The Master Guide / 04 The treatment and presentations · Client presentations
The deck expresses the film
A deck that could belong to any brand is a template. Design every deck from its own film.
A deck that could belong to any brand is a template. Design every deck from its own film.
Write one design idea for the whole deck before any layout (decided), derived from the film: "the deck is lit like the film: one window, deep shadows, warm faces".
Take every choice from that idea (decided):
Choice | Taken from | For example |
Ground | The film's world | Black for a night world; the brand's light ground for a clean product world |
Colour | The film's palette | A subdued accent that lives in the frames; the signature colour waits for the payoff |
Display type | The film's tone | A warm, engineered, comic or luxurious display face, paired with a plain text face |
Frame shape | The film's aspect ratio | Full-height vertical frames for a 9:16 film; scope bands for a scope film |
Rhythm | The film's cutting | Denser strips for a fast-cut film; wide margins and single images for slow luxury |
Motifs | The product, its materials or the concept's device | The air conditioner's vent slats become the heading rule |
Separators | Sourced stills | A still sets the mood of each deck section before its content |
Build three pages first: the three-page design check [proven] for style frames before the build; the three-page form [best available, not yet validated]. The cover, one story page (a scene pair in a 16:9 treatment, a scene page otherwise, a concept's title page in a concept deck) and one argument page (a department or "what we learned" page), with real frames. Look at them at 1440 px and at 390 px phone width, side by side in one image, with the design idea in one line beside them. In a deck with several concepts, the three are the cover, one concept's title page in the shared frame, and one argument page. Build the rest only once those three are right.
Write a one-line design idea for every page [proven] except the scene runs. No two argument pages share an idea.
Page types are layouts to adapt, never templates to fill [proven] (Client presentations → Page types and storyboard pages).
Two picture modes [proven]: full-bleed cinema pages for stories with people and places; matted gallery pages for product and luxury worlds. Covers, openers, hero moments and the close are full-bleed or full-height in both.
A deck with several concepts (decided): one quiet shared frame holds the deck (your type, grid, cover and closing pages), and inside it each concept's section expresses its own film, with its own ground, accent and frames.
Why: motion studios lock the look on two or three style frames before they animate; a whole deck judged wrong only after it is built wastes days.