# Hooks: spotify-concept-ad
Runtime date: 2026-10-20. Stage 03 openings step (ice-film/references/openers-and-endings.md sections 2 to 4).
Priority test: benefit "the noise around you can become your track"; open question "who wins: the noise, or me?"; payoff at 12.0 s (the play press locks the first noise to the beat) and fully at 31 s (the street as a drum machine).
Studies: grey blocking, real copy, real candidate fonts (Inter Bold for English, Noto Kufi Arabic 800 for Arabic; type is decided at 05), first 3.2 s, rendered with the HTML capture renderer at half size: ice/renders/studies/opening-<A|B|C>-<en|ar>.mp4; stills at 0, 1 and 3 s: ice/plan/hooks/opening-studies-sheet.png. The studies are built in isolation from the film; their timing may differ from the final cut.

| Opening | Leads with | Frame 0 | By 1 s | By 3 s | Heard | Muted read | Choice notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | typography: one giant noise word | A single sound word ("HONK" / "كلاكس") slammed huge across the frame, mid-impact, the street behind it | the camera pulls back through the word; the other noise words jitter on their lanes | the street at a grazing angle, four noise words firing out of time | a horn blast on frame 0, then drill, engine and hammer out of time | "a noisy street": the giant word is read before anything else | frame 0 crops the giant word at the edges; the Arabic word is cut through its letters (ice-arabic rule 3 conflict) |
| B | depth: street level, a word passing close | Grazing street-level view; a noise word passes in the near lane, others behind | three words fire, two pass close and large, partly out of frame | the four words crowd the middle ground, the loudest in front | engine pass-by, drill, horn, hammer | "noise words as traffic" | frame 0 has no fully readable word (the passing word is cut by the frame edge) |
| C | camera: from above, then down to the street | Top-down: the street as a map, the four noise words lying on their lanes, moving with no order | the camera starts tilting down toward street level | street level, the words standing up as billboards, crowding | the four noises from far, getting closer as the camera falls | "a street from above, then inside it" | bookends the later crane up (the film opens with the camera falling and later rises again); frame 0 readable, but small words |

Chosen: C mixed with A's one element (hook critic, ice/review/direction/D-15-critic.md: A REJECT 5, B REJECT 4, C REVISE 6), because C is the only frame 0 a muted viewer reads at once and its far-to-near fall escalates into the 5.0 s horn; A lends the single dominant word.
Fixes carried into the storyboard and build: (1) frame 0: the horn word (HONK / كلاكس) fires in the nearest lane at about twice the size of the other words, whole, the only bright word, held at least 0.6 s, smaller than the 5.0 s horn; (2) every read Arabic word whole inside the frame, only unread words overlap, dot zones clear (the موتور and كلاكس collision at 3.1 s is fixed by lane spacing); (3) open on a close oblique patch (two lanes, about 60 degrees tilt), never the full plan view, so the ordered grid is first seen whole at 31 s; (4) raise far billboards into the empty top 35 percent by 3 s; (5) 9:16 re-laid out so frame-0 words stay at least 5 percent of the frame height inside y 360 to 1420.
First-3-seconds gate on the chosen opening: rules 1 and 5 pass as studied; rules 2, 3 and 4 are fixed by fixes 1 to 4 and re-checked on the encoded opening at 09 (ice-qa captions-and-sync.md section 2).

## Revision at 04 (D-30, owner feedback on draft-7, 2026-10-21)
The three openings above belong to the lane-grid world (D-15, superseded by D-30). New opening: frame 0 is close on a grey honking car mid-honk in a drawn night street, HONK popping over its bonnet; the camera pulls back by 2.5 s to the whole noisy block (four machines, four words), the loudest horn at 2.6 s, the search field rising at 2.9 s. Priority test: benefit "the noise around you can become your track"; open question "what will this noise turn into?"; payoff at 7.5 to 8.0 s (the press makes the car honk on the beat) and fully at the drop, 19.5 s. First-3-seconds gate on the stills (ice/plan/style-frames/v2/frame-1, temp/v2l/v2-en-16x9/t000.30, t002.62): rule 1 pass (a concrete situation, a street in noise); rule 2 pass (mid-honk at frame 0, no black frame); rule 3 pass (frame 0 readable and full: hero_share 42, frame_fill 14 of 16 against the floors 30 and 10); rule 4 pass on the muted read (a car honking with HONK on it, then four machines with their words, read without sound); rule 5 pass (the film keeps the promise on screen at 7.5 to 8.0). The frame-by-frame check on the encoded opening runs at 09.