# Dropped premise, subtitled skit — rebuild sheet

A 31.6s comedy skit shot on one sunny rooftop patio: a "POV:" premise banner lands over the opening, drops away, and a group of friends then performs the premise in dialogue for the rest of the runtime. 1,455,355 views · 85,195 likes · @jackshowers.

**Why it works** — The banner makes a promise in the first two seconds and then removes itself, so every line the cast says afterwards is the viewer silently checking the picture against a claim that is no longer on screen. Because the lines are performed straight in a real place with no costume and no set, the joke reads as caught rather than written, and the small burned-in subtitles keep it legible with the sound off.

## The beats

| Time | What happens | On-screen text |
|---|---|---|
| 2.52s | Handheld two-shot on a rooftop patio — a bearded man in a grey tee in the blurred foreground, a man in a black tee mid-sentence facing him. Round table between them with energy-drink cans, a water bottle, snack packets. Brick buildings and overhead wires behind. | **POV: White boys switching up when their black friend arrives** (pinned, top-centre, four lines) · small subtitle low-centre: *I don't know* |
| 7.57s | Wider from a step back — four or five men in tees, shorts and caps around the table on plastic chairs and a sofa, one standing with a hand raised mid-gesture. Artificial-turf decking, blue sky. | Same banner, same position, same wording |
| 12.62s | Cut in to a single — a young man in a grey tee square-on to the lens, talking. Back door of the house and a grill behind him on the same deck. Banner gone from here on. | *We had a few brothers at my private school* |
| 17.67s | Camera has swung off the group to the far end of the deck: grill, bucket, propane tank, wooden railings, neighbouring rooftops. A person in a green top stands at the extreme left frame edge, cut off by the frame line. | none |
| 22.72s | Low and close — a bearded man in sunglasses and a grey graphic tee leaning toward the lens, his hand meeting another hand entering from the right. A dap greeting with someone the frame never shows. | none |
| 27.76s | Looking down from the deck onto the street — parked cars, red-brick building and shopfronts opposite, a person in a green top and light trousers walking on the far sidewalk. | *Yeah* |

**What the frames do not show:** the arriving friend is never in frame at any sampled beat. The green top at the edge of 17.67s and the person on the street at 27.76s may or may not be the same person, and the hand in the 22.72s greeting is never identified — six stills cannot establish when the arrival actually happens or who the greeting is with. Everything between the sampled beats is unknown; the audio and the full dialogue are not available here.

## What carries the value

The performed dialogue. The banner sets the premise once and abandons it; from beat three on, the payload is the over-corrected lines the group starts saying, escalating one beat at a time and kept readable by small burned-in subtitles. Nothing is demonstrated, nothing is held to the lens, and the camera proves nothing — the writing and the delivery are the whole product.

## Shoot it

- **Camera:** phone, vertical, handheld from inside the group at seated height. Never on a tripod, never locked. Cover the same scene from several positions — a foreground-blurred two-shot, a wide of the whole table, a face-on single of whoever has the line, plus a swing off the group and one low close on the greeting. Reframe constantly; the wobble is part of the register.
- **Light:** hard midday sun outdoors, no bounce, no fill. Faces go contrasty and the sky blows out — leave it.
- **Wardrobe:** exactly what the cast already owns. Plain t-shirts, shorts, caps, sunglasses. No costume, no styling, nothing that reads as a character — the moment anyone looks dressed, the bit reads as written.
- **Location:** one real place used for the whole runtime. Somewhere people would actually be sitting around — a deck, a yard, a garage. Leave the mess in: cans, bottles, packets, a grill, cheap furniture.
- **Text:** two layers. Bold white premise banner top-centre, "POV: …", pinned over the first two beats only, then gone for good. From there on, small dialogue subtitles low-centre carrying the spoken lines verbatim.
- **Writing:** the beats have to escalate. Each line must go further than the last, and the last one lands short and flat ("Yeah").
- **Cast:** this one needs performers. It cannot be rebuilt with an operator and a product.

## Or generate it

The single most important beat is the open — the premise banner over an ordinary group in a real place. Everything after it is coverage of the same location.

```
vertical 9:16 handheld photograph, a group of {SUBJECT} in plain t-shirts, shorts
and caps sitting around a round patio table on a sunny rooftop deck, one of them
mid-sentence with the others turned toward him, {PRODUCT} standing on the table
among cans and snack packets, artificial-turf decking, wooden railings, brick
buildings and overhead wires behind, hard midday sun, nobody looking at the
camera, phone-camera look, slight grain, no retouching, no on-screen text
```

*(The original has only drink cans and snacks on that table — no product anywhere in the video. `{PRODUCT}` is the rebuild slot, not something the frames show.)*

**Motion:** handheld from inside the group at seated height, drifting and reframing between the person talking and the people listening, never locked and never cutting away from the deck.

**Text overlay pattern:**
- Beats 1–2, pinned top-centre, bold white sans, four lines, identical both beats: `POV: {group} switching up when {the person who changes the room} arrives` — then gone for the rest of the runtime.
- Beat 3 onward: small burned-in dialogue subtitles low-centre carrying the spoken line verbatim, one to two short lines per beat.

**Reference:** https://www.instagram.com/p/Dblp5C1JfH2/
