The first half-second is the whole pitch

Attention isn't lost in the middle of a video. It's lost in the first half-second, before a single word has been understood. If the opening frame doesn't promise something — tension, beauty, a question — the thumb keeps moving and nothing else you made gets a vote.

Hook the eye before the ear

People see before they hear. We design the first frame to do work on its own: a striking composition, an unexpected object, motion that implies a story. The audio hook matters, but it arrives a beat late — the image has to buy that beat.

Our rule of thumb: if you paused the video at 0.4 seconds and showed a stranger the still, would they want to know what happens next? If not, the hook isn't done.

Write forty, ship four

We don't write one hook and hope. We write forty, kill thirty-six, and test the rest. The winners rarely look clever on paper — they look obvious in the feed. That's the point. The feed isn't a place to be admired; it's a place to be understood instantly.

Make the first half-second un-ignorable and the rest of the story finally gets a chance to be told.