Norton Neo — The Process File
A :30 Neo teaser made without a camera, four hours from brainstorm to delivered cut
Every board, take and reject behind the Neo teaser, in order: brand captured off the live site, eight beats on a sticky note, thirteen boards drawn down to eight, twelve takes, four cuts, four sound passes.
If a beat couldn't be drawn as a single frame, it wasn't a beat — so every clip starts and lands on a board that was locked before anything moved.
Seven stages, brand capture to delivered cut.
Neo — Browse Smarter, a :30 teaser for Norton's Neo browser. Every artifact below comes from the real project directory: timestamps, file sizes, alternates and rejects included.
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Sourced — brand captured from the live site
No deck, no guidelines PDF. The identity was captured from Norton's live Neo site itself: palette, type, voice, and the teal glow the whole film runs on. Three screenshots became the entire art bible.
capture · what it looks like 
study · what it does 
study · how it speaks Distilled into a reference kit: teal glow on black. Every teal in the film traces back to this capture session.
ref · the wordmark 
ref · the launch frame -
Written — the script fit on a sticky note
Thirty seconds, eight beats, one voiceover. The logline: the old way of browsing is noise — tabs, clutter, glass about to break. Neo arrives as clarity: ask, get answers, move fast, stay private. Written as a shot list first, so every beat had to survive as a single still before it earned motion.
beat board 01 The desk — browsing as chaos 02 The break — the old window shatters 03 The arrival — Neo materializes 04 Ask — search that answers 05 The user — AI at the elbow 06 Shield — speed and privacy 07 The network — everything connected 08 Endcard — Browse Smarter Art direction, in one line: desk noir into neon clarity. Practical desks and hands up front, pure signal-space by the end. Cold, teal-keyed grade; slow push-ins only.
early ref · the look -
Drawn — thirteen boards, eight survived
Generated stills stood in for a shoot. The first exploration pass was thrown out; the final boards locked in ninety minutes. Image models invent lettering, and this film sells a logotype, so every board with type in it was redrawn until the type was correct.
first pass · too literal · shelved 
raw output · as it came back · kept for mood only 
scene 05 · wrong wordmark · rejected, redrawn as board 05 The eight locked boards, scenes 01–08.
01 · the desk · overhead, hands, coffee, a screen full of noise 02 · the break · the old window shatters in a teal beam 
03 · the arrival · a glass window rebuilds itself from wireframe 
04 · ask · a search bar that answers instead of listing 
05 · the user · the board that had to be redrawn 
06 · shield · speed tunnel around a privacy hex 
07 · the network · one figure, everything connected 
08 · endcard · drawn three times before the glow sat right -
Animated — image-to-video between locked boards
Image-to-video, board to board. Each clip starts on one locked board and lands on the next; the motion in the middle is generated. Twelve takes were rendered. Because every transition is a morph between two locked frames, an eight-board film cuts like a one-shot.
01 · open · hold on the chaos 1 → 2 · take a · keep 1 → 2 · take b · break lands off-beat · reject 6 → 7 · late take · tunnel into network The remaining takes, board to board.
2 → 3 · shatter into wireframe 3 → 4 · window into answer bar 4 → 5 · to the user · shipped 4 → 5 · alt · logo smears · reject 5 → 6 · room into speed tunnel 7 → 8 · network into endcard -
Assembled — conformed and finished in After Effects
The generated takes went into a real comp: conform to :30, beat-cut retimes, screen paint-outs over six fill-plate folders, and the logo type rebuilt as a live layer so it can never misspell itself again. Four cuts in three hours and fifteen minutes. The generators supplied footage; judgment and timing came out of the comp.
cut file verdict v01 7.4 MB · 1024 × 576 · 35.5 s five seconds over, pacing sags · re-cut v02 163.6 MB full-res check v03 57.7 MB picture lock, no audio v04 55.7 MB final, mixed · ships The first assembly, and a select pulled off the picture lock.
v01 · first assembly select · clip 3 of 3 -
Scored — four SFX passes, then licensed music
Picture lock first, then sound. Four SFX preview passes were rendered against the silent v03, then the voiceover and the score went under: “Level” by The Grey Room, licensed from Density & Time. The beat grid set the final cut points, not the other way around.
sfx pass over the picture lock · unmute to hear -
Shipped — thirty seconds, no camera anywhere
Four hours, brainstorm to delivered cut: script, boards, animation, edit and mix — one sitting, one machine. Sound on.
Neo — Browse Smarter · v04 · unmute for the mix
Tools used
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