AI vs agency vs in-house: what short video really costs to produce in Malaysia

"How much should a TikTok video cost?" is one of the most common questions we get — and it's the wrong question to lead with. The useful one is: which approach gets you content that's good enough, in the quantity you need, reliably? There are three ways to make short video, and they differ far more in that than in any headline price.

The three ways to make short video

• In-house. You build a team and shoot it yourselves. People assume this is the cheap option — it usually isn't (more on that below).
• Agency / production house. You brief a team that handles concept, shoot, talent and edit. You buy real polish and offload the work — at a premium, and rarely at volume.
• AI-assisted. You use AI tools for the visual production under human direction. Done properly, it's the route that holds quality and keeps the volume flowing — steadily, on schedule.

Why in-house is rarely the cheap option

The instinct is that doing it yourself saves money. So picture what "doing it yourself" actually needs to hit a decent standard:

• Two on-camera talents;
• Someone to shoot;
• Someone to edit;
• Often a stylist or wardrobe person too;
• Plus props, a location or studio to rent, and post-production.

Add those up and "in-house" stops looking cheap. And there's a second cost that never makes the budget: stability. People get sick, have off days, or leave — and every wobble hits your quality and your posting schedule. Human production is necessary and valuable, but it isn't free, and it isn't reliably repeatable at volume.

Audiences are meeting AI halfway

Worth saying plainly: viewers are increasingly comfortable with AI-made content — the same way audiences grew comfortable with animation, or any particular visual style. It's becoming a familiar, accepted type, not a red flag. Some people still won't love it, just as some people don't enjoy cartoons — and that's fine. You're not trying to make every single viewer love it; you're building a brand the right people trust. (We dig into that craft in making AI video that doesn't look like AI.)

The real balance: quality and quantity

This is where the three approaches truly separate:

• In-house and agency content is usually good quality these days — but rarely reaches the quantity the platforms reward.
• Most cheap AI content does the opposite: plenty of quantity, but crude and careless.

Running a brand properly means refusing that trade-off — holding quality while sustaining the volume of output the algorithm needs. That combination is what pulls in new customers and keeps existing ones warm, and it's the whole point of our AI content service, The Aesthetic: it sets the brand's tonality and the way people and products are shown, and it keeps the output stable — in quality and on time.

From the founder

I don't want anyone walking away thinking of this as the ‘cheap’ option — because that word drags two wrong ideas with it: that the quality must be poor, and that you can just churn it out. Neither is true. Producing content that's genuinely good and in real quantity isn't cheap; it's more efficient — it reaches the result with a better use of time and money than the old way, and that edge only grows.

But that only holds under proper planning — it comes from experienced hands directing the tool, not the tool on its own. And I'm not against real filming: for a brand with budget, put some into professional human production and some into stable, high-quality AI content. If budget's tight, lock in the steady quality flow first, then fund the human shoots from what it earns.

— Louis Teo, Founder of Hansen

The smart mix: AI content and human film together

We don't pretend AI replaces professional human production. For a brand with the budget, the sensible split is both:

• Part of the budget to real, professional human filming — the occasional hero or brand-image piece;
• Part to stable, continuous, high-quality AI content that keeps the brand present every day.

Together they build a stronger, more memorable brand than either alone. And if budget is tight, the priority is clear: secure the stable, quality content flow first, then — once it's working and earning — put some of the returns toward a few human-shot films. You can see how we run the AI side on our AI short video page.