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PortfolioCase study

CP-01Live

Cinematic Portfolio

A portfolio, on film.

A scroll-driven film portfolio — AI-generated footage of Tushar as the backdrop, scrubbed like an Apple product page, with no build step.

The scroll film's opening frame: Tushar standing in warm light against a dark background.
  • 0 ms

    frames over 16 ms in the scrub benchmark

    Measuredas of 26 Aug 2026

    mean 0.04 ms per frame

  • 31 / 31

    QA checks passed across three passes

    Measuredas of 26 Aug 2026

    8/8, 11/11, 12/12

Evidence keyMeasured

The question

Recruiters ask one thing first: who is Tushar Pathak?

A list of links answers what he did, not who he is. The bet was a short film that answers both as you scroll.

The film

Scroll, and the film plays with you.

Three scenes — an opening, the work, a closing walk — scrub frame by frame with the page. Under reduced motion, the film becomes still frames.

The film's work scene: Tushar seated at a desk among glowing holographic panels.
The work scene
The film's closing scene: Tushar walking between tall panels of warm light.
The closing walk

Decisions

Cinematic, but never at the reader’s expense.

  • Could have
    A conventional page of cards
    Chose
    A film as the backdrop
    Because
    The PRD starts from the recruiter’s first question: who, not what.
  • Could have
    Motion for everyone
    Chose
    A static fallback under reduced motion
    Because
    The film must never be the price of reading the page.
  • Could have
    A framework and a build step
    Chose
    Static HTML, CSS and vanilla JS
    Because
    Nothing to build; the film and the page ship as plain files.

How it was made

Generated, cut, then scrubbed.

  1. Generate the filmHiggsfield, credits pre-flighted
  2. Post-processffmpeg and headless Chrome
  3. 289 scrub frames
  4. Smooth scrollLenis moves the frames
  5. Static fallbackunder reduced motion
From generated film to scroll

What I learned

The tooling is part of the craft.

  • Know the tool’s gates

    Plan gating, refunds on a failed render and start-image versus reference behaviour shaped the film.

  • Pre-flight the spend

    Estimating credits before rendering meant the film cost exactly what was planned.

Sources

Everything here is backed by a real artifact.

  • PRD
  • Build ledger
  • Design

Evidence behind the Cinematic Portfolio case study

Private working documents are listed with what they support; only public sources link out.

  1. PRD

    PRD25 Aug 2026

    Supports: The recruiter question, film-as-backdrop, the reduced-motion fallback

  2. Build ledger

    Build ledger26 Aug 2026

    Supports: QA 8/8, 11/11, 12/12; scrub 0.04 ms; 197 credits; review fixes

  3. Poster frames (opens in a new tab)

    Design

    Supports: The three scenes shown here