Times Square Billboard Video: Technical Breakdown & File Delivery | YC Startup
Inside the After Effects project behind Neuron Industries’ $10M seed announcement
Putting a funding announcement on a Times Square billboard means designing for the shape of the screen, the way people see it from the street and the file the operator needs to play it.
Watch the full technical breakdown and studio discussion:
The linked video is the production walkthrough, with our reaction to the founders’ Times Square footage at the end.
For Neuron Industries, we adapted our 15-second landscape announcement for the Midtown Financial billboard in New York. The display combines a curved main screen with a separate vertical mast. That changed the composition, the timing and the way we packaged the finished animation.
Neuron is a Y Combinator-backed company developing AI-native industrial control. Its ambition reaches across manufacturing, energy systems and critical infrastructure. Our film needed to announce the company’s $10M seed round and give that wider ambition a clear public presence.
In the accompanying technical walkthrough, our co-founders Allan Rowland and Arran Clark open the After Effects project and explain how we approached the adaptation.
Working with the After Effects billboard template
Every billboard has its own layout. For Neuron’s funding announcement, the supplied After Effects template gave us a way to understand how the animation would sit across the main screen and vertical mast.
We moved between the working composition and the billboard mock-up, checking what happened to the product, headline and supporting imagery when they appeared on the building.
That back-and-forth shaped the adaptation. It let us judge the composition in context and work out which elements could use the full screen, which needed to stay central and how the separate areas could work together.
Adapting a landscape video for a curved billboard
Our existing 16:9 announcement provided the starting material. We then rebuilt the composition around the billboard’s available screen areas.
The Cortex controller needed to remain recognisable. Enlarging it across the curved corners would have distorted its appearance, so we kept the product in the central section and checked it against the mock-up.
The main headline could use more of the wraparound surface. In this composition, large text could extend around the corners while the product remained centred. Each element had to be considered separately.
We also moved supporting industrial imagery towards the sides. It established what Neuron does and directed attention towards the announcement. Putting that imagery in the middle would have competed with the message.
The extra screen space needed a job. It was useful for context, scale and movement, while the centre carried the information we most wanted people to see.
Keeping the funding announcement readable
Someone passing a billboard may glance up halfway through the film. The announcement has to work under that condition.
We kept the seed-round headline and investor information prominent for as long as the sequence allowed. The closing line then expressed the larger ambition behind the company: physical AI for reindustrialisation.
This affected the pace as much as the layout. We held important information on screen and gave it room, instead of making every second introduce another detail.
For a startup funding announcement, that hierarchy matters. The round, the company and its ambition need to remain legible within a short public viewing window.
Animating the vertical mast
The separate mast gave us a way to connect the lower billboard with the height of the building.
We developed an opening signal pulse that travelled upwards and led the reveal of the text and investor logos. It gave the two screens a shared sequence and connected visually with Neuron’s industrial control technology.
In the walkthrough, we step through the animation frame by frame to show how the reveals follow the pulse. The motion gives the unusual screen arrangement a purpose from the opening moment.
The effect came from working with the architecture of this particular billboard.
Preparing the final file for billboard delivery
The delivered file looked different from the billboard mock-up.
In the mock-up, we were checking how the animation would appear on the building. In the export layout, the main display and mast were arranged alongside one another within a single video frame.
We followed the supplied template to package both screen sections into the file handed over to the billboard company.
At 08:13 in the video, we show the combined delivery layout. This is a useful part to watch if you have been handed a billboard template and the finished export looks quite different from the physical screen.
Seeing the announcement in Times Square
At 09:43, the walkthrough moves from the project to our reaction to footage recorded by Neuron’s founders in New York.
We were watching from the UK. The founders’ phone footage let us see the announcement in its actual surroundings, with traffic below and the signal pulse travelling up the building.
The colour and contrast looked more intense in that footage than in the mock-up. The blue light revealing the Cortex controller had a stronger presence, and the opening pulse became much more noticeable at building scale.
It was also a chance to see the earlier decisions together: the held headline, the central product placement and the movement across the two screens.
The technical discussion ends with that reaction. It gives prospective clients a less rehearsed view of the people behind the work, as well as the production itself.
Navigate the technical walkthrough
Use these chapter times in the linked video.
Time | Topic |
00:00 | Technical walkthrough of Neuron’s Times Square billboard |
00:30 | After Effects billboard template and mock-up |
01:03 | Curved screen layout and avoiding product distortion |
02:06 | Adapting the 15-second funding announcement |
02:37 | Headline readability and message timing |
03:11 | Reworking a 16:9 video for the billboard’s aspect ratio |
04:11 | Large text and product placement on a wraparound screen |
04:53 | Side panel imagery and visual hierarchy |
05:42 | Designing for the main screen and vertical mast |
06:31 | Creating the animated signal pulse |
07:16 | Timing text and investor logo reveals |
08:13 | Export layout and packaging both screens for delivery |
09:43 | Our reaction to the Times Square footage |
10:08 | Comparing colour and contrast with the mock-up |
10:59 | Checking headline timing and the building-height reveal |
11:20 | From our UK studio to Times Square |
Company films and funding announcements for hardtech founders
LiveUP Media creates 3D company films, startup launch videos and funding announcements for companies changing how the world manufactures, builds and supplies itself.
Our UK studio works with YC and hardtech founders across the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles and internationally. We take responsibility for the creative direction, 3D production and adaptation to the formats a launch needs.
If you are building something unusual, brief Allan Rowland. A one-line brief is enough to begin.
