Every sample is 15 seconds because only about 10 of them are content

When we rebuilt our sample films, we fixed all 11 of them at 15 seconds. What we had before was a single 20-second film, so this was a deliberate cut. Here is how we decided on the length.

That 20-second film walked through the 5 scenes of the storyboard in our spec, one after another, which is 4 seconds a scene. Looking at the finished thing, every scene moved on while it was still mid-explanation. The length was not too short; we had put too much in.

So when we rebuilt them, the length was the first thing we decided. Split 15 seconds up: showing who the brand is at the open takes 2 seconds, and leaving one promise on screen at the close — a price, a date, the next thing to do — takes 2 to 3 seconds. That leaves about 10 seconds. Whatever fits in those 10 seconds is everything the film gets to say.

What fits in 10 seconds is 1 action, or 1 promise. So we wrote exactly that into the packages. Starter (planned, 15 seconds) shows 1 action; Standard and Launch (planned, 30 seconds) show up to 3; the monthly plan is 4 Starter-sized 15-second films a month. Doubling the length does not take us to 4 actions, because a 30-second film still spends the same amount on its open and its close.

The beat matters too. The sample built as a music-festival announcement is cut to a 128 BPM beat. At that tempo 15 seconds is exactly 32 beats, which is 8 bars in 4/4. When the cuts land with the music, a short film does not feel rushed. Thinking in bars rather than in seconds turns out to be easier to build against.

The shorter a film gets, the more the first second costs. We work on the assumption that a viewer decides whether this has anything to do with them in the first 1 to 2 seconds, so in each film we pushed the strongest thing about that industry towards the front. In the property film that is the line drawing rising into a building; in the fintech one it is the numbers turning. That is our judgement, not something we measured.

Fixing the length created a problem of its own. Played end to end, 11 films run 165 seconds — 2 minutes 45. Nobody who visits watches all of that. So the showreel moves on to the next film when one ends, and the film tabs let a visitor jump to whichever one they want. The 15 seconds is a decision about a single film; the page as a whole is built on the assumption that people leave during the second one.

We also built something shorter still. Mini Motion (planned, Rp990,000, excluding PPN) is 5 to 8 seconds. What fits in that is a logo, 1 line of text and 1 picture. That is why we wrote that its revisions cover typos only, and that bespoke direction or structural changes are not included. Like the price, the shape of it is provisional — something to test whether the demand is there. The delivery time, and whether the source code is included, are decided after we have measured the work.

Launch Pack comes with 3 cuts of 6 to 10 seconds for social media. Those are not the 15-second film trimmed down; they are built separately. If 15 seconds is already cut to the bone, getting to 6 means breaking the meaning wherever you cut. When a short version is needed, it is cheaper to build it as a short version from the start.

Let me be straight about this. We do not have a number that says 15 seconds is right. We have taken no orders and run no client projects yet, so we have never measured for ourselves which length gets watched to the end. Borrowing a figure from someone else's survey and calling it our reason would be easy, but I do not want to write a number I have not measured as if it were our evidence. The 15 seconds we have now is a design decision made while building.

Here is what we do intend to measure. For the first 90 days after we open, we will record, on real projects, which length gets chosen and where the finished film gets stopped. If 15 seconds turns out to be too long we will shorten it; if it is not enough we will change the standard length. We treat it like the planned prices — the goal is not to defend the first number we published.

Finally, where things stand. KAZENA Motion is not taking orders, quotes or payments yet. We are in the middle of adding the video-production KBLI — the business-activity licence — to the company, and until it comes through the page is an introduction only. Every price shown is a planned price. If you would like to be told when we start taking work, you can ask from the page. On licensing I am only writing about our own paperwork; I am not a lawyer or a tax accountant, so please confirm your own company's registrations with a professional.