# Locked-frame screen readout — rebuild sheet

A man sits in a parked car with a laptop on his lap and walks the viewer through a document on his screen for just under three minutes, one caption pinned over the whole thing — 1,894,115 views, 149,442 likes, 178.3s, @cortez_seay. The post's entire caption is "YouTube: Cortez Seay".

**Why it works** — The frame never changes, so the only thing the eye has to track is the document on the screen, and the document keeps giving: a new headed section with new photo evidence every time you look back. The pinned line never updates either, which turns it into a standing promise the deck keeps paying off, and the two blank one-word screens at the open and the close ("Rabbits" → "Crickets") frame the whole run as a thing with chapters, so it reads as a case being made rather than a person talking.

**The beats**

| Time | What happens | On-screen text |
|---|---|---|
| 14.26s | Locked frame from the driver's seat: man in a pink sweatshirt in the passenger seat, seat belt on, clip-on mic on his chest, laptop open on his lap. Daylight, trees and a parked red car through the window behind him. One hand raised mid-gesture. Laptop screen almost blank white with one word: **Rabbits**. | It IS this serious 💔🥺 |
| 42.79s | Same frame exactly. He looks down at the screen, hand toward it. Screen now shows a document section — a small heading, a block of body text, two photographs of people. | It IS this serious 💔🥺 |
| 71.32s | Same frame. Mid-speech, finger on the screen. Screen shows a headed section with a bulleted paragraph and a row of about four photographs of people. | It IS this serious 💔🥺 |
| 99.85s | Same frame. Still talking. New section on screen: a two-word heading that reads like a name, a list under it, two photographs of a person in red. | It IS this serious 💔🥺 |
| 128.38s | Same frame. Leaning back, hand raised near his face, eyes still on the screen. Another headed section, a list, photographs of people outdoors. | It IS this serious 💔🥺 |
| 156.9s | Same frame. He faces the camera, hand raised. Screen back to almost blank white with one word: **Crickets**. | It IS this serious 💔🥺 |

What the frames do not show, stated plainly: the headings and body text on the laptop are too small to read on the contact sheet, so what those sections actually argue is unknown — only that they are headed, written out, and illustrated with photos of people. There is no audio here, so what he says is unknown; the mic, the open mouth and the pointing hand are the whole basis for calling it a monologue. Six stills across 178.3s cannot prove the video never cuts — every sampled beat is the identical framing, which is strong but not proof. The two emoji render small and are read as broken-heart and pleading-face.

**What carries the value** — The document on the screen. Labelled sections, each written out and backed by a small grid of photos, stacking up inside a frame where nothing else moves. The face, the car and the caption are constants; the deck is the only moving part, which makes the deck the argument. If you rebuild this and the screen is empty or vague, there is no video.

**Shoot it**

- **Camera.** Phone on the dashboard or clamped to the windscreen, at driver's-seat height, level with the subject's face. Vertical. It does not move and it does not cut — set it, sit down, run the whole thing in one take. Frame so the subject fills one side and the laptop screen fills the other; the screen has to be readable, so check that before you roll.
- **Location.** Parked car, engine off, daylight. Park it somewhere with something ordinary out the window — trees, other cars. Nothing scenic; the background is wallpaper and should stay wallpaper for the full runtime.
- **Light.** Whatever comes through the glass. No lights, no reflector. Park so the sun is not behind the subject or you will lose the face and the screen both.
- **Sound.** Clip-on mic on the chest, visible in shot — it reads as "I set this up to say something", not as a slip.
- **Wardrobe.** One plain, comfortable top in a single colour. No pattern, no logo competing with the screen. Whatever they wear at the start they wear at the end — the frame is locked, so any change is a mistake the viewer will catch.
- **The deck is the real prep.** Build the document before you shoot: a one-word title card to open, four or five headed sections each with a short written point and two to four photos, a one-word card to close. Advance it yourself as you talk.
- **Note on casting:** this is one person holding attention for nearly three minutes with delivery alone. It needs a presenter who can carry that. It is not a no-talent format.

**Or generate it**

```
vertical 9:16 photograph, {SUBJECT} sitting in the passenger seat of a parked
car, seat belt across the chest, a small black clip-on microphone on the chest,
an open silver laptop resting on their lap and angled toward them; the laptop
screen fills the lower right of frame showing a document — a short heading, a
block of body text at left, a row of small photographs at right, with {PRODUCT}
as one of the document's labelled sections; {SUBJECT} looking down at the screen
with one hand raised mid-gesture toward it; through the car window behind them,
flat daylight, green trees and parked cars; camera fixed at driver's-seat height
and level with the face, subject filling one side of frame and the screen the
other; daylight through glass, phone-camera look, slight grain, no retouching,
no on-screen text
```

**Motion:** camera locked off on the dash and never moving or cutting — only the subject's hands and the content on the laptop screen change between beats. Generate every beat from the same seed frame so the car, the window and the wardrobe match exactly.

**Text overlay:** one line pinned top-centre for the entire runtime, identical from first frame to last — `{SHORT REACTION LINE} {emoji}{emoji}` — white with a black outline, casual sentence case with one word in full caps for stress. The source line is "It IS this serious 💔🥺"; the caps word and the two soft emoji are the pattern, not the words.

**Reference:** https://www.instagram.com/p/Db4M9M8iI_B/
