the short version
- Dollar Shave Club puts the founder in the warehouse and makes the joke do the pricing argument.
- Dropbox’s demo does the scary thing on screen: the file is on the other computer, then it isn’t.
- Slack’s film shows a specific mess, then one spoken turn, then the product doing those jobs.
- Arc’s Act II film gives the browser a real errand, then shows the old way failing at the same errand.
In this post5 sections
A launch film has one job: a stranger should be able to say what the product does, and why they’d bother, after a single watch with the sound down. The four below are real films from companies you can look up. Each link is the film, or a piece of writing from someone who was there. There are no view counts in this post. We didn’t measure them, and a number we can’t stand behind doesn’t change the cut.
How to build the 45 seconds, once you know which job yours is doing, is the launch film structure. Whether the opening survives mute autoplay is the stop-scrolling test. What studios publish as a price is what a startup launch video costs.
The film on our homepage is ours. We haven’t made one for a client. These four are the references, not a portfolio.
Dollar Shave Club: the joke is the offer
Our Blades Are F***ing Great is Michael Dubin, the founder, in the warehouse. Fast Company described it in 2012: Dubin wrote the spot, shot it in a day with Lucia Aniello at the fulfilment centre in Gardena, and the shoot cost about $4,500. That figure is Fast Company’s, from Dubin. It is not a 2026 production rate, and it is not a result.
What the piece describes is the argument. Dubin walks the warehouse. He asks whether you like spending $20 a month on razors, says 19 of those dollars go to Roger Federer, catches a tennis racket, announces he’s good at tennis, misses the ball, and keeps walking. The tagline they report is “Shave time. Shave money.”
The film works because the joke is the price. You are not watching a brand mood and then a logo. You are watching a person tell you the middle of the razor business is a celebrity, and that the blades can show up at your door without it. He is in the building where the product is, so the claim has a room around it. Fast Company quotes him on the tone: the world is full of bad commercials and people marketing too hard, and they wanted to take themselves less seriously.
Steal the structure, not the swear. One person. One offer. The product in the room. A joke that is also the reason to switch. If your app’s film needs a paragraph to explain the gag, the gag is a detour.
Dropbox: do the thing you’re afraid of
Drew Houston’s Dropbox demo is a screen recording with a voice. He introduces himself, calls Dropbox a way to store and share files that “just works,” and then does it. Files he put on a Windows PC arrive in a folder on a Mac. The folder looks like any other folder, with a small icon for “up to date.” He edits a picture on one machine and the change shows on the other. He deletes files and brings one back from the website, including an older version.
There is no world-building. The fear, for anyone who had emailed themselves a file or forgotten a USB stick, is “it isn’t on this computer.” The film answers that fear by doing the sync while you watch. The interface he shows is a folder, which is the whole product explanation: it fits the way you already work.
This is the film to study when the app’s magic is a state change. Don’t narrate the category. Perform the moment a stranger is worried about, in the real UI, with content a person would recognise. A blank account and a cursor moving through settings is a tour. Houston’s cut is a proof.
Slack: a specific mess, then one line
So Yeah, We Tried Slack is Sandwich Video’s film for Slack. Adam Lisagor tells it as his own reluctance. Stewart Butterfield wanted a video. Adam’s company ran on email and Dropbox and was, he says, fine. The mess is named: email with one person, texts with another, Gchat with a third, meetings held in a utility closet. Then the turn, to camera: “So yeah, we tried Slack.” After that, the product does the jobs the mess was failing. Channels for a topic. A file dragged in. Dropbox, and a long list of other tools, showing up inside it. The phone keeping your place when you leave the laptop.
James Sherrett, who worked on Slack’s early marketing, has written that the team wanted a Sandwich film for the launch, and that the cut arrived later than the launch. The title, in his account, came from that one line, the night he watched a nearly finished edit. Slack’s own year-one history describes commissioning the film as the company’s first ad, and as the story of Sandwich declining the job and then adopting the product. Both can be true: wanted for the launch, finished after it, still the film that explains Slack.
What to take from it is the mess. “Communication is broken” is a category. “I email Adam, text Shady, and hold the meeting in the closet” is a Tuesday. The product enters on a spoken turn, not on a logo sting, and then it is shown doing those exact jobs. A customer who is also the filmmaker is why it doesn’t feel like a script someone approved in a deck. If your film arrives a week after the date, Sherrett’s account is the consolation: the explaining still has to happen, and this is the shape of it.
Arc: give it an errand, then show the old way
Meet Act II of Arc, from The Browser Company, is a later film, not the company’s first day. It is still a launch film in the useful sense: a new behaviour, shown as a job.
They give Arc a reservation to find, among a few named restaurants, and the browser goes and comes back with the work done, including where it looked. They ask for a dish to cook. It returns a recipe, ingredients, and sources, and they open a New York Times Cooking link to check it. Then they do the old version of the same job: search “winter soup recipes,” land on listicles, hit a sign-in wall, and keep scrolling. The person watching is meant to feel the tab pile they already live in.
The order is the craft. The new way completes an errand first, so you know what “done” looks like. The old way comes second, as a comparison you recognise, not as a mocked-up “before” with fake pain. They talk the way people talk. The product is on screen the whole time, clicking through the actual web.
For an app, the equivalent is one job your user already does badly, finished inside the product, then a glimpse of the spreadsheet, the group chat, or the twelve tabs. If you only have 30 seconds, do the finished job and skip the tour of settings. Apple’s preview is a different length and a different frame. The specs are here. The store cut has to be the app itself.
What the four share
None of them opens on a mission statement. Each one picks a single argument and spends the film on it.
| Film | The argument | How you see it |
|---|---|---|
| Dollar Shave Club | You’re paying for the celebrity, not the blade | The founder, in the warehouse, missing a tennis ball |
| Dropbox | The file is just there, on the other computer | A real folder, syncing, including a delete he undoes |
| Slack | Your Tuesday is five apps and a closet | A named mess, one spoken turn, then channels and files |
| Arc, Act II | The browser can finish the errand | A reservation and a recipe, then the listicle version |
Hold the words long enough to read twice, and put one action on the end card. That is our own rule, written out in the structure post, and it survives contact with all four. Dubin’s offer is the whole film. Houston’s folder is the offer. Slack’s line is the turn. Arc’s finished reservation is the offer. A viewer who leaves at the midpoint still knows what the thing is.
A four-week Ignura launch, which includes a film, is from £16,000. UGC, if you also need a batch of shorter videos, is from £3,000. The month after is from £6,000. Those are the prices we will quote. We will not quote a view count for a film we didn’t make.
What we do here, scope and price: launch film.
If you have a cut, or a script that’s still a paragraph, book an intro call. We’ll watch the first two seconds with the sound off.
