# Painful way → zone montage — rebuild sheet

A 37.85s hair-removal reel that opens on a public, crowd-watched removal stunt and then cuts to a silent foam applied across three different body zones — 52,805,988 views, 189,569 likes, by leahandersenphdaa231.

**Why it works**
It rents an audience: act one puts a real crowd on screen watching someone endure the old method, so the viewer inherits their reaction before the product exists. Then it never argues — it just shows a blob of foam sitting on thick, untouched hair three separate times on three separate body zones, and the repetition is the claim.

**The beats**

| Time | What happens | On-screen text |
|---|---|---|
| 3.03s | Outdoor pop-up canopy, daylight, clothing rack behind. A woman in a black tank and denim shorts sits in a folding chair, both arms raised behind her head. A white-gloved hand brings a red-handled applicator to her armpit. About six people stand behind her watching and smiling, several holding printed booklets. | pinned disclaimer (see note) |
| 9.08s | Same canopy. A second woman leans across her; a gloved hand holds a white cloth strip at the armpit, another hand holds a white can. The seated woman's face is screwed up mid-reaction. Crowd still watching. | pinned disclaimer |
| 15.14s | Hard cut. Extreme close-up in a pale bathroom: a hand pressing a folded white towel. **What the towel is pressed against is not identifiable in this frame.** | pinned disclaimer |
| 21.2s | Lean torso side-on, arm raised, bright daylight through venetian blinds. Kitchen counter behind — bowl of strawberries, knife on a board. A swirled rosette of white foam sits on the ribs and waist. No face. | pinned disclaimer |
| 27.25s | Extreme close-up of a raised armpit with a dense patch of dark hair, a thick white foam rosette pressed onto the skin beside it. White bathtub edge and a wicker basket out of focus behind. | pinned disclaimer |
| 33.31s | Front-on torso, water beading on the skin, blind-slat sunlight striping across it. A hand at frame right holds a white can and dispenses a stream of foam onto the stomach, beside a swirl already there. No face. | pinned disclaimer |

**What the frames do not show — read these before you rebuild**

- **No persuasive text anywhere.** The only overlay in all six frames is a small, low-contrast legal line pinned bottom-centre for the whole runtime. Best read at contact-sheet resolution: *"Due to lighting and photography equipment, the actual product photos may differ slightly from the real product. Color and usage effects may also vary slightly. All products are subject to the actual item received."* Treat the exact wording as approximate — it is not fully legible.
- **No result shot in these frames.** Nothing shows hair coming off, rinsing away, or the after-state. The caption claims it ("dissolves body hair quickly, and rinses away effortlessly with warm shower water in minutes") but the frames sampled do not prove it. A rebuild may well need that beat; the source may have it between samples.
- **Act one and act two are almost certainly different footage.** Different body, different location, different light. Do not plan this as one shoot.
- **Whether the product in act one is the same product is unknown.** There is a white can in frames 1 and 2, but nothing identifies it as the mousse rather than a wax or an aftercare spray.
- **Camera movement is not readable from stills.** Framing is handheld-close throughout; nothing tells us whether the camera moves inside a shot.
- **Act one's substance is unconfirmed.** An applicator, a cloth strip and a hard reaction are consistent with waxing, but the frames do not name it.

**What carries the value**

The untouched close-up of thick white foam sitting on a dense patch of body hair — set up by a crowd watching someone wince through the old method, and repeated across three different body zones so it reads as *anywhere on you*. Not the product, not a claim, not a line of text. The blob on the hair.

**Shoot it**

You cannot get this whole structure from one faceless phone shoot — act one needs a real reacting person and a small crowd. Act two needs nobody.

*Act one (the opener, ~0–12s)*
- Camera: phone, vertical, handheld, standing height, wide enough that the crowd behind reads as a crowd. Shoot the reaction, not the technique.
- Light: outdoors under a canopy, flat daylight. No lighting kit — the amateur look is doing work.
- Cast: one person in the chair with their arms up, one person doing the removal in white gloves, four to six bystanders standing behind close enough to be in frame. Nobody speaks; nobody addresses camera.
- Wardrobe: everyday clothes, whatever people turned up in. The chair is a folding chair. The location is a market stall, not a set.
- If you can't stage a crowd, this half is the one to source rather than shoot.

*Act two (the product, ~13–38s)*
- Camera: phone, vertical, very close — the body zone fills the frame. Hold each shot; one zone per shot.
- Light: hard daylight through a window, blinds on. The blind stripes across the skin at 33.31s are a look worth copying.
- Wardrobe: black waistband bottoms and nothing else in frame. Never include a face.
- Three zones minimum, three different rooms if you can: side/ribs, armpit, stomach. Foam goes on as a thick swirled rosette and is left to sit — do not rub it in on camera.
- The hero shot is the armpit: leave the hair dense and untrimmed, leave the skin unretouched. Any grooming or smoothing kills it.
- Shoot the after-state too, even though the source frames don't show it.

**Or generate it**

The single most important beat is 27.25s — the armpit close-up.

```
vertical 9:16 extreme close-up photograph, {SUBJECT}'s raised inner arm and armpit filling
most of the frame, a dense untrimmed patch of dark body hair, a thick swirled rosette of
white foam from {PRODUCT} pressed onto the skin beside the hair, skin unretouched with
visible texture and pores, background a real bathroom thrown out of focus — white bathtub
edge, a wicker basket, a tiled floor — soft daylight from the side, phone-camera look,
slight grain, no face in frame, no on-screen text
```

**Motion:** camera stays very close and nearly still on the armpit with only a small handheld drift while the foam sits untouched — no zoom, no cut inside the shot.

**Text overlay:** none. Leave the frame clean — this format's whole text budget is one small, low-contrast, centred line pinned at the bottom for the entire runtime: `{legal disclaimer}`.

**Reference:** https://www.instagram.com/p/Dbmik5RNWQV/
