The Diary Of A CEO —

Opens not on the guest but on the host in medium, a slightly wider and warmer frame than the rest, with a three-line yellow-and-white caption stacked up from the bottom third asking the hook question. Starting on the questioner frames the whole montage as an interrogation and lets the first cut to the guest read as an answer — the yellow type also flags 'this is the host' so viewers never get lost when the montage jumps around.

Trailer pace: 46 shot changes in 90 seconds, median 1.45s between cuts. Sentences are chopped so a caption phrase finishes and the picture changes on the punctuation. Rhythm is mostly A-to-B punch-ins on the same subject (medium then close) with a cutaway every third or fourth beat; the two graphic-only sequences (robot, map) run slightly longer to give the ear a rest. No dissolves except when archive is laid over the presenter as a soft double-exposure.

Burned-in, word-by-word animated captions in a heavy condensed sans, all-caps for stressed words and a lowercase or italic serif-ish weight for the connective phrases, so type size and case carry the emphasis. Strict colour code: yellow with black outline for the host, white for neutral guest speech, red for threat words, green for upside words. Captions are stacked in two or three ragged lines and parked in whichever third of the frame is empty — bottom-centre, mid-right, mid-left — never in a fixed lower third. Soft outer glow plus drop shadow so they hold over dark backgrounds. Grade is cool, desaturated, crushed blacks with a heavy vignette; 75% of frames read as dark, which is what makes the coloured type pop.

1. Build the set dark before you shoot: grey walls, a shelf or bookcase 2–3m behind the chairs, two or three warm practicals in frame, and no ambient spill. The grade cannot rescue a bright room.
2. Light each chair with a single soft source at 45 degrees, keep the background 2–3 stops down, and negative-fill the shadow side so faces are modelled rather than flat.
3. Frame every interview shot with a deliberate empty third — subject left of centre, air camera-right — and shoot each speaker in both medium and tight close so you have punch-ins for free.
4. Run a third camera loose for hands-on-table and over-shoulder profiles; these are what break up an otherwise repetitive two-angle edit.
5. Record the full interview, then build the first 90 seconds last: pull 15–25 of the strongest short fragments from anywhere in the episode and lay them out as a trailer, not chronologically.
6. Start on the host asking the hook question, then cut to the guest — the question-answer whip is the hook.
7. Cut so no fragment runs longer than about two seconds; every third or fourth beat, cut away to archive or a graphic so the montage never feels like talking heads.
8. Auto-transcribe, then hand-style: all-caps heavy weight for the stressed word, smaller mixed-case for the connectives, and place each block in the empty part of frame rather than a fixed position.
9. Set a caption colour rule and stick to it: one colour for the host, white for neutral, red for negative stakes, green for positive. Add outline plus glow so type survives the dark grade.
10. Treat every cutaway to match the set: scanlines, barrel warp, heavy vignette, desaturate. Never cut to clean bright stock.
11. Grade cool and desaturated with crushed blacks and a vignette on every shot including the graphics, so type and flag-colours are the only saturated elements.
12. Drop a mid-montage billboard card (book covers, credential line) around the 30s mark as a breath before the second half.

• Two cameras minimum (one per chair) plus a third loose/handheld for the gesture and profile angles, all shooting the same log profile
• Fast primes around 35mm and 85mm at wide aperture for the blown-out backgrounds
• Low-key lighting: one large soft key per chair, dark grey/textured walls, practical wall sconces and shelf lamps in shot as background interest
• Negative fill / black flags either side to keep the set genuinely dark
• Lavaliers plus a boom, recorded to separate tracks
• Auto-transcription captioning (Premiere Pro captions or CapCut/Descript) then manual restyling word by word
• After Effects or similar for the CRT/scanline/vignette treatment and the 3D robot and map inserts
• Archive footage licence or stock library