A first frame for video is composed like a sight line from the tower: you look along it before anything travels down it. Most failed clips were failed stills first — crowded, edge-tight, with nowhere for the subject to go. Composing for motion is a stills discipline, learned before a single video credit is spent.
Three composition rules do the work. Leave space around the subject in the direction she will move; a limb already at the frame edge has nowhere to travel. Keep one clear movement in the brief, sayable in one sentence — she turns, she rises, she crosses to the window. And light for continuity: one dominant source, so frame forty agrees with frame one.
Prove the still against her tower card first, at the standard 6 credits. Only then commission the clip, reading the per-job quote — priced by duration and resolution, printed before you confirm — the way you would read a sight line: all the way to the end before the first step.
Clips that begin as disciplined stills rarely disappoint. Clips that begin as hopes usually do.