was two weeks for a 40 second social hero. Itsu was seven weeks for five customer stories, five cutdowns, two TVCs and an animated sting. Morrisons ran twelve weeks with Leo Burnett for twelve 20 second TVCs, and a chunk of that was music licensing rather than production.

Yes. Itsu ran on TV, socials and OOH with clearance handled as part of the scope. Morrisons went out as a Christmas TVC campaign.

Worth flagging early if broadcast is in the plan, because it changes the shoot as well as the delivery.

Both, and the choice usually comes out of what the film is claiming.

Itsu was shot in genuine customers' kitchens with a deliberately light crew, because a set would have undone the whole premise. Morrisons went into Cross Street Studios so oven gloves could be puppeteered through holes cut in the worktops. Heinz took over a private dining room at Brighton's Hotel du Vin and dressed it to feel lived in.

If the food is the hero, a studio gives more control. If the people are, a real room usually wins.

As many as you plan for before the shoot day, and very few you think of afterwards.

Itsu came out of one production with five 30 second customer stories, five 12 second cutdowns, two TVCs and an animated intro sting. Mentos with KISS Fresh produced five hero films plus vertical cuts across five London corner shops, and did 4 million impressions with 3.5 million views on Instagram alone.

The expensive mistake is deciding the format list in the edit.