A film fixer brief is a document, or set of files, sent to a Spain-based production contact before the first pre-production meeting call. It contains the variables a fixer needs to assess feasibility, quote accurately, and confirm availability against your dates.
A prepared brief cuts the back-and-forth. The fixer has what they need to start working on your production from the first exchange.
A brief for a film fixer in Spain should cover six things. Not all need to be finalised. Rough is fine. But each should be present in some form:
Even a short paragraph describing what you’re making gives the fixer context that no logistics document can provide. Is this a documentary that needs access to sensitive locations? A commercial with a specific product and talent? A corporate shoot with a fixed delivery format? The type of production shapes every logistical decision downstream.
Dates drive the permit process, first and foremost. Spain’s film permit system runs on fixed lead times that vary by city and location type, and none of those clocks start without a shoot window. Even a rough target is enough: five days, last two weeks of October. That gives the fixer what they need to check permit timelines and confirm availability.
Tell the fixer who you’re bringing and which roles you need sourced locally. Local crew sourcing is one of the most time-sensitive parts of pre-production, and it starts as soon as the fixer knows what they’re filling. The more specific the brief, the faster they can confirm availability against your dates.
Most international producers commissioning a shoot in Spain know the visual tone they’re after, not the specific address. That’s the right starting point for a brief. Share mood boards, reference footage, or comparable productions that capture the look and feel you need. A local fixer with genuine Spain experience will propose specific locations that match your creative intent and are realistically permittable within your timeline. Named locations in your brief are useful when you have them. Visual references are equally valid when you don’t.
You don’t need to give a precise number. A range is enough. This is the most commonly withheld piece of information in a fixer brief, and its absence slows down the response more than anything else. A fixer who knows they’re working within a €15,000 to €20,000 total budget will structure their options differently than one who has no reference point at all.
Frame rate, resolution, output specs, and any broadcast or platform requirements. Include them here. These affect what the fixer sources locally. Cameras, monitors, and recording media all need to be confirmed against your specs, so the earlier they have them, the better the options available. If you have specific camera requirements or restrictions, include them here.
A written brief covers logistics. It cannot cover intent.
Mood boards, location stills, comparable productions, and tone references have traditionally been sent as PDFs and walked through on the first call. The fixer receives the document, forms initial impressions, and the call becomes partly a guided tour of material they’re seeing for the first time. That’s a reasonable and standard process, but it means the first conversation is doing two jobs at once: briefing and deciding.
We’ve found that productions which send a short screen recording alongside their PDF brief get to a more useful first call faster. The producer records a walkthrough of their references with audio narration. Two or three minutes, enough to explain what they’re drawn to and why. The link goes with the same PDF brief. The fixer arrives at the call already oriented on the visual intent, not encountering it for the first time. The conversation moves directly to logistics, feasibility, and questions that actually need answering in real time.
The recording also travels further than a call does. It can be shared with a DoP, a location scout, or other crew members who weren’t on the original call, without anyone having to reconstruct what was discussed.There are good tools to record your screen with audio that require no installation and generate a shareable link immediately. Record your screen, narrate your references, send the link alongside your written brief. The fixer has the full picture before you’ve spoken.
In Spain, the first follow-up questions from an experienced fixer tend to be specific to the variables that change the pre-production path.
Drone involvement is usually the first question raised. AESA authorisation timelines vary significantly depending on airspace category, and knowing early whether aerial footage is on the table determines how fast that process needs to start.
Heritage-protected locations are the second pressure point. Spain has a high density of protected sites, many running their own permit processes outside the standard municipal system. The fixer needs to flag these early to build a realistic timeline.
From there, useful questions cover the access requirements for your specific locations, including whether any involve road closures or pedestrian rerouting. That triggers a different permit category in Spanish cities and needs to be identified early. They will also ask whether you’re bringing professional kit through customs on an ATA Carnet, and whether locally hired talent is part of the production. That last point brings Spanish labour agreements into scope.
These questions mean the fixer has read the brief and is already mapping the pre-production path. They are not asking you to re-explain what your shoot is.For more on what to look for in early fixer communication, what a film fixer does in Spain covers the vetting process in detail.
A brief has a secondary function beyond the logistics: it clarifies the scope of support you actually need.
Some briefs confirm that an individual fixer covers the work. A contained two-day documentary shoot in one city with a small crew and a clear location list is exactly the kind of project a competent individual fixer handles well.
Other briefs reveal something different. A production moving through Madrid, Barcelona, and Valencia over five days, with parallel shooting units and multiple permit applications running simultaneously, is a different scope. No margin for delay means no room for a single point of failure. An individual fixer working alone does not have the infrastructure to absorb that kind of simultaneous pressure without something slipping. If your brief describes a production at the second end of that range, the right conversation is about full production services in Spain rather than a single fixer. The distinction matters in practice and it’s worth settling before pre-production gets underway.
Since 2008, we’ve coordinated international productions across Spain. If you’re planning a shoot and want to know what level of support your project needs, send us your brief directly.
The more specific it is, the faster we can respond with something useful.
