Hooks and the first seconds
On a feed, the decision to keep watching gets made in about a second and a half, which we treat as a working figure rather than a law.
The short version
Is this for you? For the opener that promises nothing and loses the viewer at second two. Not if your viewers arrive having already chosen to watch; a hook earns the most on a feed, where nobody has agreed to anything yet.
What leaves your plate. The window stated and moved per platform, the logo kept out of the first second where it earns nothing, and hooks shot on purpose then chosen on what retention did, not on what felt punchy in the suite.
What starts working. Openings that were filmed to be openings and picked on the retention curve, rather than the one that sounded good at eleven at night in the edit.
The smallest way in. A free audit: three fields, and a written reading back, usually within about three working days. It commits you to nothing.
What to read next. The five levels to see where this fits, or the casework to see it done.
How long you actually have, and what fits inside it
The window is stated, and it moves per platform
About a second and a half where the scrolling reflex is strongest: Instagram, TikTok, Shorts. Two seconds on one brand's short cuts, written into its standards as a figure instead of an instinct. Thirty seconds of retention-shaped opening on a long lesson, after which the job changes to quality. Naming the number is what turns an opinion about pace into something two people can usefully disagree about.
A logo in the first second is a hook spent on yourself
On short cuts built around a strong opening, the brand mark is kept out of the front of the video entirely. It is the commonest way a good hook gets wasted: somebody who stopped for the thing in the frame is handed a second and a half of an identity instead, and an identity is exactly what they were scrolling past a moment earlier.
The presenter is not always the best first frame
On one channel the rule is explicit: keep the host out of the opening and lead on the food. A face is a strong first frame when the promise is the person and a weaker one when the promise is the thing being made. That is a judgement about what the audience came for, and it gets made per channel and never per taste.
Hooks are shot on purpose, then chosen on retention
Several openings come off the shoot and are sorted at ingest into main video, compilation, short cut and alternative, each marked in the project. Alternatives get built for the same piece so a real comparison exists. Deciding between them is done on what the retention curve actually did, which is a duller method than taste and a considerably more reliable one. Read more: A/B testing →
What the opening seconds are made of
Visual and audible, designed together
A hook is a picture and a sound. The sound does as much of the work as the frame, and the two get designed at the same moment, with neither laid over the other afterwards. Where a format is running hot, the reference comes from a maintained archive of them, and not from whatever happened to be on the feed that morning.
The shots at the front are shorter than the ones behind them
Opening beauty shots run to about two seconds. Introductory hero b-roll averages nearer four. Those are starting points from two different channels, and they differ because one of them opens on appetite and the other opens on a promise about what is going to be made.
Stopping the scroll and holding the viewer are two problems
Getting somebody to pause is a separate job from keeping them, and the second is where most short videos actually lose. Once the opening has done its work, the editing style shifts to whatever the brand's identity supports: pace, changes of format, captions, effects, and nothing that the identity cannot carry.
About a second and a half, on the platforms where the thumb is already moving. Everything in the opening either earns that or spends it.
We treat that figure as a working number, not a law, and shoot the opening to beat it rather than guessing at it.
What changes for you
Openings that were filmed to be openings, chosen on what the retention curve did rather than on what felt punchy at eleven o'clock in the edit suite.
Related: Shorts and Reels · Vertical video editing · Long-form editing · Attention and eye path
Send the channel and we will read the edits themselves: pacing, cuts, consistency across recent videos. The audit names what post-production would change first, in writing, before anything is committed.
Request your free audit.
Three fields, and a written reading back: a fit snapshot, two or three prioritised opportunities, and a recommended next step.
A person reads the channel and writes the audit by hand: a considered read typically takes three working days. That is the usual shape, not a promised turnaround. We use these details only to reply to you: no lists, no lurking.
What you will get
A fit snapshot: where your channel stands, and whether we are a match.
Two to three opportunities: specific, prioritised, yours to keep.
A recommended next step, even if that step is not us.
The audit is free and commits you to nothing: nobody follows up with a call you did not ask for.
The casework shows all of this done.
The case studies are the same work with the numbers, the sources and the dates attached.
See the casework →