# Pinned line, reaction cut

**499,742 views proved it** · 2 of Damon's swipes use this format

## What it is

One setup line, usually ending on an open colon, is pinned word-for-word identical over borrowed spectacle footage for most of the runtime, and the last beat hard-cuts to one person's face in a completely different room under that same unchanged line. The footage is the illustration; the face is the answer the colon promised.

## Why it works

An open colon is a sentence the viewer cannot close by reading, so the cut to a face lands as the completion of a thought rather than as a reaction shot. Because the line never changes, two unrelated sources read as one joke.

## The beats, in order

1. the pinned line lands over the borrowed footage, which plays in its own unchanging frame
2. the borrowed act escalates on its own terms, line unchanged
3. it keeps escalating — nothing is added and nothing is cut to
4. the spectacle peaks
5. hard cut: one person's face in an interior room, flat and unreacting, the same line still pinned

## On-screen text

one line pinned word-for-word in the identical position on every single beat including the final cut, ending on an open colon and never completed in words

## Camera

whatever camera the borrowed footage came with, held full-frame and uncut for most of the runtime, then a hard cut to a fixed front-camera close in an ordinary room that does not move

## Higgsfield — image prompt

```
vertical 9:16 front-camera close of {subject described exactly} in an ordinary interior room, chest-up and square to the lens, expression completely flat, {the room's real detail described exactly} behind them, {light source}, phone front-camera look, slight grain, no retouching, no on-screen text
```

## Higgsfield — motion

```
the borrowed act plays in one unbroken wide with no camera move; hard cut to the face, camera fixed at arm's length and motionless — the subject holds the lens and does not react
```

## Produce it

Paste those into the Higgsfield employee: https://higgsfield.ai/supercomputer/skills?employeeId=0d38d619-0ac2-45c9-bfd5-3371837ccad3

## The references in this folder

- **@marquettdavon** — 499,742 views — https://www.instagram.com/p/DamBeiqJHdP/
- **@braydgreen** — 253,937 views — https://www.instagram.com/p/DYnZuTER3yR/

Each `.md` beside this file is one reference torn down: its beats with
timestamps, what carries the value, how to shoot it, and its own prompts.
`frames/` holds the six beats of each as one picture.
