The Diary Of A CEO —

No title, no host, no context: it opens mid-sentence on a medium two-thirds framing of the guest, left of centre, gesturing with both hands, with a huge white caption sitting low across his chest and a keyword ('AI') blown up in heavier type. The frame is already almost black except for the modelled face and the orange tie, so the eye lands on the face and the word simultaneously and the viewer is inside a thought before deciding whether to watch.

Fast for an interview: 28 cuts in 90 seconds, median 2.42s between cuts. Cuts land on phrase ends, so almost every caption gets its own angle. Faces are on screen 81% of the time; the roughly 20% no-face frames are the graphics stings and the tabletop insert, clustered around the 27s name card and the 48s prop beat, which gives the montage two breathing points.

Heavy all-caps sans (Anton/Druk-like condensed bold) in white with a slight drop shadow so it holds over dark backgrounds, set as two or three ragged lines low-to-middle of frame on the side away from the face. One keyword per card is scaled up 2-3x and sometimes italicised or coloured (a pale pink/salmon accent on 'CAN'T'); occasional lowercase mixed lines vary the texture. Colour treatment is a crushed, near-monochrome grade: 94% of frames read dark, blacks are deep, walls desaturated grey-green, with the orange tie and the yellow neon graphics as the only saturated hits. Motion graphics are glowing thin-line vector networks and grids in acid yellow on black, animated with drift and parallax.

1. Build the set: dark grey textured wall, one warm practical sconce, pale round table, and keep everything else black. Sit the subject so the wall is 2-3m behind them.
2. Light with one large soft key from front-left plus a subtle rim; expose for the face and let the room fall two to three stops under so the frame reads dark.
3. Lock three cameras: home medium (subject on the left third), reverse profile, and a close single. Record continuously so any moment can be cut from three angles.
4. Shoot the whole conversation, then plant a prop moment on the table and grab a separate handheld or low tripod insert of hands and props with a long lens.
5. In the edit, pull 8-12 of the strongest short lines from anywhere in the interview and lay them end to end as a cold open, ignoring chronology.
6. Change camera angle on almost every line so the cut rate sits near 2.5s; vary medium and close so the tightest framings carry the loudest lines.
7. Grade to a crushed near-mono look: lift contrast, drop saturation on greys, protect one accent colour (a tie, a mug, the graphics).
8. Add captions from a saved template: all-caps condensed bold, white with soft shadow, two or three lines, and scale one keyword per card 2-3x, occasionally recolouring it.
9. Place captions on the empty side of the frame, never over the mouth or eyes, and let them enter on the cut rather than word-by-word karaoke.
10. Drop a 2-3s neon name-card sting at around 25-30s to close the cold open, and one abstract graphic insert later to break the face run.
11. Cut back to a clean medium after each graphic so the viewer relocates the room.

• 2-3 matched cameras (e.g. FX3 / C70 / A7S III) locked on tripods at medium, profile and close sizes
• Fast primes, 35mm and 85mm equivalents, shot wide open for shallow background falloff
• Key light in a large softbox high and slightly front-left, feathered so the background goes dark
• One practical wall sconce and a low-level backwall wash to separate the shoulder from black
• Flags or black cloth to kill spill and keep the room crushed
• Lavalier plus a boom or shotgun per subject, recorded to a multitrack recorder with timecode
• Round pale table and a metal mug/props for the tabletop insert
• Edit with auto-captions rebuilt manually in After Effects or Premiere with a saved caption template
• Reusable animated name-card and abstract graphic templates in After Effects