Seedance Ad Creative

seedance-ad-creative: cinematic product/brand ad clips

Turns a product description (or a product photo) into a commercial-style video clip: camera language, product framing, and brand tone become a Seedance 2.5 prompt, which this skill submits, polls, downloads, and reports the cost for.

This skill is a thin, scenario-specific layer over ofox-video-core. It owns the ad-creative prompt craft, the creative brief, recommended defaults, and the pre-generation cost estimate; ofox-video-core owns talking to the Ofox API correctly and safely (the OFOX_API_KEY handling, the no-resubmit rule, error-code mapping, download/verification). Read that skill's safety contract before using this one — it is not restated here.

The prompt structure shared by every Seedance scenario skill — the vendor's formula, timestamp formats and segment lengths, transition and camera vocabulary, consistency locks and negative lists, the two meanings of an attached image — lives in ../ofox-video-core/references/prompt-structure.md. Load it before writing a prompt. This file only adds what is specific to ads.

The rules for the questions that come before a prompt exists are shared the same way, in ../ofox-video-core/references/creative-brief.md; the brief section below carries only this scenario's question set.

Before generating: the availability check

Run this once per session (not on every request):

bash ../ofox-video-core/references/ofox-video.sh check

If it fails, follow ofox-video-core's guidance (install curl/jq, or get an OFOX_API_KEY at https://app.ofox.ai) — don't dead-end the conversation, and don't re-run this check on every subsequent request once it has passed.

Before writing the prompt: the creative brief

The shared rules are in ../ofox-video-core/references/creative-brief.md — the three tiers, one round of at most four questions, the shape of a question, the "Let the AI decide" discipline, the generic skip rows, the order with the approval gate, the fallback for a runtime without AskUserQuestion, and the anti-patterns. Read it before writing a prompt. This section adds only what is specific to ads.

The brief is what turns "make an ad for this bottle" into choices the user actually made instead of choices made for them in silence. Zero questions is common here: "15-second vertical TikTok ad for this sneaker photo, young and energetic, slow orbit" has settled every axis.

If four slots are not enough: Photo first, then the axis that changes the picture most (Tone), then Camera, then Aspect; anything left falls to a default and the cost table.

The product-photo question has no "Let the AI decide" option. A photo that does not exist cannot be invented, and "you decide" from the user delegates the taste axes only — it never answers this one.

The ad-creative question set

Not asked: 720p vs 1080p (two rows in the cost table); duration — take the user's number, and if there is none use the default and say in the recap that every gallery ad with a stated length runs 20–30s (see Recommended defaults); model, provider, the audio flag.

Skip rows specific to ad-creative

On top of the generic rows in creative-brief.md:

From answers to prompt — traceability

Every answer has to be findable in the prompt or the flags.

The recap for this scenario

Brief:
- Photo: /Users/me/ads/bottle.jpg (given)
- Tone: Luxury (you chose)
- Camera: slow 30-degree orbit (AI's pick)
- Aspect: 9:16 (inferred from "Reels") — I will pad the photo to 9:16 first
- Duration / resolution: 15s / 720p preview and 1080p deliverable — two rows below

Then the full prompt, then the cost table, all in one message — the order and the rule for a change made at the gate are in creative-brief.md's Order, with the approval gate.

Prompt template

Vocabulary is not repeated here. Timestamp formats and segment lengths: Segmenting the timeline; cut and continuous-shot phrasing: Transitions and Several shots in one job; shot sizes and moves: Camera language; slow motion, speed ramps and cuts on the beat: Pacing; the closing blocks: Consistency locks and the negative list; asset role sentences: Reference assets as visual anchors — all headings in ../ofox-video-core/references/prompt-structure.md. What follows is the ad-specific shape.

All nine gallery ad and UGC prompts (cases 12–15, 23–27) share one skeleton: a style or format declaration first — or the asset anchor, when an image is attached — then a multi-beat body and a stated closing action. Seven of the nine end on a technical tail, and six carry a negative list (cases 14, 15, 23, 24, 25, 26). The cinematic ones pace as hook → showcase → physical-event climax in slow motion → hero freeze (cases 12, 14, 15); the UGC ones as a flat action chain that ends "naturally, not promotionally" (cases 24–27).

