Safe Margins
Safe margins define the inner area of the frame where important content stays visible.
What this is about
The convention comes from television, where receivers cropped the edges of a picture, and it survives for a different reason: modern platforms cover the frame with their own interfaces. Social apps place captions, buttons and profile names over the lower and right edges, and a broadcaster's channel logo lives in a corner. Keeping text inside roughly the central ninety per cent, and the truly critical elements inside about eighty, means the same graphic survives a television screen, a phone and a preview thumbnail.
A term only helps when everyone on set means the same thing by it — so what follows is how it is used, not a dictionary definition.
What runs differently here
In planning terms, that means:
- Roughly ninety per cent of the frame for graphics, eighty for anything that must not be lost
- Social platforms cover the lower and right edges with their own interface elements
- Check the graphic in the actual player, not only in the editing preview window
With TillyGen
If the plan lists which platforms a film is made for, the edit knows early which areas of the frame have to stay free of text.
Change one constraint and the consequences travel through the whole plan: affected shots are flagged, the call sheet is regenerated, and nobody keeps working from yesterday's version.
Frequently asked
Do safe margins still matter if we only publish online?
Yes, more than ever. Player controls, captions and platform interfaces cover the edges, and a thumbnail crop takes another bite out of the frame.
How long does it take to get started with TillyGen?
A first project takes under an hour to set up. There is no configuration phase in which templates and fields have to be defined before the tool produces anything.
Can the results be exported?
Yes — as PDF for the crew, CSV for downstream systems and through the API for anything automated. The plan stays the source; the exports are views of it.