# Running-caption borrowed cutaways — rebuild sheet

A 78-second selfie monologue shot in one dark room, where every piece of proof is
borrowed material pasted into the frame — strangers' before photos, a stock
mechanism diagram, competitors' shop listings. 2,812,071 views · 22,563 likes ·
@clairelyyouu.

**Why it works**

The burned-in caption runs continuously and always breaks mid-phrase, so the
sentence is never finished at any moment you might leave — "everything you can
think of to get rid of that unwanted" hangs there until the next beat pays it
off. Underneath that, she never has to shoot a demo or a result: the credibility
is imported, pasted over her own face as photos, a diagram and screenshots, which
reads as receipts rather than as claims.

**The beats**

| Time | What happens | On-screen text |
|---|---|---|
| 6.27s | Selfie mid-shot, eyes wide, dark room. Two borrowed close-ups pasted across the top third over her own face — an upper lip with dark hair, a chin with stubble being touched. | `Goodbye unwanted hair🤯‼️` (white box, held) |
| 18.8s | Collage gone, full frame is her talking. Gold beaded pendant light burning behind her right shoulder, cream half-zip sweater, dark wall. | `everything you can think of to get rid of that unwanted` |
| 31.34s | She pushes a pink/yellow dropper bottle at the lens, other hand open mid-gesture. The product enters her existing frame — it never gets its own shot. | `Now,` |
| 43.87s | She touches her own chin; a white stock diagram card pasted across the top third, three labelled follicle cross-sections. A white pump bottle sits bottom-left. | Card reads `Normal Hair Follicle / Cyperus Rotundus Application / Weakened Follicle Result`; caption reads `slows down the activity of your hair fall` |
| 56.4s | Same framing, both hands up near her chin holding something small toward the lens. | `are you freaking` |
| 68.94s | Three shopping-app screenshots pasted in a vertical stack down the left, same oil in different storefronts. She stays right of frame, pulling a strand of her own hair. | `be careful because I've seen a ton of fakes floating` |

The caption asks for a comment to get the product: *"comment 'oil' for product
details!!! Make sure you're following so I can send it straight to your
messages"* — the video itself never names where to buy.

**What the frames don't show:** whether this is one take or cut — the framing
shifts between beats, which could be handheld drift or edits, and six stills
can't tell them apart. There is no audio here, so the spoken script beyond the
captions is unknown. There is also no before/after of the product working on
*her* — the only before-images in the video are the borrowed ones at 6s, and what
she holds at 56s is too small in the still to identify.

**What carries the value**

The borrowed material, not the presenter and not the product. Strangers' before
close-ups open it, a stock mechanism diagram justifies it, and rival marketplace
listings close it with a fakes warning that reads as her protecting you. She
shoots none of it. The running unfinished caption is what holds the viewer
between paste-ins.

**Shoot it**

- **Camera:** phone selfie at arm's length, held just above eye level, framed
  mid-chest up and slightly off-centre. Handheld, small natural drift, no zoom,
  no b-roll. Everything — including the product — enters this one frame.
- **Light:** one warm practical behind the shoulder in the upper corner of frame,
  visible in shot and flaring; the room otherwise dark and falling off. Face
  front-lit by the phone screen. Do not add a ring light or clean up the shadows
  — the amber cast and shadow noise are the whole look.
- **Wardrobe/room:** plain neutral knit, hair down, no set dressing beyond the
  one lamp. The room must not change for the entire runtime.
- **The actual work is the paste-ins.** Collect them before you shoot: two or
  three close-ups of the problem, one diagram of the mechanism, three
  screenshots of competing listings. Composite them over the top third or down
  one side — never full-screen, the face stays visible under them.
- **Caption rule:** never let a line complete a thought at a beat boundary. Cut
  the sentence mid-phrase and carry it into the next beat.
- **Needs a presenter.** This is 78 seconds of one person talking to camera;
  there is no version of it without someone on screen.

**Or generate it**

Base plate for the opening beat — the pasted panels are composited on afterward,
not generated:

```
vertical 9:16 selfie photograph, {SUBJECT} in a plain cream half-zip knit
sweater, long loose hair, sitting close to a phone held at arm's length just
above eye level, framed from mid-chest up and slightly off-centre, in a dark
room with brown-grey walls; the only light is a single small warm gold pendant
lamp burning behind their shoulder in the upper right, throwing a soft flare and
leaving the rest of the room in falloff; warm amber cast on the face, front-lit
by the phone screen, phone-camera look, slight noise in the shadows, no
retouching, no on-screen text. {PRODUCT} is not in frame at this beat — it
enters later, held up to the lens in this same room and light.
```

**Motion:** handheld selfie at arm's length, tiny natural drift and re-framing as
they talk, no zoom, no cuts inside the beat — the frame stays on the face while
pasted panels appear over the top of it.

**Text overlay:** one white-box hook line held over the opening beat —
`Goodbye {problem}{emoji}‼️`. Then a running white lower-centre caption for the
rest of the runtime, one or two short lines at a time, cut mid-phrase so the
sentence carries across beats: `everything you can think of to {failed attempts}`
→ `Now,` → `{mechanism claim}` → `be careful because I've seen a ton of fakes
floating`. Borrowed panels paste into the top third or down one side, never
full-screen.

**Reference:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DTktKp3DdM9/
