About the Project
THE PRODUCT
Manus is an AI agent. You give it a goal and it handles the steps on its own - searching, opening sources, pulling out what matters, comparing it and writing the findings into a finished document. You write one sentence. It does the job in the background and hands you the result.
THE PROBLEM
An agent is difficult to film. The work happens somewhere nobody can watch it. Most films in this category solve that by putting the machine on screen: tabs opening, tasks ticking off, progress bars filling. I watched a lot of them before I started and none of them made me want the product. Software thinking is boring to look at.
MY PART
Everything: the insight, the script, the shot list, the UI design, the AI direction, the animation, the sound design, the edit. AI generated the woman, the beach and the light from my prompts. Every interface in the film was designed and animated by hand in After Effects.
Design Decisions
She says one line out loud, and the other one we watch typing itself into the Manus search panel. "Oh god, I totally forgot" is spoken, because that makes the panic she feels hit harder. The command is shown as text being typed into Manus, because the viewer has to understand that this is the moment Manus starts gathering the data and the whole magic begins.
In the first few seconds I focused on her. That's the only way the viewer relates to what she's going through. And when someone relates to the character and her problem, they're much more likely to notice the product we're advertising and want it - in this case Manus, which gets you out of trouble.
I kept the research part short. The point wasn't for the viewer to read everything, just to see that a lot of work is happening at once. If I'd shown it properly and made it all readable, it would have taken too long and people would have scrolled past.
Where AI ended and the work began
AI: AI: the woman, the beach, the lipsync. Consistent frames with a consistent character, built on a prompt I refined over many iterations - I wanted her to look as natural as possible. Voice-over and sound effects generated in ElevenLabs. Frames and AI-generated video in Higgsfield.
By hand: everything the product does. The message layer, the Manus input field, the source cards, the extraction sequence, the report, the send and sent confirmations, the compositing, the timing and the mix. Designed in Photoshop and Illustrator, animated in After Effects, edited and mixed in Premiere Pro.
The competitor names, feature sets and report contents are fictional assets I designed for the film.
Unofficial concept - not affiliated with or commissioned by Manus.