Template A — cinematic ad, 15–30s

Segments run 3–5s (cases 15, 25, 26, 27); the one official 30s piece with 10s segments (case 13) never cuts. Slots are in <angle brackets>; optional lines in [square brackets]. Pick one header labelling style and keep it.

The beats below are a floor, not a ceiling. Counted per case: the gallery's ads run 5 shots in 20s (case 15, 4s each) up to 9 CUTs in one generation (case 14), and case 26 runs seven segments in 30s — so a 30s spot written as five 6-second beats is the slowest ad in the set. Split a beat into two shots rather than holding one for six seconds; the per-case counts are in "Shot density, measured per case" in the shared file. The Ofox-measured envelope now reaches 20 seconds, 7 shots and 6 hard cuts in one job, with a first frame attached — this scenario's own accepted jobs did it (see "Several shots: timestamps inside one job, chain across jobs" below) — so Template A's four or five beats are inside what has been run, not past it. Above 7 shots or 6 cuts is still gallery practice, and a first attempt there is an experiment.

⚠️ That warning was only ever about the shot count, and a count is half of the problem. It was in this file, in these words, when a 15s ad was written as five beats at the floor — and the clip was rejected as "too simple, too monotonous" anyway, because three of those five beats contained no physical movement at all. A beat can be at the floor and still be dead; "a floor, not a ceiling" says nothing about what happens inside a beat. The missing half is now written down as 7. Every beat needs a physical event — and "slow" is not "still" below, and it is the first thing to check after the beat count.

[FORMAT: <N> seconds, <16:9 | 9:16 | 1:1>, hard cuts on the timestamps.]            — optional; must match the flags
STYLE: <ad category> commercial, <capture anchor: 8K photoreal studio | 35mm film grain | glossy high-speed>, <tone: luxury — slow, dark, warm gold | playful — bright, saturated, fast | minimalist-tech — white or grey, cool, steady>.
COLOR PALETTE: <dominant>, <the product's warm or cool accent>, <contrast colour>, <metallic accent>.                        (case 14)
[CHARACTER: <one block — age range, build, hair, wardrobe item by item with colours, one signature accessory>. Referred to below as "<tag>".]   (case 14; text only — see the real-person note below)
PRODUCT: <shape> <material and finish> <colour> <product name>, <label text in quotes, verbatim>, <contents or accessories item by item>.
         [image1 provides the product exactly — <shape, label, cap, colour>; ignore its background.]                     (cases 12, 24)
SCENE: <backdrop>, <one or two props framing the shot>, <light: saturated studio key with a warm rim | golden hour | single hard key>.

0–<3–5>s    HOOK — <one visual focus: a macro of one ingredient | the cap | the clock face>; <one strong move: a hard cut lands as the detail completes its motion | low-angle dolly-in | a white flash freezes the frame | layers unfold>.   (cases 12, 13, 15, 14)
<TRANSITION between any two beats — name a kind; a hard cut is one of nine and an unnamed boundary becomes one: HARD CUT. | The camera plunges through <the gears / the pour / the open lid> into the next beat. (case 13) | <The product / the blade / a hand> sweeps past the lens and the camera comes out of the occlusion on <the next arrangement>. (the phrasing is cases 2, 8, 41, none of them ads) | A white flash freezes the frame, then <the next pose>. (case 15) | An extreme speed ramp carries <the event> into <the next beat>. (case 15) | Without cutting, <the array reassembles in frame>.>
<>–<>s      SHOWCASE — <arrangement: a strict geometric array of the variants | <tag> holds the product toward the lens, steam rising | the camera orbits the product 30 degrees>; cut to close-ups of <two or three details>. <one physical event in this beat — required, see slot notes>   (cases 12, 14, 24)
<>–<>s      CLIMAX — <one physical event: the biscuit snaps | the broth erupts | the blade sweeps past the lens>; drops into slow motion for one second — <micro-detail: the filling bursts, crumbs fly, droplets hang> — then back to speed.   (cases 12, 14, 15)
[<>–<>s     PAYOFF — <the event's result, as its own timed shot: the drop lands and one ring spreads and dies | the crumbs settle on the white>; full speed, and the landing named as a required visible event.]   (only when the payoff is small and fast; job 60fbea52 wrote it as CLIMAX's tail and lost it, job cb6b7870 gave it its own stamp and got it — slot notes below)
[<>–<>s     VARIATION — back at full tempo, <a second arrangement>.]                                                        (case 12)
<>–<N>s     CLOSE — product hero frame, <centered | in slow motion>; [the slogan "<text>" enters word by word, one word per cut;] [the logo per image2 in the last second;] hold the final frame.   (cases 12, 13, 14, 15)

