# Word-per-beat scene chain — rebuild sheet

A 33-second hair-care spot carried entirely by a voiceover chopped into one-word captions over six unrelated shots — 226,097 views, 3,773 likes, from @modernmammals.

**Why it works** — The caption is only ever one word or a two-word fragment, so the sentence is permanently unfinished and there is no clean second to leave on. Underneath it the picture changes completely every beat, and the insider footage nobody can shoot at home — the shampoo basin, the tattooed hand over a working barber station — supplies the authority the narration is claiming.

**The beats**

| Time | What happens | On-screen text |
|---|---|---|
| 2.65s | Outdoor daylight against a brick wall: a red retail carton (SHAMPOOING ET REVITALISANT, three gold stars) clamped upright in a black metal rig, white foam pouring down over it. Close, square-on. | `so` |
| 7.94s | Plain interior room — pale blue-grey wall, drop-ceiling tiles, a plant at the left edge. A man from behind, shoulder-length curly hair, white printed tee, standing mid-room. | `wash` |
| 13.24s | Barbershop wash station from the side: a man reclined into a black shampoo bowl, eyes closed, another person's hands working through his wet hair. | `to fix,` |
| 18.53s | Top-down over a barber's counter — clippers, hairdryer, comb, small tools, a pipe. A heavily tattooed forearm rises into frame holding a bottle, label to the lens. | `away` |
| 23.82s | The same man from behind in the same white tee, now against a plain pale wall with no room detail, both hands up in his hair, hair flicking out. | `fake` |
| 29.12s | Close on two cupped hands, palms up, smeared with a blue-grey clay, shallow depth, dark background. | `the` |

The six words do not read as a sentence in order — they are sampled fragments of a longer continuous narration. **The frames do not show the full sentence, and there is no audio here, so the script cannot be recovered from the stills.** At 2.65s there is a second, faint partial word behind `so` that is not legible enough to transcribe. Nothing in the six frames shows a speaker addressing the camera; whether one appears between the sampled beats is not visible either way. Whether the camera moves inside any beat cannot be told from stills.

**What carries the value** — The sentence that is never on screen whole. One word at a time, always mid-clause, pulling the viewer through six shots that share nothing else; the barbershop footage under it is what makes the words sound earned rather than claimed.

**Shoot it**

- Six separate setups, phone, vertical. No two need to match — that is the format. Cut hard on every one.
- No face to camera anywhere. The subject is shot from behind or reclined; the operator is a hand and a forearm.
- Camera per beat: close square-on for the prop rig; medium from behind for the room shot; side-on at basin height for the wash; locked overhead for the work station; medium from behind against a bare wall for the hair flick; macro on the hands for the last beat.
- Light: plain daylight outdoors for the prop shot, ordinary overhead interior light for the room, basin and station, soft flat light on a pale wall for the hair flick, and a single soft source with a dark background for the hands.
- Wardrobe is the only continuity thread: the subject wears the identical plain white printed tee in both of his beats. Everything else changes.
- Record the voiceover first and cut the picture to it, so every cut lands mid-sentence.

**Or generate it**

```
vertical 9:16 top-down phone photograph looking straight down onto a barber's work
station: hair clippers, a hairdryer, a comb and small metal tools laid across a dark
counter above white drawers; a forearm — {SUBJECT} — heavily tattooed in dark ink,
enters from the bottom of frame holding {PRODUCT} upright with the label turned toward
the lens; plain even overhead indoor light, phone-camera look, slight grain, unstyled,
no retouching, no on-screen text
```

Motion: camera locked overhead with no move and no reframe; the only movement is the hand rising into frame with {PRODUCT} and turning its label to the lens.

Text overlay: one word or short fragment of the narration at a time, centred in frame, white sans-serif with a soft shadow, replaced on every cut — `{word}` → `{word}` → `{fragment,}` → `{word}`. The full sentence is never on screen at once and no beat completes it.

The post caption carries the offer and the gate, not the screen: "It's time to get the upgrade your scalp has been screaming at you for. 😤😎 / Comment "MUD" for more info!"

**Reference:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DUboPfjAX6G/
