Visual brief: Ad-hoc Brief 1, Luteal week reel, short and offer-tied

Source verdict: approved/2026-05-20/luteal-reel.md Source draft: drafts/2026-05-20/luteal-reel.md Format: reel Generated: 2026-05-21T14:30:00

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Visual register summary

Single near-static POV shot of a kitchen counter, holding 8 to 10 seconds with no cuts. The frame is warm and grounded, cream and sand palette zone dominant, with a deep brown ink overlay carrying the hook in Recoleta semi-bold. Photography style is soft natural light, slightly desaturated, the stillness doing the emotional work while the on-screen line lands. Audio sits quiet under the visual, ambient pad only, no trending audio.

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Production-ready units

Beat 1 (single shot, holds the full 8 to 10 seconds)

• Text overlay (verbatim from approved draft):
  • Day 23. I do not recognise the woman who wrote this planner.
• Layout: Single hook overlay anchored in the top third of the frame, horizontally centered with a slight left bias so the line breaks naturally over two lines ("Day 23." on line one, the recognition clause on line two). Generous breathing room above and below the overlay, at least 8 percent of frame height as margin from the top edge. No follow-up overlays, no end card, no logo bug, no progress indicator. Hook holds the full duration with no animation.
• Background: The shot itself is the background. Wooden kitchen counter, warm mid-tone, sits in the cream and sand zone of the palette by way of natural surface color (not a color overlay). Counter surface visible across the bottom two-thirds of the frame. No texture filter added in post beyond a light film grain at roughly 3 to 5 percent strength.
• Typography:
  • Hook overlay: Recoleta semi-bold (fallback Lora bold), sentence case, approximately 64 to 72pt on a 1080x1920 vertical canvas, color deep brown #3D2818. Line height roughly 1.15. No drop shadow. If the counter tone behind the overlay reads too warm and reduces legibility, add a soft cream #FAF3E2 text plate behind the overlay at 70 percent opacity with 24px corner radius and 32px internal padding. Decide on plate during the grade pass, not in camera.
• Image / illustration: POV looking down at a wooden kitchen counter from a natural seated or standing eye-line, camera angled roughly 70 to 80 degrees downward. A weekly planner is open to Wednesday, the page filled with handwriting that reads as the narrator's own (legible enough to scan as "real" handwriting, not legible enough to read specific words). Half a cold coffee in a plain ceramic mug sits in the upper-left third of the frame, surface of the coffee dull, no steam. Phone face down beside the mug, screen hidden. The narrator's hand rests on the right edge of the planner page without writing. Once during the duration, a finger taps the page a single time, otherwise the frame is still. Soft natural light from camera-right, indoor overcast or window-diffused, slightly desaturated grade. One focal object: the planner. Negative space at the top of the frame holds the overlay.
• Color accents: No accent color. The frame stays inside the cream / sand / brown zone of the palette. Do not introduce sage, terracotta, or blue accents in this beat. The restraint is the point.
• Motion (if applicable): Visually still. The camera does not move. The hand taps once mid-duration as the only motion event. Overlay is fully still, no fade-in, no kinetic type, no animation of any kind. The hook is present from frame one and stays through the final frame so the reel loops cleanly with no overlay state change.

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Cross-unit consistency

Single-shot reel, no cross-unit consistency notes required. The frame composition, lighting, and overlay state are identical from first frame to last. The loop point is the entire shot: any frame can cut to any other frame and the reel reads continuous.

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AI generation prompt

Video prompt (reels, model-agnostic)

A quiet, contemplative kitchen-counter scene that holds for the full duration without resolving, the stillness carrying its own weight. The camera holds a static high-angle close-up looking down at the counter from roughly 70 to 80 degrees, locked off, no movement. A woman's hand rests heavy on the right edge of an open paper weekly planner filled with her own handwriting, page turned to the middle of the week; once during the shot a single finger taps the page softly and then settles, the weight of the hand pressing the page flat. The background is a warm mid-tone wooden counter with a half-finished cold coffee in a plain ceramic mug in the upper left and a phone lying face down beside it, no steam, no other objects. Soft diffused natural side light from the right, overcast indoor quality, slightly desaturated grade with a faint film grain, warm cream and brown tones, the mood of the held breath before a thought finishes. Audio is a quiet ambient pad with faint room tone, no music hook, no voice, no beat. 9:16 vertical, 8 to 10 seconds.

Image prompt

Typographic only, no AI image generation.

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Designer notes

• Video specs:
  • Aspect ratio: 9:16 vertical
  • Canvas / resolution: 1080x1920
  • Length: 8 to 10 seconds, target 9 seconds
  • Frame rate: 30fps (acceptable range 24 to 30fps; pick one and hold it)
  • Codec / container: H.264 in MP4
  • Color profile: sRGB
  • Bitrate target: 8 to 12 Mbps for Instagram upload
• Audio direction: Quiet ambient pad or sparse piano, sub-bass-free, volume sitting low under the visual so the overlay carries the moment. No trending audio. No voice-over. Per writer note in the approved draft, the stillness is the bait and the on-screen line does the talking, so the audio is texture, not foreground. If using a stock pad, pick something with no melodic hook and no perceptible beat.
• Grade direction: Warm, soft, slightly desaturated. Pull saturation down roughly 10 to 15 percent from camera-native. Lift shadows slightly so the wooden counter reads warm rather than muddy. Avoid any cool tint, avoid high contrast, avoid teal-and-orange grading. Light film grain at 3 to 5 percent.
• Overlay legibility check: Before export, scrub through the full duration with the overlay on and confirm the hook is legible against every frame of the shot. The hand tap is the only motion, so legibility should be stable, but check anyway.
• Creative latitude (where the designer can deviate):
  • Exact counter material (wood is preferred but a warm stone or warm laminate that grades into the cream / sand zone is acceptable).
  • Exact mug (plain ceramic in a brand-adjacent tone, no logo, no pattern).
  • Exact handwriting content on the planner page (must read as real handwriting, no specific words required, no brand or competitor text visible).
  • Whether to include the cream text plate behind the overlay (decide based on legibility against the actual counter tone).
• Creative latitude (where the designer cannot deviate):
  • The shot is one continuous take, no cuts, no zoom, no pan.
  • The overlay text is verbatim from the approved draft, no edits, no paraphrase, no added punctuation.
  • The overlay holds the full duration with no animation.
  • No follow-up overlays, no end card, no CTA on screen, no logo bug. Caption carries the body and the CTA, not the video.
  • No trending audio.
• Export specs:
  • File format: MP4 (H.264)
  • Resolution: 1080x1920
  • Color profile: sRGB
  • Filename convention: luteal-reel-2026-05-20-v1.mp4
• Open questions: No open questions, asset is fully specified above.