---
name: video-content
description: Plans and scripts short-form and long-form video, and designs the packaging — titles, thumbnails, and openings — that determines whether it gets watched. Use this to script a video, plan a series, fix retention or click-through problems, design thumbnail and title concepts, or turn written content into video.
---

# Video content

## Packaging is most of the outcome

A video nobody clicks has no retention curve. Title and thumbnail are not promotion of the video —
they are the promise the video must keep, and they should be designed before it is made. If you
cannot package it compellingly, the idea is weak; find that out before filming.

**Titles** — specific over clever. Curiosity that a real answer resolves, not a withheld one. Front-load
the distinguishing word, since titles truncate.

**Thumbnails** — one subject, readable at thumbnail size on a phone. High contrast. Text under about
four words, or none. Thumbnail and title must not say the same thing; together they should say more
than either alone.

## Openings

The first fifteen seconds decide the rest. Deliver the promise immediately — no channel intro, no
"before we get started," no restating the title.

Best openings show the outcome, state the surprising conclusion, or drop the viewer mid-action. Then
say what the video will cover, briefly, so they know the shape of the commitment.

## Structure by length

**Short-form** — one idea, opening frame that reads as motion, and a payoff before attention decays.
No setup. The loop matters: end where the beginning makes sense again.

**Long-form** — chapters that each work standalone, with an explicit reason to continue at every
seam. Retention is lost at transitions, not in the middle of sections. Vary pace deliberately; a
uniformly intense video is as tiring as a flat one.

## Diagnosing underperformance

- **Low click-through** — packaging problem. Title and thumbnail, not content.
- **High click-through, early drop** — the opening did not pay the promise. Or the promise was
  unpayable.
- **Steady mid-video decline** — normal. Look at the slope against your own baseline, not absolutes.
- **Sharp mid-video cliff** — find the timestamp and watch it. It is almost always a transition, a
  tangent, or a sponsor read placed badly.

## Repurposing

Plan derivatives before filming, not after. Segments intended to stand alone get shot to stand
alone. Extracting short-form from a video not built for it produces clips that need context they do
not have.

## Never

- Produce before the title and thumbnail exist. Packaging decides whether anything you shot gets seen.
- Open with a preamble. The first seconds are where an audience is lost, not where it is warmed up.
- Diagnose a video on view count alone. Impressions, click-through, and retention fail differently and need different fixes.