CAMERA: handheld energy and high-speed slow motion on the <climax>; smooth static holds on the <showcase>; cinematic shallow depth of field throughout.   (case 14)
AUDIO: <room tone of the set>; <two or three recorded sounds tied to visible actions: the cap breaking its seal, the snap, fabric, a footfall in dust>; no dialogue. No music — see "4. No dialogue, no music — but a sound block" below.   (jobs 7ae7d49e, ac927785)
CONSISTENCY: the product's shape, label, colours and proportions stay identical in every shot[; <tag>'s face, hair and wardrobe do not change].   (cases 24, 15)
AVOID: dialogue, subtitles, on-screen text other than the slogan card, watermarks, jitter, identity drift, wardrobe change, warped hands, extra limbs; music, score, soundtrack, instrumental, melody, rhythm track, percussion, <named instruments: cello, strings, piano, bell, chime>, humming, singing.   (cases 15, 24, 14; the music items are jobs 1ff72400 / 7ae7d49e)

Notes on the slots:

• Every beat carries one physical event, SHOWCASE included. This is the slot where an ad goes quiet: it is the one whose job is "show the product", and a rejected 15s spot spent it on an orbit that never moved — six frames sampled across it hold the same orientation, the same cap perspective and the same highlight. Name something that happens — the product is set down, a hand enters, liquid moves, steam rises, a cloth is pulled away — and check the whole timeline for a beat carried only by light sliding across a surface. The measurement and the three repairs are in "7. Every beat needs a physical event — and 'slow' is not 'still'" below.
• Anchor sentences when an image is attached — put them first, before STYLE (cases 15, 24 both open on the asset): Begin with the exact composition of the reference image. (case 15, a --frame-first-image job) · Preserve the product exactly as in @image1 throughout — frame shape, lenses, hinges, colours, materials, proportions. (adapted from case 24) · one role line per asset, image1: product appearance. image2: logo, last second only. (cases 12, 13). Sentence patterns and the @image1 caveat: Reference assets as visual anchors.
• Several pieces or an unboxing (case 24): name every piece and lock each — Use the uploaded sunglasses, retail box and leather case as locked product references — then run the showcase as a chain: box opens → case → product lifted → rotated to show hinges and lenses → worn, turned to catch the light → held beside the face → push in on the product, fade.
• A person interacting with the product (case 14): one CHARACTER block, then the tag in every segment (the model holds the bowl toward the lens with both hands, steam rising). Describe the person in text — and note that this is a full route, not a consolation prize: see "A model and a locked product: the route that works" below. Gallery cases 15 and 24 attached real-person images on other platforms; do not read them as Ofox behaviour.
• Order the framing so the risky anatomy stays small. A person in an ad is where hands, faces and limb counts go wrong. Job ac927785-92ef-4e28-97b9-ff8172ec5554 (20s, 7 shots, a runner and a shoe) came back with no deformation at all, and the thing it did differently was the order: foot → hand and ankle and lower leg → lower leg and knee → the foot again in slow motion → full body exactly once, and that once distant, from behind, head turned away → the set empty again. Focus stayed on the product in all seven shots and never on the person. So: escalate how much of the body is in frame, keep the full figure to one distant shot, and never make a hand or a face the focal point. Avoiding people entirely is not the only option. What that run did not establish is that a written size limit works, and a later one shows it does not. Job 60fbea52-b14b-4796-80bf-03afe0aa4fa0 (a hand entering a macro on a dropper) said twice — once in the shot and again in AVOID — only the fingertips and the first knuckle ever visible and never more of the hand than that, and the render shows most of the index finger and the hand to the knuckles. The shot was still anatomically clean, with no extra or warped fingers, and what kept it clean was the macro framing plus one simple action, not the limit. Write the framing order above; treat a "never more than X of a limb" clause as a wish, not a second line of defence.
• Give the climax's payoff its own timed shot when that payoff is small and fast. Measured once, on 60fbea52-b14b-4796-80bf-03afe0aa4fa0 (15s, 5 shots, accepted): a five-second CLIMAX was written as 7-8.5s the pipette lifts clear of the bottle, 8.5-10.5s in slow motion a drop swells at the glass tip and falls, 10.5-12s back at full speed the drop lands on the surface of the oil in the bottle, one clean ring spreads out and dies against the glass. The build-up rendered beautifully and the landing never happened: at 11.8s the drop is still hanging from the pipette, and at 12.25s the clip cuts to the hero frame. Five and a half seconds of climax bought a suspended drop and no event. A hanging, glowing droplet is exactly the kind of picture this model is good at, so it made that and skipped the fast physical beat at the