10 Questions Brand Marketers Should Ask a Director Before Signing the SOW

Most director-vetting checklists are written by production agencies trying to look thorough. They focus on logistics, insurance, deliverables. Those things matter, but they do not tell you whether the director can actually carry your project.

These are the ten questions I would want a marketer to ask me before they hired me. If a director cannot answer them clearly, keep looking.

1. What is the smallest version of this project that would still work?

A director who can describe a smaller, sharper version of the brief understands the story. A director who only describes the bigger, more expensive version is selling you scope, not vision.

2. Walk me through a project you killed and why.

Every working director has projects they walked away from. The reasons reveal the values. Listen for "the brand wanted to script the documentary subject's quotes" or "they would not let me cast a real person." Those are the right answers.

3. Who else needs to be on this team for it to work?

A director who tells you they can do it all alone is a red flag. The right answer names a producer, a DP, an editor, and explains who is non-negotiable for this specific piece and why.

4. What part of this brief do you disagree with?

If the director says "nothing, this is great," you are hiring a yes-person. If they push back on one or two specific things and explain their thinking, you are hiring a partner. The pushback should be substantive, not stylistic.

5. How do you handle it when the subject says something the brand will not want to use?

For any branded documentary, this happens. The right answer involves a clear protocol, an honest conversation with the brand, and a refusal to fabricate. The wrong answer involves "we just edit around it."

6. What does success look like to you, separate from what we wrote in the brief?

A director worth hiring has their own definition of success that overlaps with yours but is not identical. They are thinking about craft, reusability, what gets the project into festivals or on a panel. That ambition is what makes the work outlast the campaign.

7. What is your revision policy, and how many rounds before it gets ugly?

Honest directors will tell you exactly how many rounds are scoped, what happens after, and where they have seen revisions kill projects. Vague answers here predict invoices later.

8. Have you worked with a brand at our stage and budget? If not, what is your closest analog?

You do not need someone who has done your exact thing. You need someone who has done something structurally similar and can articulate the parallels. Vague claims of "yes I have worked with brands like yours" are not answers.

9. Who owns the footage, the project files, and the outtakes after delivery?

This question reveals whether you are working with someone who thinks long-term about your brand assets or someone who treats the deliverables as the end of the relationship. The right answer is "you do, and here is how I hand them off."

10. What would make you walk away from this project?

A director with no walk-away conditions is a director who will keep saying yes when they should be saying no. The best directors have lines they will not cross, and they will tell you what those are before they sign.

What to do with the answers

Run these questions in the second meeting, not the first. The first meeting is rapport. The second is judgment. By the end of question ten, you will know if you are hiring a vendor or a partner.

If a director answers these well, the rest of the SOW is a formality. If they cannot, no contract clause will protect you.