# Subtitled monologue, evidence cutaways — rebuild sheet

A guy with visibly active acne opens in macro on his own inflamed forehead, argues for six clauses straight to a front camera in a dark bedroom, cuts once to a physical analogy for a clogged pore and once to himself applying a product, then closes on the same forehead. 32.3s · 462,614 views · 2,829 likes.

**Why it works**
The narration is one sentence chopped into fragments, so every beat is mid-thought and there is no clean place to leave. The proof is the operator's own untreated skin, put on screen before any claim is made and returned to at the end — advice about not popping pimples lands differently from a face that has them.

**The beats**

| Time | What happens | On-screen text |
|---|---|---|
| 2.58s | Extreme macro on his own forehead and brow. One hand pushes his fringe up from the top of frame, the other index finger touches a raised red papule above the brow; six or seven more inflamed spots across the forehead, unretouched. His eyes sit at the bottom edge; the room behind is dark. | "but that actually" |
| 7.75s | An inset clip pasted into the upper two-thirds of his own frame: a dark green bottle upright on white paper, a dark metal tube pressed down into a ring of soft white blocks packed at its mouth — a physical analogy for a blocked pore. His hand and black t-shirt are visible around the inset, same dark room. | "it clogs the pore" |
| 12.92s | Arm's-length front camera, head-and-shoulders. Black crew-neck tee, dark fringe, warm lamp glowing behind his right shoulder. Both hands up beside his face, thumb and forefinger pinched, miming a squeeze. | "when you pop it" |
| 18.09s | Same room, same wardrobe, same framing; hands lower, one still pinched near his chin, mouth open mid-speech. Only the gesture has changed. | "so don't pop it" |
| 23.26s | Off the talking frame and tighter: eye, brow, nose and cheek fill the shot while he presses a white tube or stick of product to his cheek below the eye. Something green at the lower right edge, too far out of shot to identify. | "with calming ingredients" |
| 28.42s | Back to the opening forehead macro — same framing, same hand lifting the fringe. The skin is now glossy and wet with applied product, a whitish film across part of it, the spots reading flatter under it. | "produces less oil" |

What the frames do not show, and I have not filled in: the audio, so the sentence is reconstructed from the caption fragments only; what product the white tube at 23.26s is, or what the green object beside it is; whether the analogy insert at 7.75s was built by him or borrowed; and whether any time passed between the first and last beat — the closing forehead may be the same take with product on it rather than a later day. Nothing in the sheet claims a before/after and neither does the post caption.

**What carries the value**
His own visibly active, unretouched acne. It is the first thing on screen and the last, in the same framing both times, which is what licenses the whole argument — the clause chain only stops you leaving. The analogy insert and the product beat are supporting evidence; neither would hold the video on its own.

**Shoot it**
Three setups, one room, one phone.

- *Macro setup (open and close)* — front camera held at arm's length, very close on the forehead so the skin fills the frame with the eyes just at the bottom edge. Hold it still; the closing beat has to match the opening one, so shoot both without moving. Soft frontal light on the skin only, the room behind dark and unreadable. No retouching, no smoothing filter — the spots are the asset.
- *Talking setup* — same room, same front camera, head-and-shoulders, warm practical lamp behind one shoulder, everything else falling dark. Plain black crew-neck tee. Hands work: the pinch mime is what makes "when you pop it" readable without the audio.
- *Analogy insert* — one static shot of a household stand-in for the mechanism, shot on white paper, pasted into the top two-thirds of the talking frame rather than cut to full-frame. It needs to be crude; a clean graphic would break the register.
- *Text* — subtitle the speech in fragments, one per beat, lower centre, same spot every beat, plain white sans with a soft shadow. Never let a beat carry a complete sentence.
- *Talent* — this one needs a real face with a visible version of the problem, and that face has to talk to camera. Rebuild it on clear skin and there is nothing carrying it.

**Or generate it**

```
vertical 9:16 extreme macro photograph filling the frame with {SUBJECT}'s forehead and
brow, their own hand entering from the top of frame to push their fringe up off the skin
and the index finger of the other hand touching one raised inflamed spot just above the
brow, several more unretouched inflamed spots spread across the forehead, their eyes and
the bridge of the nose at the very bottom edge of frame, plain black crew-neck t-shirt,
a dark unlit room behind so nothing of it reads, soft frontal light on the skin only,
phone front-camera look, slight grain, no retouching of the skin, no on-screen text —
{PRODUCT} is not in frame at this beat, it arrives four beats later
```

*Motion:* camera held still and very close on the forehead at arm's length, the only movement the hand lifting the hair and the fingertip pressing beside the spot; no zoom and no cut inside the beat.

*Text overlay pattern:* one clause of the spoken line per beat, lower centre, same position all runtime, plain white sans with a soft drop shadow, each one a mid-sentence fragment that never closes: `but that actually` → `it {what the problem does}` → `when you {the mistake}` → `so don't {the mistake}` → `with {ingredient class}` → `{the result}`

**Reference:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DWJ1fuwgbno/ — @dongzik_skin. Post caption: "If you pop pimples, you'll just make it worse. You need just gentle care #skincare #kskincare #kbeauty #pimple #acne"
