Blog · Behind the film · 27 Oct 2026

Two 9-second films in one day, and the rule behind both: build it out of their homepage

One is an AI equity research platform. The other is a satire project that gives an AI root on your server. Opposite tones, same rule.

Today I made two free launch films back to back. EquiReason runs an entire equity research department as software. Firefighter.sh is a joke: an AI that patches your server as root with zero confirmations, made by a developer who told me straight up it's satire and he's never going to sell it. Both founders said yes to sharing them, so here they are, and here's the one rule that made both of them work.

The rule: the film is already on their homepage

Every founder has spent weeks on their homepage. The headline, the hero image, the one line of fine print they're secretly proud of. That's the brief. I don't invent a look or a slogan; I find the thing on the page that already explains the product, and I make it move.

EquiReason: their hero image, brought to life

EquiReason's homepage has a cloud of dots on the left, and every dot is pulled along a thread into one bright point on the right. That's the product in a picture: thousands of signals in, one decision out. Their own copy even says it: "Thousands enter. A handful of decisions emerge."

So the film is that picture, moving. Filing tags like 8-K, 13F and Form 4 flicker into the cloud ("Thousands of signals enter."). Every dot streams into the point while the camera moves onto it ("One brain connects them."). Then one held beat of stillness, the only moment in the film where nothing moves, and the point flares open into a verdict card: a score, a band, evidence for and evidence against ("A verdict emerges. With evidence."). Then the card folds back into the point, and the point becomes the star in the middle of their ER logo. The brand isn't slapped on at the end; it grows out of the story.

One honest detail: the company on the card is "Company A", not a real ticker. A real stock with a verdict in an ad reads like a stock tip, and that's not what a launch film should be doing. The founder's reply was the best part of my day: they liked "how you incorporated the way EquiReason was introduced". That's the rule working.

Firefighter.sh: their warnings are the joke

Firefighter's homepage is funny because it's completely serious about something insane. "Runs as root. Makes changes. Keeps an audit trail." "This might delete your entire server." "You have to be insane to run this." The install command is literally curl | sudo bash. When I asked the maker if he wanted it funny, he said "Go for it :)".

The trick with satire is to never wink. So the film plays it as a straight product launch. A polite terminal asks "Apply patch? [y/N]" while a clock waiting on the human runs from seconds to 74 hours ("The internet is on fire."). Firefighter types "y" for you, the prompt burns away into embers, and the patch log scrolls faster and faster, in the same flat voice as real logs: "rotated ssh host keys", "patched the patch", "disabled the smoke detector", "verified vibes" ("Firefighter doesn't ask."). Then it stops on one more question, "Are you sure? [y/N]". A beat of silence. And Firefighter answers its own safety prompt.

That last beat wasn't in my first cut. Our design review pointed out that a lone "Are you sure?" didn't say who was asking, and suggested calling back to the first "y". It turned a good ending into the punchline. Then the terminal catches fire, the fire shrinks into their flame logo, and the film ends on their own line: "You have to be insane to run this."

What the reviews caught (so you don't ship it)

Every film goes through a frame-by-frame review before it renders: a design pass on stills and an automated check for pops, gaps and anything touching the frame edge. Today it caught things I'd never have seen at full speed:

  • A card that "folded" by shrinking to half size, sitting there empty for a frame, then vanishing. On screen it read as a glitch. The fix was an explicit shrink curve: 80%, 30%, 13%, 3%, gone.
  • Pixel fire animated "on twos" (a new frame every other frame, the classic pixel-art look). When the fire fills the whole screen, that makes the entire picture jump every second frame. It now moves every frame and still looks like pixel art.
  • A dim copy of the fire left behind as a glow, which turned olive-grey on black. Off-brand mud on the most important transition. It's now one flat orange wash that's gone in half a second.

None of these are things a viewer would name. They're things a viewer feels, as "this looks cheap" or "this looks expensive".

Try it on your own homepage

Open your homepage and find the one thing on it that already explains your product: an image, a line, a number, even a warning label. If you can describe your film as "that, moving", you've got your film.

Want one for your product?

I'm making these free for founders who are launching, and sharing them (with your OK) on our Demos page. Request yours, or send me your link.