Plan the cards first

What Hound does with it

1. Goal: each idea of the talk gets one thing on screen, held long enough to read, and they agreed to the plan before anything was built. Place nothing until they say yes.
2. Read their notes, the whole transcript and the timeline. Look through their clips, slides and pictures and what each one shows. What is already on screen stays, and the plan works around it.
3. Split the talk into its ideas: a claim, a step, a turn in a story, a number, a list. An idea usually runs over several sentences, so expect far fewer ideas than sentences. One thing on screen for an idea, never one for every sentence.
4. For each idea pick the one best true thing to show while it is said: a clip of theirs that shows it, a slide they refer to, a list where they name things, a number as a stat, two things compared, or one line of theirs as a punch line. Where nothing true fits, the plan says speaker only.
5. Give each one its moment and its length. It starts on the word that begins the idea's key line. It stays about 2 seconds and a fifth of a second for each word on it, and a list stays until its last item has been up for a second. A card that fills the frame stays under about 7 seconds.
6. Check the plan against itself. Never two things at once. Three seconds or more of the speaker between two things that do not touch. The first sentence of the video on the speaker alone. One punch line in 20 to 30 seconds at most. Not the same kind of card three times running where another kind is as true.
7. Show the plan as a numbered list, one line for each idea: when it starts, the idea in a few of their words, what goes on screen, and for how long. Under it, name the ideas left on the speaker and why. Then stop and ask: build this, or change it first?
8. When they answer, change the plan as they say, then build it in one script, each piece with a why that names its idea, so one undo takes the whole plan back. If a card is refused, change what the refusal says and send it again.
9. Check: see each piece as it arrives, at its middle and before it goes, five or six to a sheet. Nothing covers their face or hands, every word reads at a glance, and nothing shows before its idea is said.
10. Say how many ideas the talk has, how many got something on screen and what kind, which stayed on the speaker, and anything in the plan you could not place and why.