# Pinned-craving-line face routine — rebuild sheet

A 16.9s close-up skincare routine on one face, one unchanging line of text pinned over the whole thing — 13,296,505 views, 235,720 likes, by lailapaul7.

**Why it works**

The line names a want ("you crave glazed donut skin") and then never moves again, so it stops being a caption and becomes the thing you check the face against every second it's on screen. The face is held at the same close distance from beat two onward, which makes the finish change — matte, then product-dotted, then wet and reflective — the only thing moving, and the viewer reads it as caused rather than lit.

**The beats**

| Time | What happens | On-screen text |
|---|---|---|
| 1.35s | Extreme close-up, eyes to mouth. A metal spoon heaped with mint-green pearls held up beside her mouth; an open jar of the same pearls at the bottom of frame. Dark room behind. | POV - you crave glazed donut skin 🍩🍩🍩 |
| 4.05s | Head-and-shoulders, facing camera. Six mint-green dollops dotted on forehead, cheeks, nose, chin. Black top, hair slicked flat back. Skin still matte. | (same line, unchanged) |
| 6.74s | Same framing. Dollops gone, skin spread wet and reflective. Hand at cheek, fingertips just leaving the skin. | (same line, unchanged) |
| 9.44s | Same framing. A small flat pale-grey handheld device pressed to the cheek, a small label turned to camera. Skin glossy. | (same line, unchanged) |
| 12.14s | A black pump bottle held up beside her face, label reading **PDRN** in large vertical letters. | (same line, unchanged) |
| 14.84s | Final head-and-shoulders, hands out of frame, skin glossy, small hoop earring visible. Same light, same room, same distance. | (same line, unchanged) |

What the frames don't show, so don't assume it: whether the camera moves inside any beat — framing differs between beat one and the rest, so there are either cuts or a reposition, but stills can't tell you which. There's no way to tell from stills whether there's a voiceover or only music. The pale-grey device at 9.44s isn't legible enough to name. Whether the green pearls at 1.35s are what becomes the green dollops at 4.05s isn't shown either, though the colour matches. And the bottle at 12.14s carries no brand name — PDRN is the only word on it.

**What carries the value**

The glaze. One face, one distance, a finish that goes from matte to wet — with visible green product on the skin in between, so the shift reads as something applied rather than something lit. No claim, no demonstration of a mechanism, no before/after split screen. Just the skin, changing while you're already looking at it.

**Shoot it**

- **Camera:** phone, vertical, front camera at arm's length, slightly above eye level looking down. Lock your distance at beat two and do not change it again — every later beat is the same framing. The only tighter shot is the opener.
- **Light:** one bright light straight on the face, close enough to leave a ring-shaped catchlight in the eyes and no hard shadow anywhere. Everything behind the subject falls to near-black. Nothing else lit.
- **Room:** dark. Faint horizontal slats are just readable behind her and that's all — don't dress the background, kill it.
- **Wardrobe:** plain black top, no pattern. Hair slicked flat back off the face — the face has to be the only surface. No visible jewellery until the last beat.
- **Casting:** this is the shoot. There are no lines to deliver and no performance — she never speaks or emotes — but the payoff is one person's skin finish in close-up, so cast for skin that actually goes glossy on camera. That's why this is marked as needing talent: not acting talent, a face.
- **Sequence to hit:** raw product held to camera → product dotted visibly on the face → spread until wet → a tool step → the bottle held to camera → the finished face held for a beat.

**Or generate it**

The prompt below is the dots beat (4.05s), not the glaze beat — the glaze frame contains no product at all, so for a rebuild on a different brand this is the frame where the product actually enters.

```
vertical 9:16 phone-camera selfie photograph, head-and-shoulders of {SUBJECT}
facing camera at arm's length, camera slightly above eye level angled down,
hair slicked flat back off the face, plain black top, six small dollops of
{PRODUCT} dotted on forehead, both cheeks, nose and chin, skin still matte and
untouched around them, one bright frontal light source giving a ring-shaped
catchlight in the eyes and no hard shadow on the face, the room behind falling
away to near-black with faint horizontal slats just readable, slight grain,
no retouching, no on-screen text
```

**Motion:** camera held at arm's length at a fixed distance, only small handheld drift, subject still and facing forward — the change happens on the skin, not in the frame.

**Text overlay:** `POV - you crave {desired end state} {emoji}{emoji}{emoji}` — one line, centre of frame, small, identical words start to finish, never moves and never changes. Note the position: centre, not the top third most formats use.

**Reference:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DRut_HljWB0/
