Inspiration
Impressive generated footage is not automatically a useful campaign. Creators still need audience research, a defensible hook, cost control, product truth, brand consistency, captions, and adjacent social formats. Reel Director moves research and creative direction in front of generation, then finishes every output as a campaign asset.
What it does
A creator starts with natural language and can attach live URLs, product images or video, PDF, DOCX, TXT, or Markdown. Reel Director asks at most one clarification and always offers Skip. It creates a reviewable Content Blueprint, performs live Parallel research, and uses Gemini to produce an evidence-grounded research synthesis, three creative directions, and a structured production plan.
Director Studio shows three candidate shots before video generation. The creator can produce a complete Campaign Pack or choose Hybrid Reel, Static Post, Carousel Post, Slideshow Reel, or Full Video Reel individually. The default Hybrid Reel sends only the selected candidate to Veo 3.1 Fast. Deterministic finishing then adds the real logo and product visuals, controlled motion copy, pixel-safe captions, and CTA while preserving Veo's native audio.
How we built it
- React, TypeScript, Vite, and Tailwind for the responsive studio
- FastAPI for orchestration and controlled state transitions
- Parallel Search API through the official parallel-web SDK for live evidence
- Gemini through google-genai for brief analysis, research synthesis, directions, shot plans, brand suggestions, and still-image generation
- Veo 3.1 Fast through google-genai for native-audio vertical footage
- Pillow and FFmpeg for deterministic brand layout, motion, captions, CTA, audio preservation, and assembly
- Google Cloud Run for the public service and private Google Cloud Storage for media delivery
Challenges we ran into
The difficult part was enforcing production economics and reliability rather than merely invoking models. We moved from automatic three-shot generation to explicit single-shot selection, added production locking and retry guards, removed OAuth query-string delivery, implemented HTTP Range playback, separated interface language from campaign language, treated uploaded content as untrusted context, and made brand placement and captions deterministic.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
- Live Parallel research rejects irrelevant or excerpt-free evidence.
- The default Hybrid path generates exactly one selected Veo shot.
- Static and Carousel formats reuse the same intelligence without a Veo call.
- Campaign Pack produces a Hybrid Reel, Static Post, five Carousel cards, Slideshow Reel, and cover.
- Media playback supports seeking without exposing credentials in URLs.
- One container serves the API, production React bundle, and SPA deep links.
The public deployment uses a safe deterministic demo configuration so judges can explore without exposing paid provider credentials. The repository contains the real Parallel, Gemini, Veo, and private GCS runtime integrations and deployment instructions.
What we learned
Agentic creative production works best when generative models make bounded creative decisions and deterministic systems own exactness. Research, synthesis, and cinematic intent benefit from Gemini and Parallel; typography, brand placement, CTA geometry, security boundaries, and cost limits benefit from strict software contracts.
What's next for Reel Director
Move state to Firestore or Cloud SQL, add authentication and quotas, run production jobs in durable workers, add collaboration and approval workflows, and connect optional scheduling and publishing services.
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