# Then-vs-now demo — rebuild sheet

A garment steamer that inflates into a human body shape, sold by staging the old way of doing the job as a saucepan pressed on a t-shirt and dating it "1726" — 24.9s, 29,960,265 views, 591,239 likes, caption "You won't believe 👀".

**Why it works**

The first three beats are an argument, not a demo: two dated labels put a 300-year gap between a saucepan on a table and a shirt standing up on its own, and a reaction cutout in the corner tells you which one to be amazed by. Once that image has landed the video drops the comparison and the cutout entirely and spends its back half as a plain operating demo — so the hook does the persuading and the demo only has to answer "how".

**The beats**

| Time | What happens | On-screen text |
|---|---|---|
| 1.99s | Modern kitchen-diner. Someone in a maroon hoodie presses a grey saucepan face-down onto a crumpled t-shirt on a dark wood table. A hard-edged green-screen cutout of the creator — red tee, black cap, glasses — sits bottom right, looking at his phone. | Ironing in 1726 · Vs... |
| 5.98s | White-walled room, wood floor. Hands in a black long-sleeve pull a taupe t-shirt down over a white inflatable body form on a small base unit. Cutout still bottom right. | Ironing in 2026 |
| 9.96s | Same room, camera back and lower. The form is fully inflated — torso, arms straight out — the shirt stretched over it and damp, nobody touching it. The cutout's mouth is open. | Ironing in 2026 |
| 13.95s | Kitchen with dark cabinets. The bare machine, a white zipped body bag on its base, stands inflated on the floor, shot from behind. Cutout gone from here on. | You never have to iron clothes again🥹 |
| 17.94s | Tight low shot: a brown "LIMITED EDITION" tee on the form, dark with steam damp toward the hem, a cap hanging in at top left, the control panel and its lit readout centred low. | Set time & temp |
| 21.92s | Same kitchen, wide. The tee now dry, warm-toned and smooth on the inflated form, sleeves out. | none |

*Six stills across 24.9s is what we have, so cuts between these moments are not visible and the first two and last three seconds are unseen. There is no way to tell from frames whether there is a voiceover or music. At least two different garments appear (a plain taupe tee at 5.98/9.96, a printed brown one at 17.94/21.92), so this is two demo passes cut together, not one continuous take. The "1726" beat is staged in a normal modern flat with a saucepan — no period dressing, no costume.*

**What carries the value**

The garment standing up by itself in a full human shape with nobody's hands on it. That single image is unfamiliar enough to hold a scroll on its own; the saucepan in beat one exists only to make it land harder, and the reaction face only points at it. The captions never argue — they just date the two pictures.

**Shoot it**

- **Camera:** phone, vertical, handheld but near-still. Two setups only: a table at standing height looking down for the old-way beat, and the machine straight-on at chest height about two metres back for the reveal. Step in tight and low once, on the control panel, for the step caption. Nothing pans, zooms or whips.
- **Light:** whatever the room has. Flat indoor daylight, no fill, no lamp. The source rooms are plainly lit and slightly grainy and that is doing work — a lit set would read as an ad.
- **Rooms:** ordinary and lived-in. A wall and a floor is enough. Change rooms between the argument half and the demo half; the change reads as time passing.
- **Wardrobe:** none for the hero beats — the only people visible are a pair of forearms in a plain hoodie and a pair of hands in a plain long-sleeve. The reaction layer is one person in a plain tee and cap, cut out on green screen, pinned bottom right, silent, holding a phone. He appears only in the first three beats and never speaks on camera in anything the frames show. Drop him entirely if you have no one — the format still stands.
- **Text:** white bold sans with a heavy drop shadow, centred upper third, big enough to read at a glance. Same style every beat.
- **Runtime:** roughly half the video on the argument, half on the demo. Finish on the clean result with no text at all.

**Or generate it**

The one beat worth generating is the reveal at 9.96s — the object standing filled out on its own.

```
vertical 9:16 phone photograph, {PRODUCT} standing on the floor of a near-empty
room, plain white wall behind and pale wood flooring, skirting board visible,
{SUBJECT} fitted over it and held out in a full human torso-and-arms shape with
nothing supporting it, a black power cord running loose across the floor out of
frame, camera straight on at chest height roughly two metres back with the whole
object and headroom in frame, flat even indoor daylight, unstyled and lived-in,
slight phone-camera softness and grain, no retouching, no on-screen text
```

`{PRODUCT}` is the device itself; `{SUBJECT}` is the thing it acts on — leave both as placeholders until injection. Generate the clean plate only; the reaction cutout is composited in the edit, not generated into the frame.

**Motion:** camera handheld but essentially still, holding the whole object in frame while the garment fills out from slack to standing — no zoom, no push, no cut inside the shot.

**Text-overlay pattern:**

- Beat 1 — `{TASK} in {DISTANT_YEAR}`, with `Vs...` on a second line under it
- Beats 2–3 — `{TASK} in {CURRENT_YEAR}`, held unchanged across the reveal
- Beat 4 — `{PLAIN_BENEFIT}{emoji}`
- Beat 5 — `{OPERATING_STEP}`, placed on the control it names
- Final beat — no text

**Reference:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DU4KVK9DHGN/
