# Word-per-beat procedure — rebuild sheet

A 21.7s locked-overhead scalp treatment by domepeace.co — one word on screen per beat while a pair of hands works on a bald client's head. 75,994,238 views · 516,940 likes.

**Why it works**

The words build a single sentence that isn't finished until the last beat, so leaving early means leaving mid-sentence — the read is the retention device, not the footage. Because the camera never leaves the crown, the problem stays on screen the whole time the fix is happening, so every step is measured against the before-state without a single cut back to it.

**The beats**

| Time | What happens | On-screen text |
|---|---|---|
| 1.74s | High overhead on a seated client's bare scalp, a raised reddish scarred patch clearly visible on the crown. Black barber cape, teal stool cushion, concrete floor, dark carved wooden barber station behind. Face never in frame. | BALD |
| 5.22s | Identical framing. The whole scalp is now coated in a terracotta-coloured mask, spread in streaks with skin showing through. | SIMPLE |
| 8.69s | A hand holds a black tub up to the lens so it fills the frame — coarse, wet, grainy brown scrub inside. The coated head sits soft behind it. | THIS |
| 12.17s | Tighter overhead. Two hands with pink manicured nails: one flat on the head steadying it, the other pressing a small pale sponge against the now-wet scalp. | before |
| 15.65s | Back to the wide overhead. A white towel wipes across the scalp — the mask is gone, clean skin showing. Cables and a floor mat at the bottom of frame. | we |
| 19.12s | Tighter. Both hands cupped flat over the clean bare scalp, held still. | heal |

Two things the frames don't settle, stated plainly: these are six stills sampled across the runtime, so there may be more words between them than the six here — "BALD / SIMPLE / THIS / before / we / heal" is what the sample shows, not a verified complete sentence. And there is no audio in the contact sheet, so whether this runs on voiceover, music or silence is unknown.

**What carries the value**

The client's untreated scalp. The scar and texture are established in the first beat and never leave the frame, so the coat, the scrub, the wipe and the final clean skin all read as work done on a real problem instead of a demo. The unfinished sentence is what keeps the viewer there to watch it.

**Shoot it**

- **Camera.** Phone on a stand or an overhead arm, vertical, angled down at the crown from just above and behind the seated client. It does not move — not once. Two framings only: a wide that shows the chair and floor, and a tighter one on the hands. Cut between them, never pan or zoom.
- **Light.** Flat, even, ordinary indoor light. No window flare, no ring light, no styling. The frames show a plain interior with no visible light source.
- **Wardrobe and frame rules.** The client is in a plain black cape and nothing else identifiable. **No face, ever** — the crown is the subject. The practitioner is hands only. Leave the real room in frame: the station, the cables, the floor, the mat. The mess is what makes it read as a real appointment.
- **Casting.** The person you shoot has to have a visible condition on the treated area in beat one. This format does not work on clear skin — there'd be nothing for the sentence to be about.
- **Text.** One word per beat, centred low, white with a heavy drop shadow, held roughly 3.5s each. Open in caps, close in lowercase, and colour exactly one word (green in the original) for emphasis. Same position every time.

**Or generate it**

Image prompt for the beat that has to be right — the product coating the problem area:

```
vertical 9:16 top-down photograph shot from just above and behind a seated
{SUBJECT}, the bare scalp filling the upper half of the frame and coated in
{PRODUCT} spread in visible streaks with skin showing through, {SUBJECT}
wearing a plain black barber cape and seated in a barber chair on a concrete
floor, a dark carved wooden barber station with metal drawer pulls behind, a
stool and floor cables at the edge of frame, flat even indoor light with no
visible window, phone-camera look, slight grain, no retouching of the skin,
face not visible, no on-screen text
```

**Motion:** camera locked at that overhead angle and completely still for the whole beat — only the practitioner's hands move, spreading the product across the scalp in one continuous pass.

**Text overlay:** one word per beat, centred low, white with a heavy drop shadow, ~3.5s each, reading as one sentence in order — `{WORD_1}` / `{WORD_2}` / `{WORD_3}` / `{WORD_4}` / `{WORD_5}` / `{WORD_6}` — opening words in caps, closing words in lowercase, one word coloured for emphasis.

Generate every beat from the same seed frame so the room, the chair and the angle match exactly across all six. If the room drifts between beats, the format breaks — the whole mechanic depends on the frame being identical.

**Reference:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DUe1HtWjI3p/
