Leash: Product Demo Film for an AI Startup

A self-initiated concept. Leash is a fictional product that gives AI agents their own budget: a card, a limit and a list of what they may buy. Inside the limit an agent just buys; over it, Leash asks a person first. The job was a 70 second demo film with voiceover, the kind a startup puts on its launch page, plus a 15 second vertical cut for social.

The receipt. Thermal paper prints in two colours: black for normal lines, red for anything that needs attention. Every purchase in the film prints as a line on one long tape, and red only ever means "this needs you". The camera never cuts away from the tape; it rides it from the printer into the app, the approval, the phone and the month's ledger.

Eight beats, storyboarded before any animation, with a 130 word script. The voiceover was generated and then transcribed back to get word timings, so every highlight, cut and tab switch lands on the word that names it.

The UI is rebuilt for the camera rather than screen-recorded: fewer rows, larger type, one idea per shot. Motion follows a few rules: one movement at a time, the camera makes every transition, payoffs hold long enough to read, and nothing sits completely still.

The paper leans back in depth and straightens as the story lands; the $18,400 line gets a punch-in and a jolt.

Cards spring in and build part by part; the others fall out of focus when the camera picks one.

Over the limit, the line prints red, the card jolts and the cut line draws across.

The agent's reason appears word by word as it is read.

Camera moves carry motion blur scaled to their speed.

Reframed for 9:16 with its own camera moves, not a centre crop, with subtitles placed above the platform UI.

Voiceover, a short original score and sound effects (printer, cutter, tear, notification) are all synthesised; the music ducks under the voice.

Leash is a design concept by Krishna Bhupathi. It is not a real product, and all names and figures are invented.