The method
Four moves
Four moves, named so a direction can cite them. Anything outside the list is a deliberate exception and is written up as one.
| Move | What | Use |
|---|---|---|
| cut | Hard cut, no transition | The default between every shot and every graphic |
| settle | A graphic appears with a short fade or a small rise, one motion under 400 ms, then holds still | Cards, chips, lower thirds |
| reveal | A number counts or a bar fills once, in step with the narration saying it | Measured claims only, and only if the count itself is the point |
| hold | The frame stops on a still, a word, or a flat ink card, for a beat’s length | The verdict, and the deliberate pause |
The rules that go with it:
- Motion is motivated by the narration or by the footage, never by the clock. Nothing breathes, drifts, pulses, or orbits while waiting.
- Graphics do not track subjects, follow cursors, or “pop”. They appear, they hold, they leave on a cut.
- Camera moves inside the footage are the shoot’s decision. The edit does not add digital pushes to a static shot to make it feel alive.
- Transitions other than a cut are named in the direction with their reason.
Why four
A vocabulary this small is a constraint that pays for itself twice. It makes a direction writable. “Settle the chip, hold the verdict” is unambiguous, and two people reading it build the same thing. And it makes the absence of motion meaningful: when nothing on the channel drifts or pulses, a single reveal on a measured number actually lands.
Most motion in most videos exists because the timeline had a gap. That is the clock motivating the move, and it is exactly what this list rules out.
Part of the method, v1.0. Revisions are recorded in what changed.