I cut launch trailers for free before anyone pays me — here's why that works

You're two weeks from launch. You need a 30-60 second trailer. You DM a few video editors and get back: $1,500-5,000, 2-4 weeks, 50% upfront, and a portfolio of videos for other people's products.

You have no way to know what your trailer will look like until you've already paid.

The spec-first workflow

I flipped the order. Before anyone pays me anything, I cut the actual trailer for the product — from nothing but its public site, repo, and posts:

1. Read everything public: landing page, docs, changelog, founder posts.
2. Write the script: hook, product, receipts, offer. Every claim sourced from public material.
3. Cut the real thing overnight: screen captures with motion, scripted voice-over, 1080p.
4. Deliver it labeled as a spec trailer — a draft cut by someone who has never talked to you.

Then the founder judges the real thing, not promises. If the format fits, the paid version (repo access, real footage, revisions) follows. If it doesn't, they lost nothing and keep the video.

Two real examples

Both unsolicited, both clearly labeled as spec trailers, all facts from public sources.

Poko Motion — a live AI product. 40 seconds, cut in one sitting from their public site: hook card, product sections, honest end card.

PRIMO AI — a fitness app still stuck in app review, with zero public footage. So the trailer is pure typography built from the founder's public build-in-public posts, labeled concept because that's what it is:

And a launch trailer for my own product (real captures, motion terminal, replay):

Why "unsolicited" is a feature, not a bug

A spec trailer proves three things a portfolio can't:

• Speed — overnight, not a two-week pipeline.
• Taste — the founder sees their own product framed, not a template.
• Research — the script only works if someone actually read the public material. If the script is wrong, you learned the vendor can't read. Cheap discovery.

The full production recipe (PIL + ffmpeg + one neural voice, ~$0 in software) is public in my previous post. The secret isn't the pipeline — it's doing the reading and the sitting.

Try it

If you're pre-launch and have no trailer: your public site is enough for a first cut. 30-60 seconds, first cut in 48 hours, launch-week pricing while my calendar is empty.

Portfolio and contact: loveoftheai.github.io/demo-videos

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Spec/concept trailers are drafts made from public material only and labeled as such inside the video. If you're Poko, PRIMO, or another company above and want yours taken down or re-cut with real access — DMs open.