Runbooks

Product demos: how to give a demo or launch video an idea and a look

How to give a product demo or launch video an idea and a look, so that it is exciting rather than a screen recording.

What it can see: only these three pages.

Source on GitHub.

The runbook itself

How to give a product demo or launch video an idea and a look, so that it is exciting rather than a screen recording. It covers creative direction: the idea, the treatment, the camera, the rhythm and the hero shot. It does not cover:

1. Story: the skills but-therefore and cognitive-prophylactics cover it.
2. Hooks: how to open so a viewer stays: validate, then surprise; and the foraging and visual-reset work on attention.
3. Production engineering: motion tooling and critic gates.

It is built from ten launch films taken apart frame by frame. The parts: films.md holds the measurements and what makes them exciting (sections 1 and 2); craft.md holds borrowed ideas, stakes and signs (sections 3 to 5). This page holds the method and the checks.

6. The method a director follows

Do these in order. Don't skip ahead to shots. Section numbers 1 and 2 are in films.md; 3 to 5 are in craft.md.

1. Idea first. Write the motion thesis (3.1): one moving image that turns the "before" into the "after". It should be a picture of what the product does (2.1). Test: could a still of it, alone, tell a stranger what the product does?
2. Then the treatment.
   1. The palette is one ground plus one accent (2.2.1). Take both from the brand if you can, so the film's light is the site's own.
   2. One texture binds the made shots and the captured shots (2.2.2).
   3. Pick a type stance: type as image (2.2.3) or type that whispers (2.2.4). Don't mix them.
   4. Pick the camera language for the world and for the UI. UI is macro crops on what changed (2.3).
   5. Write all of this up as an identity note, and agree it with the story owner before any image is made.
3. Then the beats. Use the but/therefore beats from the story owner. For each beat, name the moving object, its state change and the sign it carries (section 5). Run the anti-slide gate (3.3). Plan the rhythm: fast in the middle, then one long hold for the relief (2.4).
4. Then the hero shot. One image the film builds to (2.6), held longer than any other shot. Make it first as a still, because if the still doesn't land, the film won't.
5. Then the frames, cheaply. Make one still per treatment, at the delivery ratio, with real type set over it (never generated type). Have the person whose taste decides choose among 2 or 3 treatments. The owner of the product decides on taste.
6. Then build, and send it through a critic gate: a review pass against the questions in section 8 before it ships.

8. Questions to check a film against

1. Can you say the one moving idea in a sentence, and is it a picture of what the product does?
2. Is there one ground and one accent, and does the accent come from the brand?
3. Does the camera ever show a whole browser window? (It shouldn't.)
4. Does every beat have a visible state change and a sign from section 5?
5. Is there a person, by hand or by thing, and whose status moves?
6. Does the obvious fix fail on screen before the product works?
7. Is the hero shot held longer than anything else, after the fast middle?
8. With the sound off, do the captions carry it? With it on, does sound add without being needed?
9. Is every number on screen from the real run, and is every made shot tagged "Illustration"?

Use it

Hand it to your agent: give it this page's address, or paste the runbook into the chat, and ask it to follow the steps.