Messages to customers and partners: the opening, the year, and the party

A message to customers is judged in the first three seconds. Either it is clearly about something they care about, or it is closed. That is the constraint all four are built around, and it is also why none of them needs much material.

A shop that is opening

A new shop, or one that has been rebuilt and is opening again. The owner has a website, a date and nobody to make a film. On a plan, Nine reads the shop's own colours and typeface from its website, so the film looks like the shop rather than like a template, and the address should come last, on its own, so it can be forwarded.

A menu that changes

For the screen in the room or for social media. Written as a script, each dish is its own paragraph and becomes its own scene, with the price beside the name. The dishes are words rather than photographs, so a menu change is a new line in the script rather than a new photo shoot.

The year, summarised

January, from a small business or an association, thanking people and showing what was done. Three numbers from the year, one scene each, in the company's own colours. If a number is left out, the film moves on: a number somebody invented would be worse than a number that is missing.

A festival or a market

An organiser, six weeks out, with a programme that is not quite final. Written as a script, one item per paragraph, each item arrives as the previous one leaves, so the order is clear even when the list is long. A programme that changes is a new line in the script and a new film.

What keeps these honest

• Prices come from you. A film that shows a price shows the one you wrote.
• No customer is named, and no example here is a real one.
• The numbers are yours. Where the film shows a number, it is the number you wrote.

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.