Explainer Video Production Process: Six Stages and Their Review Gates
How I run an explainer from script to final mix in six stages, and the review gate I put at the end of each one so the client never reopens a stage we already closed.
An explainer video for a software client nearly came apart on its final review call in my agency, right, with the animation finished, the sound mixed and four people from their side watching. About forty seconds in, their product lead stopped it and said the second line of the voiceover was wrong. To be very honest, that line had been approved in the script document weeks earlier, and the catch here is that nobody on their side had heard it sitting on top of the pictures until that call, so one sentence became a new recording session, three retimed scenes, a fresh sound pass and so on.
That call is basically why my explainer video production process now runs as six stages with a review gate at the end of each one, right, and the client walks through each gate exactly once. You probably know the stage names already, so what I want to cover is what actually gets reviewed at each gate and how I set it up inside PlayPause so the client sees the structure from the first day.
The explainer video production process at a glance
The way I explain it to a new producer is that every stage produces one thing the next stage is built on, right. The script gives the words, the voiceover gives the timing, the style frames give the look, the animatic puts timing and look together, and animation and sound finish it. When an earlier thing changes after a later stage has started, the later stage gets partly rebuilt, and that rebuild is where studios quietly lose margin, because the client sees it as a small note and never as a new request.
So a gate is the moment a stage gets closed, and closing means the client has reviewed the actual thing in the format they will judge it in later, so a voiceover gets heard and timing gets watched. A gate closed on a PDF when the real judgement happens on a video is basically a gate with a hole in it. I wrote about where every review gate belongs across animation work, and this is the client facing cut.
At kickoff I also ask for one named approver per gate, right, because the founder who appears only at the end of a SaaS explainer is usually the one who reopens things, so if the founder wants a say on the voiceover, they review it at the voiceover gate.
A worked example on a 90 second explainer
Here is roughly how a 90 second SaaS explainer runs in my studio, so you can see the whole animated explainer workflow against a calendar. The script lands around 200 to 220 words, because an unhurried read in my studio sits near 140 to 150 words a minute and the visuals need a few silent beats. The client then gets two working days for the script and scratch read together, one for the real voiceover, two for style frames, two for the animatic, two for each of two animation passes and one for the final mix. That is about twelve working days with the client holding the ball, and each of those days sits in the proposal next to its gate, so when a review runs late the delivery date moves by the same number of days and nobody argues.
Script and voiceover review
The script gets reviewed as text in a normal document, because comments about words belong on words. The mistake is treating script approval as voiceover approval, right, because a sentence that reads fine on a page can be far too long when a human says it at a natural pace. So in my studio the script gate only closes once the client has also listened to a scratch read, one of my producers reading the script over a rough slate with the scene numbers on it.
That scratch read goes into PlayPause as a video, and this is where range comments earn their keep, because voiceover notes are about a stretch of time, almost never a single frame. The client selects 0:12 to 0:19 and writes that it feels rushed, the note sits on exactly that stretch, and my producer trims or splits those sentences before the real artist records. Does that make sense, right, you are basically using a cheap scratch read to find pacing problems while they still cost nothing.
When the recorded voiceover comes back, it stacks on the same card, so the scratch read is MV1 and the real take is MV2. On the Agency plan the AI transcription gives you a clickable transcript of the take, and I check it against the approved script word for word, because voice artists do paraphrase, very very politely. The artist can also upload the take straight onto the card through guest version upload, which collects their name and email instead of asking them to make an account.
The voiceover gate closes when the approver has listened to MV2 top to bottom. From that point the timing of the whole video is locked, which is the most important idea in this post, trust me on any level.
Once the voiceover is approved, the timing of the whole explainer is locked, and every later stage is built on that timing.
Style frames and the look sign off
Style frames are three to six finished looking stills that show the colours, the character style, the type and how a product screen gets framed. The review question here is narrow, right, it is only about the look, and I say that out loud to the client, because otherwise they start rewriting scene descriptions and you end up reopening the script by the back door.
I export the style frames as a short slate video, a few seconds per frame, and share a normal link, so the client opens it in a browser without an account and draws straight on any frame. A note saying make the character friendlier turns into a long debate, while a circle around the eyebrows with the words softer here turns into a ten minute task for the illustrator.
Playbooks on the Agency plan are a per-client document of creative style and direction, and I keep a brand playbook for the rules that never change for that client plus a folder playbook for this one project, where the approved decisions go in plain words for the animators, for instance no drop shadows on UI screens. Its checklist items are not done until someone ticks them, so an animator who joins in week three works from the same rules the client signed off.
Style frames are reviewed only for colour, character and type, and every decision is written into the folder playbook before animation starts.
Animatic review before animation starts
Once the look is locked, the board gets drawn in it, and on an explainer the storyboard and animatic share one gate that sits on the animatic. The storyboard frames get cut to the approved voiceover with a few simple moves, which is the animatic animation studios have used for decades, so the client watches the whole video in real time before anything is properly animated, right. It is the cheapest place to find out that scene four needs to be two scenes.
