The Lab · Creative & Content
Video production and editing services built for the feed, not the film festival
Every platform now ranks video by one thing: whether people keep watching. We produce and edit video the way category leaders do — hook-first, platform-native, shipped on a cadence — and we price it like a system, not a showreel.
The Standard · Pricing
Pricing — and exactly what you get
Shorts Engine 10
$599 /mo
Ten platform-native verticals a month from one system — hooks, captions and retention review included, not billed as extras.
- 10 vertical videos / month for Reels, TikTok, Shorts
- Hooks rewritten before the edit starts
- Captions burned in, platform-safe margins
- A hook variant with every video
- Monthly retention-curve review
- Motion mini-system built in week one
- Raw selects and exports are yours
Shorts Engine 20
$999 /mo
Double the velocity at a lower per-video rate — the cadence where format learnings compound weekly instead of monthly.
- 20 vertical videos / month
- Everything in Shorts Engine 10
- Format experiments run inside the batch
- Priority turnaround
- Cross-platform repackaging included
Long-form & channel
from $99 per video
Per-video from $99 by runtime and complexity — or $499/mo for a 4-video channel retainer with thumbnails and packaging.
- Long-form edits from $99 per video
- Channel retainer: 4 videos / month at $499
- Pacing, b-roll, sound design
- Thumbnails and packaging included on retainer
- Keyword-mapped titles and descriptions
Promos, shoots & podcasts
from $999 per promo
Scripted work is quoted by length and animation load — shoots from $299, remote direction from $199, podcasts $79 per episode.
- Promo / explainer videos from $999
- Brand & product shoots from $299
- Remote creative direction from $199 per shoot
- Podcast edit + publish at $79 / episode
- Podcast launch package $999
- Quoted itemized within 24 hours
Why retention beats production value
The first 1.5 seconds decide everything
What "platform-native" means here
- → Hook rewritten before the edit starts — not found in the edit
- → Captions burned in: most feed viewing is muted
- → Safe margins per platform — no UI covering your punchline
- → Pattern interrupts every 3–5 seconds to reset attention
- → Monthly retention-curve review — the numbers pick the formats
Agencies love production value because it photographs well in a portfolio. Platforms don't care. A phone-shot video with a sharp hook and honest pacing will beat a cinema-grade brand film in every feed, every time, because the algorithm is only measuring whether the viewer stayed.
So our editing discipline starts where the data starts: the hook is written first and cut tightest, the opening frame is designed to be legible at thumbnail size, and every edit gets a pattern interrupt budget — cuts, zooms, captions, b-roll — spent where retention curves historically dip.
The same discipline extends to brand: motion identity is a system, not a flourish. Type animation, lower thirds, caption styling and end cards are templated in week one, which is why a Shorts Engine can ship twenty videos a month that all look unmistakably yours — and why video #40 costs us less effort than video #1 while looking better.
And because we're a search agency at heart, nothing gets published blind: titles and descriptions are keyword-mapped, YouTube uploads are structured for suggested-feed pickup, and clips cross-link with the content engine and social program so every view has somewhere to go.
The first 30 days
From kickoff to a running engine
WEEK 1
Brand intake and the motion mini-system: type animation, lower thirds, caption styles, end cards and colour treatment, approved by you before a single edit ships. We also audit your existing footage library — most brands are sitting on more usable raw material than they think.
WEEK 2
First batch delivered: hooks written, formats varied deliberately — talking head, b-roll narrative, caption-led — because the first month is a structured experiment, not a guess. Every video ships with a hook variant so the platforms tell us which opening wins.
WEEKS 3–4
Publishing cadence locks in, retention curves come back, and the format playbook gets its first revision: winners get more of the batch, losers get cut, and the second month starts smarter than the first. That loop never stops — it is the whole engine.
Questions we hear most
Video production & editing — FAQ
What does a Shorts Engine month actually look like?
You send raw footage, talking-head recordings or even voice notes; we return 10 or 20 finished vertical videos — hooks rewritten, captions burned in, platform-safe margins, native ratios for Reels, TikTok and Shorts. Every video ships with a hook variant, and each month we review retention curves together and adjust the format playbook before cutting the next batch.
Do you shoot, or only edit?
Both, with a caveat: editing, motion design and post-production are fully in-house. For shoots, we run brand and product photography from $299 per shoot in markets where our crew network operates, and remote creative direction from $199 per shoot anywhere else — we plan the shot list, direct over a call, and handle everything after the camera stops.
Who owns the footage and project files?
You do — raw selects, final exports and, on request, the project files. Our subscription work follows the same no-hostage-files policy as every 3rd Unicorn service: cancel with 7 days’ notice and everything we made leaves with you.
Can you match our existing brand look?
Yes — the first week of any engagement builds a motion mini-system: type animations, lower thirds, caption styles, end cards and colour treatment pulled from your brand guidelines (or built alongside our creative design team if you don’t have them yet). Every editor on your account cuts from that system, so video #40 looks like video #1.
Ready to run video like a system?
Send us one piece of raw footage and we'll cut a sample short — free — so you can judge the hook discipline before you spend a dollar.