Built label moments

A label the viewer must read is built from the client's own photo or artwork by default. The end card shows the product exactly as the hero shot left it.

Readable label moments are built by default (decided). Every moment where a label or exact copy must be read (a packshot, an end card, a hero hold) takes one of four routes [proven]. The fourth, a generated label, is kept only if it passes the every-frame check. Your shot plan marks each such moment "build" (see Planning, budgets and takes → The asset list and versions). The four routes:

1. Real photography: the client's own product photograph, used as the shot. Landing a moving shot on one exact client packshot photograph is a start-frame case (see Video with Seedance → The six start-frame cases).

2. Real photography animated in code (photo base, preferred): the client's real product photograph, animated in code; nothing is redrawn. A slow push (scale 1.00 to 1.06 over the shot), or a small parallax between a cut-out of the product (the client's photo, background removed and checked at full size) and its background. A light sweep, a soft band crossing the product on its own layer at low opacity, only if the brand book allows sheen. Rendered opaque, on the cut track, ungraded.

3. The client's artwork over a generated plate (plate base): a generated clean plate of the product, from the approved product sheet, as its own shot, with the client's exact label artwork placed flat over it as a transparent overlay, positioned to the label area by its measured corners. This is the default for Arabic, legal or dense text. A flat placement works only on a surface that faces the camera and does not move.

4. A generated label, used only if it passes the every-frame check: every frame of the used window where the label reads, at full size, letter by letter (see Video with Seedance → Product and labels in motion). One failing frame fails the take.

End-card words, wordmarks and legal lines are code graphics (see Graphics, captions, versions and delivery → Graphics built in code).

Anything with perspective, curvature or movement goes to After Effects: artwork tracked onto a moving product, or a curved wrap on a jar or bottle. A curved wrap built in code is used only once a render, checked at full size on every readable frame, shows it holds.

The end card shows the product in the hero shot's state (decided): condensation, open or closed, fill level. Where the state is part of the brief, ask the client for a photo in that state, or build the end card over the last frames of the generated hero with the artwork placed flat. The product is always pristine (decided): a state is not wear.

The end card itself: the client's logo file, the end line and the call to action on the brand's background, held for the agreed time.

• No abrupt black-to-white change into or out of it. Compare the mean brightness of the last frame before the card and the first frame of it. If it jumps, change the card's own background or first frames. Never fix it with a fade or a dip (steps below).

• A still hold is a freeze, and a freeze is a speed change: declare it in the delivery check. Some channels refuse freeze frames. For those, keep a little live motion in the hold (a 1–2% drift of the background). Never hold an end card longer by freezing a shot. Choose a take that lands earlier, or keep live motion in the hold.

Do it yourself

Measure the brightness jump into the end card (ffmpeg, a Waveform)

1. Read the two frames' mean brightness (the two YAVG lines) with ffmpeg, using your film's two frame numbers:

ffmpeg -i master.mov -vf "select='between(n\,671\,672)',signalstats,metadata=print:key=lavfi.signalstats.YAVG:file=-" -f null -

1. Or compare the two on the Waveform.

Sources

• This Guide's own rules, from brand-book notes on real commercial work.