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I have been on both sides of this. I have pitched for the work, and I have watched clients choose badly — almost always because they evaluated the deck instead of the company.
These are the questions that actually separate them. Four of them are ones I would rather you didn't ask me, which is how you know they're the useful ones.
On the work itself
1. Who directed the three pieces you just showed me?
Reels are assembled from a company's best work, not necessarily from the person who will direct yours. Ask which credits belong to the director being assigned to your job. If the answer is vague, the answer is no.
2. What did that project's budget actually look like versus mine?
A beautiful piece made for four times your budget tells you nothing about what you will get. Ask for work made at your number. More on that in How Much Does It Cost to Produce a Commercial?
3. Show me something that went wrong.
Every company has a job that lost a location, lost a day, or lost the weather. What you are testing is whether they can describe the recovery. A company that claims nothing has ever gone wrong is either new or not being straight with you.
On the money
4. What's in the bid that isn't in the bid?
Ask directly what is excluded: overtime thresholds, weather days, additional deliverables, versioning, music licensing, revision rounds. The gap between a low bid and a high one is usually sitting in the exclusions.
5. How many revision rounds are included, and what counts as a round?
"Two rounds" means nothing until someone defines a round. Notes on a cut? Notes on notes? A change of direction after approval? This is the single most common source of overage in post.
6. What happens to the budget if we lose a day?
Not a hypothetical. Ask for the actual mechanism — who absorbs it, at what rate, under what conditions.
7. Is the schedule padded, and by how much?
Nobody will love this question. Ask it anyway. Most bids carry days of insurance against an undecided creative. If your creative is locked, you are paying for insurance you don't need. If it isn't locked, you need those days and you should know you are buying them.
On the people
8. Who is on set from your company, and who is freelance?
There is nothing wrong with a freelance crew — nearly all crews are. What matters is who carries continuity and accountability when something breaks.
9. Who do I call at 5am?
One name. If there isn't one, you are buying a vendor, not a partner.
10. Is the director in the room for the client calls, or only on the day?
A director who only appears on the shoot day is being handed someone else's interpretation of your brief. The best work comes out of the director having heard the problem directly.
On the things people skip
11. What is your actual sustainability practice — and don't say offsets.
If the answer is a certificate or a carbon purchase, they have bought their way past the question. The real answer is about schedule, crew sourcing and travel, because that is where a production's footprint actually lives. The longer version of that argument is here.
12. What would you tell me not to make?
The most valuable thing a production partner does is talk you out of the wrong film. A company that says yes to every version of your brief is optimising for the booking, not the result.
The short version
If you only ask three, ask 1, 5 and 12. Who is actually directing it, what a revision round means, and whether they will tell you the truth when your idea is wrong.
Everything else you can recover from.
Static Free Films is a director-led, minority-owned production company in Los Angeles and London. Brand work includes Nestlé, Microsoft, HP, adidas, Samsung, HelloFresh, WWF and GE.
Ask me all twelve. Start a project and I'll answer them on a call or in writing, whichever you prefer.