# Black-card quote monologue — rebuild sheet

A 20.8s front-camera piece by official_lfy_trav: she tells a story straight to her phone in her own bathroom, and someone else's words are quoted on screen twice — once over an opening shot of her from behind on a bed, once alone on a completely black frame. 61,049 views · 2,467 likes · caption: "The simple things".

**Why it works**

The blackout is the whole trick: when the picture disappears, the quoted line is the only thing left on screen, so a sentence that would slide past as a caption becomes something you have to sit with. Everything either side of it is a text-free face at arm's length, which means the viewer spends the runtime reading her reaction to a line they were just made to read themselves.

**The beats**

| Time | What happens | On-screen text |
|---|---|---|
| 1.66s | Handheld from behind — dark hair in a top-knot bun, bare back, thin gold chain, striped bottoms, kneeling forward onto a bed with rumpled white bedding. Plain wall, soft warm light. | Mf okay but please no prank |
| 4.99s | Cut to a tight front-camera selfie at arm's length, angled slightly up. She is mid-speech, mouth open, skin very glossy. Home bathroom behind her — mirror edge, a shelf of coloured bottles. | — |
| 8.32s | Full black frame. No picture at all. | “I want you to be happy” |
| 11.65s | Back to the identical selfie framing, same bathroom, same shelf. She is smiling now, eyes crinkled. | — |
| 14.98s | Extreme close and motion-blurred — the camera pushed right against her cheek and jaw, gold hoop earring and hair filling frame, out of focus. | — |
| 18.3s | Black. | — |

Where the frames do not tell us: there is no audio in these stills, so what she is actually saying is unknown — the frames only show that she is speaking. Whether more text cards land between the sampled beats cannot be told from six stills. The final black frame at 18.3s shows no text, so it may be an end card, another quote card sampled before its line appears, or simply a cut to black. And no product is ever held: the bottles are background dressing on a bathroom shelf.

**What carries the value**

The other person's quoted words landing on a full-black frame — nothing to look at, so the line is the only event — against her unguarded face in the beats on either side of it. The bedroom shot and the bathroom are set dressing; the black card and the face are the format.

**Shoot it**

- **Camera:** phone front camera, held at arm's length, just below eye level and tilted slightly up. Return to the exact same framing after every card — that sameness is what makes the black card read as an interruption. One handheld shot from behind for the opening beat. Last beat: push the phone right in until the face goes soft and out of focus. No tripod, no second angle, no cutaway to a product.
- **Light:** ordinary warm overhead bathroom light, straight on. Do not diffuse the shine — the glossy, reflective skin in this video is part of why it reads as unproduced.
- **Wardrobe:** whatever she'd actually be wearing at home. Here: hair pulled back off the face, thin gold chain, small gold hoops, white strappy top. No makeup look, no styling, no retouching.
- **The cards:** yellow rounded sans. Only two of them. One over the opening scene shot, one alone on a full-black frame with the picture cut entirely. Every face beat carries no text whatsoever — resist adding subtitles, they kill the device.
- **Talent:** this one needs a person on camera. The black card and the bedroom shot are trivial to make; the face reacting is not, and there is nothing else holding the runtime.

**Or generate it**

```
vertical 9:16 front-camera selfie photograph, tight head-and-shoulders framing of {SUBJECT} held at arm's length just below eye level and angled slightly up, mid-speech with the mouth open, skin left glossy and dewy with a bright specular sheen, hair pulled back off the face, thin gold chain and small gold hoop earrings, white strappy ruffled top, standing in a small home bathroom with the edge of a mirror and a shelf of {PRODUCT} bottles visible over the shoulder, warm overhead indoor light, phone front-camera look, slight grain, no retouching, no on-screen text
```

**Motion:** handheld at arm's length with small natural drift as she talks, the same framing returned to after every card, and on the last beat the camera pushes right in against the cheek until it goes soft and out of focus.

**Text-overlay pattern:** yellow rounded sans, someone else's words in curly quotes — `“{their exact line}”` — landing on only two beats: once over the opening scene shot, once alone on a full-black frame. Every face beat carries no text at all.

**Reference:** https://www.instagram.com/p/Dcb7u2YREHt/