end of it. The counter-measure is to write the payoff as its own timestamped shot with its own share of the seconds, compress the build-up to pay for it, and name the result as a required visible event (the drop must be seen to leave the tip, land, and ring the surface) instead of trailing it off the end of a longer shot. That is what the optional PAYOFF line in the template is for. ✅ That counter-measure has now been run, and it worked — the first time it was tried, on cb6b7870. The payoff got its own boundary at 11-13s, separate from the CLIMAX before it, and its own required-event sentence: A column of white steam must be seen to rise out of the open mouth of the bottle, climb into the warm key light where it glows, and drift off to the right. This is a required visible event: the steam has to leave the neck and travel up through the light within these two seconds, not merely hang above it. The steam rises, glows and drifts, confirmed at t=12.5s — one of only two segments in that clip where anything physical happens at all, in a clip rejected for being too still. Two things to copy from the wording: the event has its own timestamp, and the clause naming what it must not do (not merely hang above it) describes the earlier failure exactly. One before-and-after pair on two different events, not a controlled test — but the fix is no longer a hypothesis.
• A continuous state change can be one of the listed changes, if its direction is pinned. A consistency lock normally reads "nothing changes except these things", and the things are discrete events. The same job also let one continuous drift through, and it rendered correctly: the bars of window light from the blinds were allowed to only ever creep lower and warmer, never brighter, never higher, and never change direction — named as the single permitted drift in a scene whose props were otherwise nailed down. Opening and closing frames confirm the bars moved, and moved the written way. One observation on one clip, but it means a dimming afternoon or a cooling set does not have to be broken into discrete steps to be controlled.
• An extreme macro inside a homogeneous liquid is the weakest showcase shot on record here. The same job's 2.1-second macro inside amber serum came back as a near-flat colour field with two soft refracted light bands: competent, and nothing to watch. The comparable shot into a carbonated drink carried itself on rising bubbles (7ae7d49e). One observation each way, so read it as a warning rather than a law — a liquid macro needs something inside the liquid that moves.
• Do not ask the model for music. The AUDIO slot above used to read <upbeat | cinematic | minimal> instrumental; percussion hits synced to <the climax event> — copied from cases 12 and 14, and that is the shape that got refused here. A prompt asking for "one sustained low cello note" and "a soft bell chime" came back failed with error.code: output_moderation_failed and the upstream message the output audio may be related to copyright restrictions (job 1ff72400-0f30-4be1-a417-f52d43955d09, 2026-09-04). Nothing was billed. Keeping only recorded, diegetic sound and naming the music words in AVOID passed on the next run (7ae7d49e-7eb9-4165-9d95-09cd525d53ed); the next ad in the same batch wrote it that way from the start and was also clean (ac927785-92ef-4e28-97b9-ff8172ec5554). One refused sample, so the exact trigger is unknown — but a real ad's music is laid in afterwards anyway, so the cost of complying is nothing. Detail: "Asking for music can fail output moderation on copyright" in the shared file.
• Slot pacing by tone: Luxury runs 5s segments and slow moves (case 13); Playful runs 3s segments and cuts on the downbeat — the cuts, not the music the downbeat came from (cases 12, 14). ⚠️ Luxury's longer segments raise the stakes on the rule above rather than relaxing it: a 5-second beat with no event in it is 5 seconds of nothing, where a 3-second one is only
  3. If a Luxury beat has no physical event available, split it into two shorter shots instead of holding it.
• Five beats in 15 seconds has now been run three times, and an uneven duration split is honoured closely. 7ae7d49e, 60fbea52 and cb6b7870 are all 15s, 5 shots, 4 hard cuts, first frame attached, and all three kept every cut — cb6b7870's four landed at 3.000 / 7.542 / 11.042 / 13.250s against written stamps of 3 / 8 / 11 / 13, so within half a second each way. ⚠️ And the third of those was rejected, which is the point worth carrying: the structural half of this template is now well verified and the structural half is not what decides whether an ad is watchable. See 7 in "Writing a good ad-creative prompt". On 60fbea52 the per-shot budget was planned 3 / 2 / 2 / 5 / 3 seconds and rendered 2.62 / 2.13 / 1.87 / 5.63 / 2.79 — every segment within 0.4s of its plan, including a deliberately lopsided split that gave the climax more than twice any other shot. So spending the seconds by function rather than evenly is a real instrument on this path, not a hope. (This bullet used to warn that four or five beats was past what had been verified; that warning was retired in 1.9.0, and this is what replaced it.)

