Format

The shape and container a piece is made for: a vertical screen, a spread, a sixty-second cut. Design the work for its format, or watch the format redesign it.

Format is the first collaborator on any piece: it sets the frame's shape, the viewer's distance, the sound's chances and the length attention will grant. A story built for one format and poured into another does not shrink; it breaks along invisible lines.

Our practice is to name the destination before the first frame is made. A vertical cut is not the horizontal one turned; it is re-directed, re-blocked, re-paced. When budget forces one master to serve many formats, we design the safe area first, so the crop is a choice made early rather than damage discovered late.