UGC and short-form video glossary
Plain definitions of the words that come up around UGC, short-form video and lynxr — each one written to stand on its own, without needing the rest of the page for context.
Format
Format is the shape of a video rather than its subject: the hook and the job it is doing, the beats and their order, the turn where the video becomes something else, and the close.
Go deeper: What a UGC video format is.
Topic
Topic is what a video is about — the product, the place, or the story — as distinct from its format, which is how the video is put together to get there.
Hook
Hook is the opening of a short-form video, the first thing it says or shows, and its job is to stop someone from scrolling past.
Go deeper: How to write a UGC hook that stops the scroll and Question hooks.
Beat
Beat is one step a video moves through on its way to delivering what the hook promised, and a format is made of several beats in a specific order.
The turn
The turn is the point in a video where it becomes something other than what it looked like it was going to be — a reveal, a reversal, or a shift from problem to solution.
Go deeper: Where a storytime turns into the product.
The close
The close is the last part of a video, the point where it wraps up once the turn has landed and hands off to whatever comes next.
Script
Script is the written version of a video's format, rewritten with a new subject — the words and beats a creator or lynxr produces before anything is filmed.
Go deeper: The parts of a UGC video script.
Short-form video
Short-form video is video made to be watched quickly on a vertical, mobile feed rather than a longer, sit-down format — the kind of video lynxr reads and the agency behind it makes for brands.
Creator
Creator is a person who makes short-form video for a company — the audience lynxr is built for, alongside the people who brief them.
Brand
Brand is the company a creator is making a video for — the company whose product, subject or message a script or format is written around.
Brief
Brief is the instructions a company gives a creator before a video gets made — what they want covered, and what they want left out.
Go deeper: How to turn a brand brief into a script.
Transcript
Transcript is the written record of everything said in a video, produced automatically when lynxr or a creator reads a video's audio.
Shot list
Shot list is a record of a video's individual shots — what the camera shows and in what order — used alongside the transcript to work out a video's structure.
UGC
UGC, short for user-generated content, is short-form video made for a brand by a creator in the style of an ordinary person's own post rather than in the style of an advertisement. A UGC creator is commissioned by the brand to make it, which is what separates it from a post a customer makes unprompted.
Call to action
A call to action, often shortened to CTA, is the specific thing a video asks the viewer to do — comment, follow, click, buy — and it sits inside or immediately after the close rather than bolted on as an afterthought.
Payoff
Payoff is the moment a video delivers what its hook promised: the answer to the question, the proof of the claim, or the end of the situation it opened with.
Go deeper: Hook and payoff: why a strong hook still loses the viewer.
Two-column script
A two-column script is a script written as a table: the spoken words sit in one column, and the shot, the action and any on-screen text for each line sit in the column beside them.
Go deeper: The two-column script: SAY and DO side by side.
Storytime video
A storytime video is a short-form video in which a creator tells one real event from their own life to camera; in a brand video, the product is part of how that story ends.
Go deeper: How to script a storytime video for a brand.
POV video
A POV video is a short-form video that puts the viewer inside a scene: the camera stands in for someone's eyes, and an on-screen label beginning with POV says whose.
Go deeper: How to write a POV video script.
See what a video format is for how these terms fit together, the parts of a short-form video script and how to turn a video into a script for a brand for the same ideas in use, questions and answers for what lynxr costs and how access works, or get started on the homepage — sign-up is open, 3 free scripts a week.