Template B — 10 seconds or less, three beats

Inferred from the 15–30s cases; the gallery has no ad prompt of 10s or less (the shortest stated length is 20s, cases 15 and 27). No header manifest — the vendor's formula order, subject and action first (shared file, The vendor's own formula (ByteDance first-party)).

<Product> <one action or event> on <backdrop>; <tone archetype>, <capture anchor>. [image1 provides the product exactly.]
0–3s: <a macro of one detail>; a hard cut lands as it completes its motion.
3–7s: <the physical event> in slow motion — <micro-detail>; rim light along the edge.
7–10s: product hero frame, centered; [the slogan "<text>" | the logo per image2 in the last second;] hold the final frame.
<light line>. <palette line>. No music; ambient/SFX only; no dialogue. No subtitles, no watermarks, no jitter.

Worked example — adapted from case 12 (translated), timestamps added

The official fruit-biscuit ad, moved from its prose-ordered original into Template A at 20 seconds. The original reads the strawberry variant from an attached image and takes composition, motion and impact from six reference clips; Ofox allows one video reference, so this version keeps only the image. Word choice is ours; the beat order, the snap-in-slow-motion climax, the word-by-word slogan and the scatter ending are the original's.

Case 12's own audio direction is an upbeat instrumental with the cuts synced to its downbeat. That part is not carried over here — this version replaces the scored cue with recorded sound only, because asking this model for music has failed output moderation on audio copyright here (unbilled; see "4. No dialogue, no music — but a sound block" above, and "Asking for music can fail output moderation on copyright" in the shared file). A score can be laid over the delivered clip afterwards, which is where case 12's instrumental would have to come from anyway — so, unlike the rest of this adaptation, the AUDIO line and the beat-timed cues below are a deliberate departure from the original, not a translation of it.

FORMAT: 20 seconds, 16:9, hard cuts on the timestamps.
STYLE: bright, multicoloured snack commercial; clean, premium, strongly rhythmic; glossy high-speed capture.
COLOR PALETTE: strawberry red, mango yellow, blueberry violet and kiwi green on white; gold foil accents.
PRODUCT: rectangular fruit-filled biscuits in four flavours, each beside its fruit; image1 provides the strawberry variant's exact packaging and filling colour.
SCENE: white seamless backdrop, the fruit as the only props, saturated studio key light with a warm rim.

0–3s    HOOK — a single strawberry fills the frame in macro; the cut lands as it rotates to catch the key light.
3–9s    SHOWCASE — the four biscuits and their fruits in a strict geometric array, orderly and bright; cut to a close-up of each variant.
9–13s   CLIMAX — one biscuit snaps; the instant drops into slow motion, the fruit filling bursts open and crumbs fly; back to speed.
13–16s  VARIATION — full tempo again, the biscuits in a horizontal row.
16–20s  CLOSE — the words "One bite of crispness, a heart full of delight" enter word by word, one per quick cut; product freeze frame, centered; biscuits and fruit scatter outward.

