--- title: Genre Selection description: Full genre palette for brand video — formal characteristics, appropriate contexts, and compositional implications for each genre. type: reference order: 10 --- # Genre Selection Genre is the formal language a video speaks. It determines editing tempo, the role of music, whether narration is appropriate, and what kind of visual authority the video claims. Choosing the wrong genre produces a video that is technically correct but tonally alien — a product that nobody asked for. Genre must be derived, not assumed. See Phase 0.5 in the main skill for the derivation process. --- ## Genres for Rational-Appeal Brands Used when the audience is evaluating: developers, technical buyers, B2B decision-makers, financial consumers. ### Feature Demonstration The product is the protagonist. The video is a structured tour of capability. - **Editing**: Medium tempo, deliberate. Each cut serves a new capability. - **Music**: Neutral — present but not emotive. The product should be audible over the music metaphorically. - **Narration**: Usually appropriate. Voiceover or text captions that name what is being shown. - **Visual authority**: Screen recordings, UI interactions, real product behavior. Illustration only for abstract mechanics (data flow, request handling). - **Wrong for**: Any brand whose audience chose it for aesthetic or identity reasons. A developer tool used by indie hackers for its personality should not produce a clinical feature tour. ### Problem-Solution Two states — before and after. The product is the bridge. - **Editing**: Contrast-driven. Before scenes feel heavier, slower, more cluttered. After scenes feel lighter. - **Music**: Can shift register between before/after to reinforce the contrast. - **Visual metaphor**: The "before" state must be specific to this product's actual users, not a generic "chaos" stock image. What does friction look like for a developer deploying? For a designer sharing files? Name it specifically. - **Wrong for**: Brands that don't have a clear before/after (lifestyle, identity brands). Forcing a problem-solution structure onto a brand whose appeal is aspirational produces an awkward, unearned arc. ### Proof / Evidence The product's claims are shown, not stated. Data, metrics, real usage patterns. - **Editing**: Methodical. Each scene introduces one piece of evidence. - **Music**: Minimal. Evidence speaks for itself. - **Use when**: The brand's differentiation is empirical (performance, scale, reliability) and the audience needs to be convinced, not just felt-at. --- ## Genres for Sensory/Aesthetic-Appeal Brands Used when the audience is seeking experience: consumer beauty, fashion, food, fragrance, interiors, premium goods. ### Mood Film The video is a sensory argument. It does not explain; it demonstrates a feeling. - **Editing**: Driven by music tempo and texture. Cuts land on beats or against them deliberately. - **Music**: Primary carrier of meaning. Music choice is a brand decision, not a background choice. - **Narration**: Rarely appropriate. If text appears, it should feel like poetry, not copy. - **Visual language**: Texture, light, skin, material, detail. Close-ups over establishing shots. Movement over stasis. - **Duration**: Mood films work at 15–30s. Longer requires a narrative arc to sustain. - **Wrong for**: Any brand where the audience needs to understand something before they can feel something. ### Product Poetry The object in motion — no people, no narration, pure product behavior. - **Use when**: The product is visually distinct, the design is the message, and the audience is already familiar with the category. - **Motion approach**: The product's own material logic should generate the motion — a skincare product's texture suggests slow pour; a streetwear drop suggests quick reveal; a precision tool suggests deliberate movement. - **Wrong for**: Products that look generic (the design is not differentiated) or products the audience hasn't heard of (no context). ### Texture Reel A sequence of material close-ups — fabric, skin, food, surface — that builds a sensory argument for quality or feeling. - **Editing**: Fast or slow depending on energy. Often music-forward. - **Use when**: The brand's truth is material (what it's made of, what it feels like) and the website/photography already reflects this. - **Compositional note**: Each shot should isolate one texture. The sequence builds an argument through accumulation. --- ## Genres for Community/Identity-Appeal Brands Used when the audience is seeking belonging: lifestyle brands, streetwear, music, fitness culture, subcultures. ### Community Portrait / Faces Film Real people as the brand's primary visual material. The brand is the audience. - **Editing**: Humanistic tempo — long enough on each face to register the person, not just their demographic. - **Music**: Should feel like something the community would actually listen to, not background licensing. - **Visual authority**: The faces must be real or feel real. Polished model shots break the community contract. - **Narration**: Rarely appropriate. Let faces speak. - **Wrong for**: Any brand that doesn't already have a community — this genre requires authentic material. Fabricating it reads as hollow. ### Cultural Artifact The video looks like something the community produces, not something the brand made about the community. - **Editing tempo**: Platform-native. What does content on this platform look like at its best? Match that register. - **Visual quality**: Often deliberately lo-fi, handheld, grain-forward. Polish is a liability for authenticity-first brands. - **Music**: Culturally specific. The wrong track is a category error. - **Wrong for**: Premium brands where polish is part of the product promise. ### Aspirational / Dream State The audience in the world they want to inhabit — the product is how they get there, but it's not the subject. - **Use for**: Lifestyle brands where the aspiration is the product. The brand sells a version of a life, not a physical object. - **Editing**: Slow, expansive. Room to imagine. - **Visual language**: Space, light, movement. The aspiration has physical textures — cold water, warm light, open sky. - **Wrong for**: Products that require explanation before aspiration. If the audience doesn't know what the product does, aspiration won't land. --- ## Hybrid Genres ### Sensory → Rational (Earned Evidence) Lead with mood or sensation; resolve with a fact that gives the feeling a foundation. - **Use when**: The brand has both sensory appeal and a rational claim worth making (premium food brand with real sourcing; skincare brand with actual clinical data) - **Structure**: Establish feeling → reveal the reason behind it - **Wrong version**: The sensory section is disconnected from the rational section. They must feel like the same argument. ### Rational → Sensory (Made Real) Lead with a technical truth; show what it feels like in practice. - **Use when**: The brand's differentiation is structural but the audience experiences it emotionally (a payments API whose reliability means a founder's business doesn't go down on Black Friday) - **Structure**: State the fact → show the human consequence - **Wrong version**: The emotional section is generic human-interest footage unconnected to the specific technical truth. --- ## Genre Fitness Checks Before committing to a genre, run these: **1. Audience test**: Would the target audience, encountering this genre cold, feel it was made for them? Or would it feel like it was made for someone else? **2. Truth test**: Does the chosen genre allow the Phase 0 brand truth to be expressed? A truth about invisibility fits a mood film. A truth about a specific API design does not. **3. Platform test**: Does the genre work at the required duration and aspect ratio? A mood film at 60s on LinkedIn is wrong. A community portrait at 15s on TikTok might work. **4. Anti-pattern check**: Is the chosen genre the default for this product category? If so, what would a competitor produce? If the answer is "the same thing," the genre is wrong unless there is a strong reason to own the default.