Design System

Video design

Documentary register, never commercial.

Default register: documentary, not commercial. FDT video should read like a production company shooting a defense contractor, not an ad agency shooting a product.

Live action

Production register for everything shot with a camera - capability films, recruiting, interviews, event coverage.

Register

Documentary-grade. Handheld grounded, not Steadicam glide. Available light or motivated lighting - never studio-bright. Subjects are operators doing work, not models posing with hardware.

Color grade

Muted, cool-leaning, navy lift in the shadows. Blacks crushed slightly - defense-tech footage does not publish washed out. No orange-and-teal commercial grade. LUT derived from the navy-900 → fog-100 palette: midtones desaturate toward steel, highlights hold at fog-100 and don’t blow to white. Reference: the grade on Andor sits closer to FDT’s register than The Mandalorian.

Framing

Subjects off-center. Interview framing: medium close-up, shallow depth of field, eyeline off-frame at an unseen interviewer - never straight to camera. Action framing: wider, more space around subjects, let the environment do work. Hardware: matter-of-fact, not reverent. The iPad is a tool, not a relic.

Motion

Camera moves slowly when it moves at all. Push-in, slow pan, static lockoff. No whip-pans, no fake-handheld shakycam, no drone orbits around people, no sunset flyovers.

Framerate

24fps for cinematic launch films, 30fps for demos and recruiting. 60fps only for slow-motion technical reference footage (rare - slow-mo is for documentation, not emotional hero shots).

Aspect ratios

  • 16:9 (1920×1080 or 3840×2160) - primary
  • 2.39:1 - cinematic launch films, conference backdrops
  • 9:16 - social clips, quantity-limited
  • 1:1 - specific conference displays and embedded web hero loops

Audio

Synced environment audio as baseline. Scoring is minimal and ambient, never Hans Zimmer horn-drops. Voice-over (when used) is conversational - not stentorian “in a world where…” trailer register. No music sting at the product reveal. Full audio register - UI sound, alerts, music, VO, sonic branding - lives in Sound & audio design.

Anti-patterns - live action

  • Slow motion of bullets, casings, or explosions (there are no explosions in FDT)
  • Drone orbit shots of people (drone over terrain is fine for establishing)
  • Sunset / golden-hour hero lighting on operators
  • Lens flare as a decorative element
  • Bokeh product shots with rotating hardware
  • Emotional score swells at product reveals
  • Stock footage of soldiers running
  • Slow-zoom on teary faces
  • “Hero of industry” centered-subject testimonial framing
  • Anything shot in a hangar with jets in the background unless jets are the actual topic

Schematic / motion graphics

UI-in-motion, wireframe sequences, data overlays, and diegetic schematics.

Register

Use the actual product UI whenever possible. When UI isn’t ready, render geometric wireframes that match the real UI language - map-first layouts, translucent navy panels, Barlow Condensed wordmarks, mono data readouts. Schematic sequences are diegetic: they look like a real system in use, not a stylized recreation.

Palette

Identical to the digital system. Navy canvas, electric-blue accent, semantic colors for friendly/hostile/neutral/caution/unknown. No “video-only” palette.

Type

Same three faces. Wordmark L/S for identifiers, Display rung for explanatory titles, JetBrains Mono for coordinates, track IDs, timestamps.

Motion

Follows the UI motion principles. Acquire brackets snap in at 200ms. Radar sweeps at 2s linear loop. Panels slide and crossfade, not wipe. Reduced-motion variants produced for any embedded web use.

Camera on schematic

Push-in or slow orbit over a map extent. Never shake, never whip-pan, never “data download” effects.

Textures

Grid overlay at 4%, ambient radar sweep on hero surfaces, ghost tracks (UNK-003, TRK-117) as atmospheric elements. Same rules as the marketing site.

Callouts

Tactical callout pattern is the default: 1px electric-blue leader line, bracket terminal [ ] around the target, Micro uppercase label. Acquire animation: brackets snap inward, --fdt-glow-md blooms and settles to --fdt-glow-sm.

Transitions

Cut or crossfade. No wipe, no 3D-rotate, no page-turn, no “unfolding map” transitions.

Anti-patterns - schematic

  • Sci-fi HUD aesthetics (Iron Man, Minority Report, Avengers dashboards)
  • Neon wireframes, Tron-grid floors, glowing isometric architecture
  • Glitch, scan-line, or “data-corrupting” effects
  • Holographic projections (chromatic aberration on UI, shimmer, depth-of-field blur on live text)
  • Floating 3D UI elements unless the UI is actually 3D in the product
  • Matrix-style digital rain or binary streams
  • Retro-futurism (Fallout / Vault-Tec / CRT / Vector-monitor aesthetic)
  • Typewriter text animations below real typing speed
  • Stock motion-graphics templates

Mixed sequences (live action + schematic)

The most common mixed format - an operator using GRIDWATCH on a real iPad, with the on-screen UI comped in as a clean schematic render. Rules:

  • The schematic overlay tracks the device with motion-matched precision. No wobble, no mis-reg, no parallax slip.
  • Screen brightness matches the ambient lighting of the live-action shot. A daylight field shot doesn’t get a full-brightness screen; a dim operations center does.
  • The overlay uses the product’s actual UI, not a “demo UI.” If it’s GRIDWATCH, it’s the real GRIDWATCH tactical display, not a stylized re-skin.

Sora and AI-generated video

Sora and equivalent AI video tools are sanctioned for storyboarding - cinematic intro concepts, shot-by-shot mood references, scene-blocking experiments. Final delivery for any customer-facing film is real production footage, not AI-generated material. Internal use, early concept work, and one-off social clips are acceptable AI territory.

When AI video appears in a published FDT deliverable, the training-construct disclaimer applies the same way it does to synthetic scenario content.

Lower thirds and on-screen text

Lower third

navy-800 @ 85% translucent bar, 1px top border in steel-500, spanning the lower sixth of frame. Name in H2 (fog-100), role in Micro (steel-300). Optional 2px electric-blue accent stripe at the left edge.

Titles

Display L or M in Inter 800, title case. Eyebrow above in Micro uppercase electric-blue. Always set against translucent navy, never free-floating over live action.

Data readouts

JetBrains Mono, tabular. Coordinates, track IDs, timestamps. Monochrome fog-100 or accent-colored if indicating a live state.

Title cards

Full-bleed navy-900 with grid overlay at 4%. Wordmark hero treatment centered or bottom-centered. No animated logo reveals - if the wordmark animates, it’s the acquire pattern (brackets snap in, glow settles) and nothing else.

Delivery specs

  • Color space: Rec. 709 for web/broadcast, P3 D65 for cinematic.
  • Codec: ProRes 422 HQ for master, H.265 for delivery.
  • Audio: 48kHz 24-bit, −23 LUFS for broadcast, −14 LUFS for social.
  • Subtitles: SRT or VTT, forced-on by default for social clips. Fonts follow the system.