CAMERA: handheld energy on the snap, smooth static holds on the arrays, shallow depth of field throughout.
AUDIO: studio room tone; SFX: the biscuit's snap, crumbs scattering, fruit skin catching the light; no dialogue. No music.
CONSISTENCY: packaging colours, biscuit shape and filling colour identical in every shot.
AVOID: dialogue, subtitles, on-screen text other than the slogan, watermarks, jitter, music, score, instrumental, percussion.

UGC variant

Five of the nine gallery ad prompts are creator-style clips (cases 23–27). This skill's description does not claim them, but the request "make it look like a real customer filmed it" lands here often enough that the slot differences are worth having. The boundary is what carries the clip: a creator holding, using and describing the product stays here; a scene carried by the performance and the exchange between people is seedance-short-drama, per this skill's description. Same skeleton as Template A; these slots change:

Writing a good ad-creative prompt

Where the product goes

Earlier versions of this skill said: product first, then camera, then mood. The gallery does not support that order. All nine ad and UGC prompts open with a style or format declaration — or, when a reference image is attached, with the asset's anchor sentence, as cases 15 and 24 do — and place the product second or third (case 14 runs Style: → Character: → Subject: → Setting:). There is no A/B evidence that either order renders the product better; there is simply no collected prompt that leads with the product. So:

• 15s and longer: header manifest — FORMAT → STYLE / COLOR PALETTE → CHARACTER (if any) → PRODUCT → SCENE → timeline → CAMERA → AUDIO → CONSISTENCY / AVOID. Template A above; the shared file's Prompt skeleton: header manifest, timeline, closing block.
• 10s and shorter: the vendor's formula order — subject and action first, then scene, style, camera, sound, in two to four sentences and no manifest. Template B above; the shared file's The vendor's own formula (ByteDance first-party).

1. The product, described precisely

Shape, material, colour, finish, and any text on it verbatim in quotes. Finish drives how light behaves on the surface (glass, brushed metal, matte plastic), so name it (case 14's Subject: lists five ingredients; case 17 names the accent colour and every accessory).

A tall clear glass perfume bottle with a gold cap, "NOCTURNE" embossed on the front, centered on a reflective black surface.

2. Camera as a real shot, with a speed

Concrete cinematography terms steer the model; "make it look cool" does not. The full vocabulary is in the shared file's Camera language; the moves ads reuse most are the 30-degree orbit, the slow push-in with shallow depth of field, the rack focus from background to product and the pull-back reveal (cases 13, 15, 19, 24, 26). Ads also carry a speed dimension the other scenarios rarely use — slow-motion insert, speed ramp, freeze, static hold, cut on the beat — in the shared file's Pacing (cases 12, 14, 15).

The camera orbits the bottle 30 degrees; soft rim light along the glass edge; shallow depth of field, the background gently blurred. The cap turn drops into slow motion for one second.

3. Brand tone, as an archetype plus a palette line

One archetype word steers grade and pacing more reliably than a paragraph of adjectives; a Color palette: line (case 14) pins the colours it implies.

• Luxury: slow movement, dark or moody background, warm gold highlights, 5s segments (cases 13, 15). ⚠️ slow movement is a speed, not a quantity — read it as "the movement is slow", never as "there is little movement". This line as written above is what a rejected flask ad turned into three separate sentences pinning the camera and the product still; see 7 below for the measurement and the three repairs.
• Playful/consumer: bright saturated colours, faster movement, cuts on the beat, 3s segments (cases 12, 14).
• Minimalist/tech: clean white or grey background, precise steady camera, cool light.

The negative list is where you name the tone you are not making — a Luxury prompt excludes cartoonish, oversaturated; a UGC prompt excludes cinematic color grading (case 25).

