Projects / LIVE
ActiveLIVE: making films by directing coding agents
1 / 7The LIVE site.
- Product
- LIVE, the Learner's Intelligent Video Engineer
- Role
- Creator and product owner
- agentic AI experience engineer and designer
- Team
- Nishad P, with two teammates, at ASU's Learning Engineering Institute (LEI)
- Timeline
- August 2026 onward
- Status
- Public
- used by LEI research teams and on AI-X's live pages
- Built with
- Node
- React
- TypeScript
- Remotion
- FFmpeg; Claude and Codex
The workspace is public, with the skills and workflows we wrote along the way, so a person with little code can direct a film by talking to their agents; the direction, taste and story still come from the person. Several research teams at LEI already make their own videos with it.
Impact
2events
Showcased at ASU
2 events, ASU AI Day in Tempe and again on the Polytechnic campus. LEI then highlighted it publicly as one of two examples of its work.
2workshops
Inside LEI
2 workshops so far, with more outreach events planned to expand it.
Proposed by LEI's leadership
After the latest workshop, LEI's executive director and associate director proposed many more, for LEI's associates and affiliates.
Teachers and professors next
Another LEI team wants to collaborate through it with professors and teachers.
In production
Films made with LIVE run on the live AI-X pages, so LEI uses it directly in its own projects.
Beyond ASU
Through a collaboration, it has reached UC Riverside.
FOLC Fest 2027
I've registered an interactive LIVE session, another workshop, at ASU's annual two-day intellectual jam.
How it started
For myself first.
In August I started building AV Lab, a way to turn my essays into short videos made in code.
The first film.
A chance came up to introduce my co-mentors and me at the launch of LEXI, LEI's paid internship program, so I made that film with it.
What it taught me.
This kind of filmmaking takes a vision, a storyboard, humour and direction, enough code to fit the pieces together, and the patience to try again and again.
From one film to a workspace.
The film got noticed, and with LEI, AV Lab grew into LIVE: a public workspace. You set the direction; agents build the film.
Where it is now
ExpandingThe repository is being upgraded actively.
Across projectsLIVE is becoming a major integrated project, across several LEI projects and with external ones.
How I work with it
Start local.
The code, the files and the rendering on my own machine are the base. Generative services like voice or video generation come in only when a scene needs them, and never as the foundation.
I keep the taste; the agents do the execution.
Purpose, timing, humour and the final call stay with the person directing, including the right to reject work that's technically correct.
The agents write the code, prepare the assets and render.
That's how my two teammates and I could work in parallel, each with our own agents, in one shared repository.
Everything goes into the repo.
Plans, storyboards, scripts and logs live as files, so any agent can pick up where another left off.
With each film the .md files got stronger, and the next film came faster.
The full process, the roles and the lessons from our logs are on the LIVE site.
The films
Many films have been made with LIVE.
Here are the two I like best.
01 · The LIVE film
Made for ASU AI Day: a Vox-style collage about making films with LIVE.
The storyboard and narration are mine.
A teammate did the first three scenes and the polish, and I did the last three and the stitching.
02 · What LIVE is to me
Made for this page: from the essays it started with, through the tools that keep changing, to the stories I still want to tell.
I directed it through four versions in one day, working with GPT-6 Astra, Claude Opus 5.5 and Codex.
What lasts
The machine won't.Anthropic launched Claude Motion in October 2026, Google has Veo inside Workspace, and Tessaract does much the same on Codex. Building LIVE was how I came to understand these systems.
The way of working will.Going from an idea to narration, storyboard, scenes and stitching, timing the beats, and setting each film's art direction.
What I'm trying next
Sound designI've started it in my own local copy of LIVE.
Interactive videoFilms that pause, ask the viewer to act, and branch, because they're code. Video that still feels like video, the way games use cutscenes and playable moments.
I'm also working with LEI's Assistant Director, Software Engineering, on scaling LIVE in and with LEI.
Reflection
I started LIVE to turn my essays into short videos, and it grew into something research teams at LEI now use. The machine underneath will change; Claude Motion, Veo and others already do much of what it does.
What it taught me is where the work really is.
Making LIVE public took away most of the tool skills and the coding a film used to need, and what is left is direction, taste, story, humour and narrative. Making the second film on this page proved it. In one day, three agents made four versions, and every render came out technically clean. What failed was meaning: the first cut looked cute and juvenile, the second didn't look like me at all, and the third was soulless because it had no story to tell. It only came together once the story was agreed first and every picture showed what its words said.
Pixie, a short film I made earlier in my own copy of LIVE, went the same way: the animation and music held up early, and the story was what kept needing work. Anyone can generate a film that looks real now. What matters is the idea, and how you choose to get it across. It's not about which tool; it's about how the tool is used, and what you bring to it from everything else you know. So that's where I'm taking it: films from my essays, my thoughts on digital experiences, civic discourse, history and mythology, and stories to tell and retell.