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motion lab

06 Launch films & reels

Structure a short film into beats, then keep it readable in every ratio.

Floor
06 of 09
Demos
Beat sheet, Safe zones
Skills
video-shotcraftlemo-opuscar

Structure before style

A launch film is short, and every second has a job. Most good ones follow the same five beats: hook, problem, reveal, proof and a call to action. The style can be anything; the structure is what makes people watch to the end.

Plan the beats as time first, then as frames. A 30-second film at 30 fps is 900 frames, and every shot, transition and caption has to fit inside that budget. Skills like video-shotcraft start from exactly this kind of storyboard before any animation is written.

Beat sheet

Every launch film has the same five beats. Drag the boundaries to give each beat its time; the shot list updates in frames.

Film length
Frame rate

Hook, frames 0 to 107: Show the product moving in the first second. No logo intro.

  • The hook runs past 3 seconds. On social feeds most people decide in the first two.

Shot list

Launch film · 30 s · 30 fps · 900 frames (f000–f899)

f000–f107  Hook            0.0–3.6 s  Show the product moving in the first second. No logo intro.
f108–f269  Problem         3.6–9.0 s  One concrete pain, shown rather than told.
f270–f539  Reveal          9.0–18.0 s  The hero moment. The slowest, most considered shot in the film.
f540–f764  Proof           18.0–25.5 s  The feature working for real, or one number that matters.
f765–f899  Call to action  25.5–30.0 s  Hold the end card long enough to read it twice.

One master, many ratios

The same film will play in a 16:9 player, a square feed and a full-screen vertical reel. Letterboxing the master into a vertical frame shrinks everything to a strip in the middle. Reframing rebuilds the layout for each ratio: bigger type, stacked elements, the product filling the frame.

Vertical video also has interface on top of it: profile names, captions, like and share buttons. Keep text and calls to action inside the safe area, or the app will cover them.

Safe zones

One end card, four ratios. Reframe it for each platform, or letterbox the 16:9 master and see what gets lost.

Launch day is here.

Try it freeyourproduct.com
Ratio

9:16: Reels, Shorts, TikTok, Stories.

From the 16:9 master
  • Title safe: keep text inside the inner 90%.
  • Typical app interface on vertical video: profile and captions at the top and bottom, buttons on the right. Exact sizes vary by app.

Rules of thumb

  • The first frame is the thumbnail on many feeds. Make it a frame worth stopping on.
  • Show the product within the first three seconds; open on the logo and people scroll past.
  • Cutdowns are new edits, not trims. A 15-second version needs its own hook.
  • Design in the tallest ratio you will ship and widen from there; it is harder to go the other way.
  • Hold the end card for at least two seconds, longer if it has a URL to type.