# Character sketch — rebuild sheet

A human-scale lanternfly, arms and hands and all, lounging in a real family's recliner and then walking around their backyard — 20.4s, no words on screen, 559,106 views and 37,136 likes for @thepestpaisan.

**Why it works**

The character declares the entire premise in frame one, so there is no setup to sit through and nothing to disbelieve — a giant pest slouched in a recliner with the family dog underneath is already the joke. Because it plays as a bit rather than a pitch, the caption can land the punchline ("Lanternfly just gets bullied online all day 😂😂😭") without a single word appearing on screen to argue with.

**The beats**

| Time | What happens | On-screen text |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 1.63s | Interior, handheld at seat height. The lanternfly is reclined deep into the open footrest of a tan leather sofa, one long jointed arm draped out to the left, its rod-thin legs running out of the bottom of frame. A shaggy dog lies on the rug beneath it. Cream-green wall, two floating shelves behind. | none |
| 4.90s | Same room, camera drifted slightly in. Left arm raised and gesturing forward, mouth working — it is talking. The dog has lifted its head. | none |
| 8.17s | Same room, tighter. Both hands drawn in together in front of the body, head tipped back, mouth open mid-word. | none |
| 11.44s | Hard cut outside. Low angle tilted up: the character standing full height on a sunlit lawn beside the house, hands clasped, casting a real shadow on the grass. Bare trees, hard blue sky. | none |
| 14.71s | A different exterior plate — visibly a different day, trees in full green leaf. It stands centre-frame with both arms spread wide in a shrug. | none |
| 17.98s | A third exterior plate — red bush, stone-and-siding house corner, background blurred. Camera close and low, moving with it as it strides toward and past the lens. | none |

Two things the frames do not settle. **There is dialogue but I cannot read it** — the mouth is clearly working at 4.90s and 8.17s, so the character is speaking, and the stills carry no way to know what it says or whether the voice is the joke. And **the three outdoor beats are not one scene**: bare trees at 11.44s, full summer green at 14.71s, a red bush at 17.98s. Those are separate plates shot on separate days and cut together, not a continuous walk.

**What carries the value**

The character. A lanternfly at human scale with human arms and hands, rendered into a real living room and a real lawn — clean edges, a correct shadow on the grass, no rig and no performer visible, which is consistent with an animated character composited into ordinary phone footage (the stills cannot say which tool made it). Nothing is demonstrated, nothing is claimed, no product appears in any frame. The incongruity is the entire payload and it is fully loaded in the first second.

**Shoot it**

You are not shooting a performance — you are shooting **empty plates** for a character to be dropped into, so the shooting job is easy and the craft sits in the animation.

- **Camera:** phone, vertical, handheld and roughly still — hold at the height the character's head will be (seat height indoors, low and tilted up outdoors). One reframe in per interior beat, nothing more. The last beat is the only moving shot: get low and walk with the character's path so the background blurs past.
- **Locations:** one interior that is obviously somebody's actual home — a used sofa, a rug, a dog if you have one — then three separate outdoor corners of the same property. Do not try to match them; the source doesn't, and the mismatch costs it nothing.
- **Light:** flat available daylight only. Interior from an off-camera window, exterior full midday sun with hard shadows. No lights, no grade, no colour work — the plate has to look like a phone.
- **Wardrobe / dressing:** nothing. Leave the room exactly as it is. Ordinary lived-in mess is what sells the composite.
- **Talent:** none on camera. Budget your effort into the character asset instead: it has to be a *character* — human arms, human hands, human posture, readable gestures — not an accurate insect.
- **Text:** none, at any point. Put the line in the caption.

**Or generate it**

The beat worth generating first is the opener — the recliner. If that frame lands, the rest is coverage.

```
vertical 9:16 handheld phone photograph of a real lived-in living room — tan leather
reclining sofa with the footrest out, cream-green wall, two floating wooden shelves
holding a framed photo and letter decor, a shaggy dog lying on the rug below — with
{SUBJECT} rendered photoreal at human scale, reclined deep into the open recliner in a
relaxed slouch, one long jointed arm draped along the seat back, {PRODUCT} within reach
on the seat beside it, flat midday daylight from an off-camera window, no colour grade,
phone-camera look, slight grain, no on-screen text
```

*The source frame has no product in it at all — the `{PRODUCT}` slot is there for a rebuild that needs one, and it can be dropped.*

**Motion:** handheld at seat height, essentially holding still with a breathing drift and one small reframe in, while the character gestures and talks — no push, no cut inside the beat.

**Text overlay:** none. Nothing appears on screen at any beat. The pattern to reuse is the post caption:

```
{CHARACTER} just gets {treatment} online all day 😂😂😭
```

**Reference:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DcjY8wCxjUb/
