Every so often a marketing lead does the arithmetic: the agency quoted RM X for the film, the production house they'd have used charges less than that, so going direct saves the difference. The arithmetic is usually correct. It is also usually incomplete, and the missing part is not only a markup — it's a job.
We are the production house in that story, so read the next few sections with that in mind. It would be convenient for us to tell you to always go direct. That is not what we think, and further down is the line we actually use.
What is the agency actually charging for?
Strip the invoice into three units and the picture changes.
| Unit | What it is | Who does it if you go direct |
|---|---|---|
| Production | Crew, gear, days, edit. The part a production house quotes. | The production house — same work |
| The brief | Turning a business objective into something shootable: what this film must change, for whom, and how you will know | Someone on your side. This is the unit that quietly moves |
| Project ownership | Chasing approvals, holding the schedule, making the call when a stakeholder changes their mind in week three | Also you |
The gap is not small. In the projects we have seen, the same production routed through an agency can end up costing the client two to three times what it would have cost direct. That is our experience, not a market rate, and it isn't automatically a bad deal: some of that difference is paying for units two and three.
Going direct doesn't delete those units — it moves them onto your desk. Sometimes that is exactly right, because you were doing them anyway. Sometimes it is how a good film gets strangled by a marketing team that already had a full-time job.
Do companies in Malaysia actually go direct?
Both routes are normal here. We are briefed directly by companies of very different sizes, including some listed companies and large brands. Which route a company takes has less to do with how big it is than with how its marketing is planned.
The companies that go direct tend to have one thing in common: they don't need a huge volume of material. They need fewer pieces, made carefully, and they aren't running a campaign across every channel at once.
When is going direct clearly the right call?
When the deliverables are films, photos and posters. If you are making a single film, or a small campaign whose outputs are video, photography and posters, you are buying production. Buy it from the people who produce it.
When you need quality more than volume. A company that needs a few well-made pieces rather than a constant stream gets little from a layer whose strength is managing a high volume of output across channels.
When you already own the brief. If you can say what the film has to change and for whom without a workshop, the agency's most valuable unit is one you don't need. Going direct removes a translation layer, and translation layers cost time and fidelity.
When there is one decision-maker. Direct works well when the person with the opinion is in the room. It works badly when six stakeholders each need to be managed and nobody has been appointed to do it.
When should you hire an agency instead of a production house?
The clearest line we know: does the deliverable cross beyond video and photography?
If the job is a full marketing campaign — the film plus graphic design, an online campaign, POSM printing and an on-ground activation — someone has to hold the idea across all of it, and that is what an agency is for. A production house is not set up to run that, and pretending otherwise helps nobody.
The same goes for companies that need a very large volume of creative. Some businesses, FMCG especially, run a constant stream of assets and activations across every channel. That kind of 360 marketing is not something we can take on, and those companies are usually better served by an agency. We do take on some strategy and performance marketing work alongside production, but that is not the same job as running an integrated campaign.
Two more situations where the agency earns its margin:
When nobody internally can own the project. An unowned project does not become cheaper by removing the agency. It becomes late.
When you need someone to argue on your behalf. Agencies push back on stakeholders and take the hit when a direction is rejected. That is worth money, and it is rarely itemised.
Have we ever told a client to go back to their agency?
Yes. We have told a client that what they wanted to make was better handled by an agency. They chose to work with us anyway, but the advice doesn't change: if the job reaches past video and photos into design, online campaigns, printing and activation, an agency is the better fit. If it is a film, a set of photos, a poster, or a small campaign built from those, go direct.
What usually goes wrong when you hire a production house directly?
In our experience, three things come up most often, and we wouldn't rank one above the others.
Nobody owns the brief. The agency used to turn "we need a video" into something shootable. Go direct without naming who does that now, and the production house ends up asking business questions nobody on your side is ready to answer. Decide who owns it before you ask for a quote — here is what a usable brief looks like.
Too many people are approving. Nobody is consolidating feedback before it reaches the edit, so every stakeholder's note arrives separately and some of them contradict each other. Agree up front who signs off, and send feedback in a form the editor can act on.
On the shoot day, nobody can make the call. Something on set always needs a decision — a location that doesn't work, a line that doesn't land. If the person who can decide isn't there and can't be reached, the crew waits or guesses. Have someone with that authority on set, or at least on the phone.
None of these is a reason not to go direct. They are the jobs the agency was doing, and they need a name on your side.
What this comparison isn't
It isn't an argument that agencies add a layer of cost for nothing. The good ones are buying you judgement and project ownership, and both are genuinely hard to hire for.
It also isn't a pricing guide. The three units above tell you what you are comparing, not what any of them should cost — that depends on the same levers as any other video budget.
And it isn't a decision you make once. The same company can reasonably send an integrated campaign through its agency and brief a single film directly, because those are different jobs.
Thinking about a project like this?
Tell us what it needs to do — we'll take it from there.
Keep reading
- When the Honest Answer Is "Don't Shoot Yet"A video is a multiplier, and a multiplier applied to something unfinished just makes the unfinished part louder. Three situations where the money is better spent elsewhere first, what to spend it on instead, and the cases where shooting before you're ready is genuinely the right call.
- Your Production Company Has No Idea If the Video WorkedWe hand over the file and you run it on your own channels. From that point we see nothing — and the one signal we do get may be measuring the wrong thing. What that means for you, and what's actually worth looking at.
- The Three Things That Actually Drive a Video's CostVideo pricing isn't a mystery once you see what's underneath it. The three real cost drivers are people, equipment and time — and one decision, where the video will run, pulls the whole chain. A practitioner's breakdown from a Malaysian studio.