The animatic gate is the one I would never skip, even on a tiny budget, because every change after it costs real animation hours, which is the whole point of my piece on storyboard to animatic approval. The animatic goes up on a new card that carries the picture to the end, so the animatic is MV1, the animation passes are MV2 and MV3, and the final is MV4, all stacked with the full history of notes.
On the Agency plan, side-by-side version compare is where that stack pays off, because the client sees the approved animatic next to the first animation pass and can tell for themselves that the timing stayed put and only motion got added. Our page on animatic review for animation teams goes deeper.
- Every scene stays on screen long enough to read
- Scene order matches the approved script
- Product screens show the right UI state
- The approver has watched it top to bottom
Animation, sound and final approval
Going from explainer script to animation is basically execution once the animatic is approved, right, and the client review here is only about motion, like whether a move feels too fast or a gesture reads. I share the first pass as a full cut with rough scenes labelled, because a client who sees the whole thing moving relaxes and gives far more specific notes.
Most of my animators work in After Effects, and PlayPause sits outside After Effects, so the loop is simple. They export, upload the pass to the same card, the client reviews in the browser, and the animator works through the frame-accurate comments beside the comp. If your final assembly happens in Premiere, the Premiere Pro panel shows the comments inside Premiere, and clicking one jumps the playhead to that frame.
Sound is its own small stage in my studio, because music is weirdly the thing clients feel strongest about, you see what I mean here. I send two or three music options over the animatic while animation is still running, so the choice is made long before the mix and the final gate is only about levels and a check of every export the client asked for. When the final lands, who-watched analytics shows me who opened the link, when and from which city, so I know the founder actually watched it before I chase the sign off.
approval by email thread, and a voiceover line reopened in the final week because nobody heard it early
one card per stage moving through custom statuses, with every version and note stacked on it
Setting review gates with custom statuses
The gate itself, inside PlayPause, is a custom status, and custom statuses are on every plan. I use the same set on every explainer, one in review status plus a closing status for each stage, so script approved, voiceover approved, look locked, animatic approved, animation approved and final approved, and every card shows its stage without the client having to ask.
The rule in my studio is that only a producer moves a card into an approved status, right, and only after the named approver has written approved as a comment on that exact version, so the record sits on the version that got signed. Slack on Creator and up sends every comment into a channel, which my producers basically live in during animation weeks, and our page on approval workflows for video review covers the mechanics.
On plans, the limit that matters most for explainers is link life, because a project with six gates often runs past a month. Creator covers statuses, range comments, version stacks and Slack, but its links and files expire after 30 days, while Agency links last 90 days and Agency adds Playbooks, AI transcription, side-by-side compare and guest upload. Pricing is flat per workspace rather than per person, so at the end of the day Agency is the plan I would pick for an explainer studio.
Walking the client through the explainer video stages at kickoff
All of this only works if the client knows the gates exist before the first one, right, so the proposal lists each stage with its approver, its review days and what a late change costs. Our video production proposal template has that review process built in, and in house teams can follow the brand video production process post instead.
On the kickoff call I share one link to a dummy project with the statuses already set up and show the client where the scratch read and the animatic will live. It takes ten minutes, and I'm pretty sure it saves more arguments than any contract clause, because a client who knows a gate is coming rarely fights it. SaaS marketing teams get a longer walkthrough in the explainer video approval workflow post, and the product side lives on review and approval for explainers.
Frequently asked questions
How long does the explainer video production process usually take?
It depends far more on how quickly each gate closes than on the animation, right. In my agency a 90 second explainer moves at a healthy pace when every approver reviews inside the agreed days, about twelve working days of client time in the worked example above, and it stalls when one gate sits open for a week waiting on the founder, because the delivery date slips by exactly the days that gate stayed open.
Why review an animatic if the storyboard is already approved?
A storyboard is still pictures, and an explainer is judged in time, so the animatic is the first moment the client watches the frames play against the real voiceover. Scenes that looked fine on a page turn out to be too short to read, or two ideas end up crammed into one shot. Finding that in the animatic costs a quick edit, while finding it after animation costs real animator hours.
Can the voiceover artist upload takes without a PlayPause account?
On the Agency plan they can, through guest version upload, which collects their name and email and drops the take onto the same card as the scratch read. It stacks on top as the next version, the client reviews it from one link, and nobody on my team downloads files from one place to upload them somewhere else, which used to eat a surprising amount of producer time.
What happens if a client wants to reopen a stage after its gate closed?
We reopen it, but it becomes a change request with a cost and a new date, and that is written in the proposal from the first day. Because every approval sits as a comment on the exact version inside the stack, there is never a debate about what was signed. Most clients reopen far less often once they know the gates are real.
If you run an explainer studio, every plan on our pricing page comes with a 7-day free trial, so set up one real project with the six gates and your own statuses and see how your next kickoff goes.
So yeah. That's my way of saying it.
Saumyajit co-founded PlayPause after years watching review and approval quietly eat creative teams' deadlines. He writes about the workflow side of video, feedback, versioning, and getting to a clean sign-off.
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