A greeting for the holidays after Christmas

Once a greeting is kept as a script, the second occasion costs a new line rather than a second production. That is the whole argument for writing greetings down once, and these three are where it shows.

New Year

This one belongs to the week between Christmas and the new year, which is a week when a lot of people change their mind about what to send. A greeting that carries a year can be made on the thirtieth and sent on the thirty first, and next year it is one number changed. Both families and companies send it, and it is the one greeting where a company can be slightly less formal than it was three weeks earlier.

Easter

The same people as the Christmas card, three months later. One Easter film works for a family and for a business, because what changes between them is the greeting rather than the structure. It is a good example of a greeting that does not need a new idea, only new words.

The seventeenth of May

A national day greeting from a family, a school class or a company. It is the one occasion in this group where the temptation is to fill the screen with flags. One accent colour does more than a screen full of borrowed shapes, and the day is marked without turning into a parade.

What all three have in common

• Quiet by default. A greeting is opened in a message, often in public, and a film that starts talking is a film that gets closed. If you add music in the chamber, keep it calm.
• Short by design. Under half a minute, because the alternative is a card nobody finishes.
• One photograph or one logo, at most. More than that stops being a greeting and becomes a summary of the year.
• Words you wrote. Nothing in the film should be a sentence somebody else invented for you.

Making it in Nine

A film of your own comes with a plan; the free part of Nine lets you look and try, and never makes a film. On a plan there are several ways in. Start from a template puts your own words into one of Nine's templates, a name and one line, a card that holds still, or three points, and adds nothing to them. A script takes the words you already have, in your order, and each paragraph becomes a scene. Just an idea needs only a sentence. A voice recording makes the film run as long as you talk, with your voice as its sound. On the Film plan a film is up to 30 seconds.

The film is drawn, so it needs no photograph. If it should show your own photographs, the plans with a library, Film + Transparent and above, make a film from your own pictures, placed as they are and never retouched. Music is added afterwards in the chamber, calm or with a beat, and goes into the video file when you save. Nine sends nothing to anybody: you get the video file, or a private review link, and you decide who sees it.