# Subtitled monologue, angle cuts — rebuild sheet

A 43-second health-tip monologue: one man, shirtless, talks straight to camera about salt in the shower, cutting between his bathroom floor, an overhead angle inside the running shower, the counter and his kitchen — 41,190 views, 1,950 likes.

**Why it works**

Every caption card is one unfinished clause with a single word set in italic blue, so the sentence is never closed on screen and there is no clean place to stop watching. The cuts change the angle and the room but never leave the speaker, so the whole runtime reads as one continuous argument delivered by a man whose own body and own bathroom are the only credential offered.

**The beats**

| Time | What happens | On-screen text |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 3.46s | Floor-level close in a dark stone bathroom: the speaker, shirtless, glasses, grey-flecked hair and beard, crouched low toward the lens mid-word. A pile of white salt sits on the dark floor at the bottom of frame. | but you will **thank** me |
| 10.37s | Hard cut to a high overhead angle looking straight down into a black-tiled shower, rainfall head at the top of frame. He stands below in black shorts, looking up into the lens, salt scattered in a ring around his bare feet. | could be the most |
| 17.28s | Same overhead angle, water now running, steam in the air. Still talking up into the lens, salt still on the wet floor. | **more** than anywhere |
| 24.19s | Same overhead angle, water over him, head tipped back, mouth open. No caption on screen at this instant. | — (nothing visible in this frame) |
| 31.1s | Cut to a warm wood-ceilinged room: chest-up, grey towel at the waist, both hands planted on a pale marble counter edge, leaning into the lens. | you step out |
| 38.01s | Kitchen, wood ceiling and daylight windows: black tank top, a white cockatoo on his shoulder, an open palm of salt held up beside his face toward the lens. | one **handful** of salt |

Bold marks the word the video sets in italic and tints blue. The frames do not show what happens between the sampled beats, so the exact number of cuts and whether the caption drops out or simply cycles at 24.19s is not knowable from the stills — treat the caption as continuous and the cuts as more frequent than six.

**What carries the value**

The running caption that is always mid-sentence. It opens on a promise it never closes ("but you will thank me") and ends on the instruction itself ("one handful of salt"), so the viewer has to keep reading to finish a sentence the video refuses to finish for them. Everything else — the body, the real shower, the salt actually on the floor — exists to make the man saying it worth believing. No packaging, brand or label appears in any frame.

**Shoot it**

- **Camera:** phone, vertical, handheld or propped — but a different position every cut. You need at least three distinct setups: a low floor-level close-up, an overhead looking straight down from above the shower head, and a chest-up frame in a completely different room. The camera does not move inside a beat; the change happens on the cut.
- **The overhead is the shot that costs you something.** It is directly above the subject looking down, close enough that the shower head is in frame. Rig the phone above the shower before you shoot anything else.
- **Light:** whatever the room has. The bathroom beats are dim and moody with the tile eating the light; the last two beats are warm daylight in a wood-ceilinged room. The contrast between them is doing work — do not light them the same.
- **Wardrobe:** bare-chested for the bathroom beats, towel at the waist for the counter beat, a tank top for the kitchen close. The body is on screen the entire time and is part of the pitch, so cast accordingly — this one does not work without a presenter willing to be shirtless on camera.
- **Props:** the substance is physically present in every location — a pile on the floor, scattered around the feet, held in an open palm. Do not cut to a product shot; keep it in the frame with the person.
- **Captions:** burn them in, one clause per beat, centred low-middle, white sans with a soft shadow, one word per card in italic and tinted blue. Break the clauses so no card ever completes a sentence.
- The cockatoo in the final frame is the creator's own; nothing in the video explains it. It is not part of the format — ignore it or replace it with nothing.

**Or generate it**

The single most important beat is the overhead shower frame.

```
vertical 9:16 photograph shot from a high overhead angle looking straight
down into a walk-in shower, black slate tile walls and floor, a matte-black
rainfall shower head at the top of frame, {SUBJECT} standing directly below
in black shorts, bare-chested, looking straight up into the lens mid-speech,
a scattered ring of {PRODUCT} spread across the wet floor around their bare
feet, warm indirect bathroom light with faint steam, phone-camera look,
slight grain, no retouching, no on-screen text
```

*Motion:* camera held overhead and effectively fixed for the whole beat, no push and no pan — only the subject, the falling water and the steam move under it.

*Text overlay pattern:* one clause per beat, centred in the lower-middle of frame, white sans-serif with a soft drop shadow and exactly one word set in italic and tinted blue — `{clause fragment with one {emphasis word} italicised}`. The clauses read as one continuous sentence in order and are never completed on screen.

**Reference:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DcRNkUKNZq4/ by milesandmika