4. No dialogue, no music — but a sound block

Cinematic ad clips carry no speech (cases 12, 13, 15; case 14 allows one vocal ad-lib), so say no dialogue to steer away from voice generation. Do not stop there: write an AUDIO line, but write it as room tone plus two or three recorded sounds keyed to visible actions — the cap breaking its seal, the snap, a footfall in dust — and exclude music explicitly.

The music half of case 14's AUDIO line does not transfer to Ofox. A prompt asking for a cello note and a bell chime failed output_moderation_failed with the output audio may be related to copyright restrictions (job 1ff72400-0f30-4be1-a417-f52d43955d09, not billed); the same ad without music passed (7ae7d49e-7eb9-4165-9d95-09cd525d53ed). Score goes in afterwards, in an editor, the way it does on a real spot. Shape and phrases: the shared file's Dialogue and sound, and Asking for music can fail output moderation on copyright for the measurement.

A loudness written per shot is not honoured — write what each shot contains, not how loud it is. Measured on job 60fbea52-b14b-4796-80bf-03afe0aa4fa0, whose shot 2 read Sound: room tone, nothing else, very quiet and came back as the loudest sustained passage in the clip. Mean level per second: about -44.6 and -43.3 dB over the opening shot, then -27.8, -24.3 and -27.0 dB across shot 2, back to roughly -37 to -41 dB for the middle of the clip, and -47.7 then -54.4 dB in the last two seconds. Two thirds of that AUDIO block did work: the loudest transients land exactly where sound effects were written — peaks of -10.1 dB at 7-8s (the pipette lifting) and -11.9 dB at 10-11s (the drop) — and the close thinned to near silence as asked. What was ignored is the relative level between shots. So do not plan a clip whose effect depends on one shot being quieter than its neighbours; name each shot's sounds and leave the mix to an editor, the same way the music goes on afterwards.

A sound written as faint can be honoured as inaudible, while the placement instruction still works. Measured on cb6b7870, whose AUDIO line named three cues: the cap thread turning, the short pneumatic tick of the seal parting at 9s, and a faint hiss of steam at 11s. The first two landed clearly — the level rises off a -43 to -46 dB room-tone floor to -30.9 dB at 7.7s and to a -21.7 dB peak across 8.8-9.2s, the loudest sustained passage in the clip and exactly where the seal was written. The third produced nothing measurable: at 11.5s the level drops to -41.6 dB and stays near the floor for the whole PAYOFF, though the steam is plainly visible on screen. So timing a sound to a visible action works and an intensity adjective is not a volume control — do not hang a beat's effect on a sound you have described as faint. Second observation of the transient half, first of this nuance.

5. Text on screen: lock it, or design it out

Two measured facts pull in opposite directions, and both are usable — plus one refinement of the second, from the run that tested it hardest.

• Text you want — a brand name, a wordmark — is reliable if it exists on the attached first frame and the video only has to preserve it. Job 7ae7d49e closed on a legible wordmark in the frame's own typeface, because the label was approved on the still first. Rendering the same text from a description is the classic failure; read the label at full size before spending on the clip. Confirmed a second time on 60fbea52, where the label word AURA survived unaltered in every shot it appeared in and the same word rendered correctly as an end card in an empty patch of wall. What was written for it: the reference frame declared the only authority on how this product looks, the letterforms and the letter spacing named as invariants, and an explicit ban — do not regenerate, redraw, restyle, re-letter, translate or reword the label, and no second word, slogan, barcode or volume marking added to it.
• Text you don't want is best removed by the set, not by the negative list. Both ads in this batch produced zero invented signage, and the reason is that a near-black studio and an empty bright studio contain no surface lettering could sit on. Compare a job on a neon street whose AVOID list named signs, posters and characters in any language and still returned sign-like shapes (41f87ac7). Detail: Unwanted text is designed out of the set, not forbidden in the list in the shared file.
• Where the set cannot be emptied, forbid the objects rather than the text. The two studio ads are the easy case: nothing in a near-black or an empty bright studio can grow signage, so the rule was never really tested by them. Job 60fbea52 is the hard case and the strongest data point in this repo — a desk, where book spines, notebooks and loose paper are the classic failure mode, and a brief that wanted a real brand word legible in the same frame. It came

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