# Subtitled monologue, evidence cutaways — rebuild sheet

An 85-second studio monologue about washing supermarket produce, cut against sourced footage and labelled evidence cards — 677,778 views, 20,368 likes, posted by drewcanole with the caption "You're buying produce wrong…".

**Why it works**

The caption box never finishes a sentence — every beat hands you half a clause, so there is no clean place to stop watching, and the speaker's authority carries the parts the pictures can't. Then each claim is paid off by a small circular card with a plain name under it — mould, a petri dish, a teaspoon of baking soda — so the argument reads as a series of labelled exhibits rather than a man asserting things.

**The beats**

| Time | What happens | On-screen text |
|---|---|---|
| 6.77s | Presenter chest-up in a dark studio, wooden director's chair, blue-grey wool overshirt, glasses, broadcast mic in frame left, hand behind his head. A vertical clip of a filthy industrial produce-wash tank — murky orange-brown water, corroded metal — is composited over his lower half. | Orange banner: "Your Grocery Store Produce Might Be Poisoning You!" |
| 20.3s | Full-frame cutaway, presenter gone: a supermarket produce aisle from a tilted low angle, misters running over lettuce, carrots, herbs, beetroot, cabbage, broccoli; sun flare blown out top left. | "hydrated." |
| 33.84s | Back to the identical studio frame, hands clasped, talking to the lens. Two circular cards with dashed yellow borders composited low in frame: a green fruit spotted with black mould, and a petri dish of bacterial colonies. | "Black mold, bacteria, biofilm" — last word tinted pale blue |
| 47.37s | Same studio frame, fist at his chin. Two circular cards with dashed pink borders: jars and a glass of white powder, and clear glass bottles. | "teaspoon of baking soda or" · card labels "One teaspoon of Baking Soda" and "White" |
| 60.9s | Full-frame cutaway, presenter gone: a tattooed forearm pressing down into a beige ceramic bowl on a stainless counter, shallow depth, working kitchen out of focus behind. Small circular card with a dashed white border — a water-droplet splash. | "excess water where bacteria" · card label "Excess Water" |
| 74.44s | Full-frame cutaway, presenter gone: two hands holding a head of broccoli against a dark background of greens, a black spray-bottle nozzle entering top left and misting it. Backlit, food-commercial look. | "Wash your produce every single" — last two words tinted pale blue |

Three notes on what the frames do **not** show, so nobody fills them in by guessing: the second card at 47.37s reads only "White" in the still — the rest of that label is not legible, so treat it as a partial. Whether the cutaways are the creator's own footage or licensed stock cannot be told from stills; either way they were not shot in the studio. And a contact sheet is stills, so camera movement inside any beat — whether the aisle shot pans, whether the broccoli shot is locked — is unknowable here.

**What carries the value**

The named contaminant made visible in a labelled card, sitting under a sentence that never finishes. The mould, the petri dish, the murky wash tank — the viewer is handed a specific thing to be afraid of and a specific cheap thing to do about it, both as pictures with names on them rather than as claims. The presenter's face is the credential; the cards are the evidence; the unfinished caption is the retention device.

This one needs a person on camera who can hold authority — it is not replicable without talent.

**Shoot it**

- **Camera:** one locked frame on your speaker, chest-up, phone on a tripod at seated eye height. It must be *identical* every time you return to it — same chair, same distance, same angle — because the cards land in the same empty space each beat. Never move it, never cut to a second angle.
- **Background:** plain black. A dark wall or a black sheet a few feet behind the chair does it; keep light off the background so it falls away entirely.
- **Light:** one soft key from the front (a window, or a softbox), slightly above eye line. Add a small light behind and to the side for the rim on the shoulders if you have one — it is what separates him from the black. Nothing else lit.
- **Framing:** leave the bottom third of the frame deliberately empty. That is where the caption box and the cards go, and a busy lower half will kill the format.
- **Wardrobe:** plain, textured, mid-tone — a wool overshirt, a knit. No pattern, no logo, nothing that competes with the cards. Same outfit start to finish, since the studio beats have to cut together as one take.
- **Prop:** a broadcast mic on a boom arm entering the left of frame. It is set dressing that buys authority; it does not need to be the mic you actually record on.
- **Cutaways:** shoot or source three, and make them look like nowhere near the studio — a store aisle, a kitchen counter, a clean product close-up. They go full-frame with the speaker completely absent.
- **Cards:** circular crops with a dashed border, dropped into the empty lower half, each with the plain name of the thing under it in white bold.

**Or generate it**

The single most important beat is the studio frame where the mechanism gets named (33.84s) — get that one right and the rest is cutaways.

```
vertical 9:16, {SUBJECT} seated chest-up in a wooden director's chair against
a plain black studio background, wearing a plain textured overshirt and
wire-rim glasses, a broadcast microphone on a boom arm entering the left of
frame, soft key light from the front and a subtle rim on the shoulders,
everything behind falling to black, hands loose and low in frame, mid-sentence
toward the lens, clean studio look with slight grain, no on-screen text, with
a clear empty area across the lower half of the frame where {PRODUCT} evidence
cards will be composited
```

**Motion:** camera absolutely locked — same chair, same distance, same black background at every presenter beat; only the speaker's head and hands move, and the label cards pop into the empty lower half without any camera move.

**Text overlay pattern:**

- Hook beat — an orange banner across the middle of the frame, white bold: `{Your everyday thing} Might Be {harming} You!`
- Every beat after — one dark navy caption box in the identical lower-centre position, carrying one clause of continuous speech cut off mid-sentence, with the last word or two tinted pale blue: `{spoken clause} {trailing words}`
- Beneath it — circular cards with a dashed border, each captioned in white bold with the thing's plain name: `{Named thing}`

**Reference:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DUsu-TtEaao/
