# Subtitled monologue, evidence cutaways — rebuild sheet

An 85-second skincare piece by kskinbydavid: a suited presenter argues to camera from an office set, twice cutting away to himself in a t-shirt and gloves working a paste onto a real person's underarm, and closing with the product held to the lens. 204,951 views · 1,563 likes.

**Why it works**
The office set — suit, bookshelves, anatomy chart — buys authority before a word lands, and the running word-by-word captions never finish a sentence, so there is no clean place to leave. The two gloved cutaways are what turn the talk into evidence: the same person, in different clothes, with the claim visibly happening on somebody's body.

**The beats**

| Time | What happens | On-screen text |
|---|---|---|
| 6.81s | Close handheld. Presenter in a blue t-shirt, clear glasses, purple nitrile gloves, leaning in at top-right holding another person's raised arm — the visibly darkened underarm fills the left of frame. Plain white wall, flat indoor light. | REMEDIES |
| 20.44s | Wider office frame. Same man, now in a navy suit and tie behind a white desk; medical bookshelves, a lemon branch, an anatomy chart at the right edge. Four supermarket items lined up in front of him: turmeric powder, lemon juice, raw honey, baking soda. | SODA IN A |
| 34.07s | Back to the gloved close-up. A thick translucent honey-coloured paste is now spread across the underarm; one gloved finger points into it. His face is at the top of frame, mid-sentence. | BRINGING IT BACK |
| 47.7s | Office again, tighter — chest-up, square-on, straight to the lens, one hand raised in a small gesture. | SKIN |
| 61.32s | Same tight office framing. A round white pad held flat in one open palm, the other hand pointing at it. | SOOTHING |
| 74.95s | Same tight office framing. A pale-green jar raised toward the lens, label to camera, partly covered by his fingers. | I PUT THE |

Every caption is a fragment of continuous speech in the same centre position — all-caps white with the spoken word boxed in yellow. None of the six sampled beats shows a finished sentence.

**What carries the value**
The gloved cutaway: a thick paste spread over a real, visibly darkened underarm on somebody else's body, shot in a completely different room and wardrobe from the talk. That is the only beat where the claim is happening rather than being asserted — and the wardrobe change is what makes it read as a separate, real session rather than a staged prop.

**Shoot it**

Two setups, and the gap between them is the format.

- **Set A — the spine.** Seated at a desk, square-on, eye-level, chest-up. Formal wardrobe: jacket, collar, tie. A wall of books and one piece of subject-matter signage behind you (the credential does the work, so it has to be in frame and legible). Soft even light from the front — a window or a single softbox at camera height, no shadow across the face. Two framings are used in this video: one wider that includes the desk surface for the ingredient beat, one tighter chest-up for the rest. Keep each framing identical every time you return to it.
- **Set B — the evidence.** Handheld close, arm's length, on the body area being treated. Plain wall, flat indoor light, nothing styled. Different wardrobe: casual t-shirt, gloves. Frame so the treated area fills most of the shot and your face is a partial presence at the edge — you are the operator here, not the presenter.
- **Wardrobe rule.** Never wear the same thing in both sets. The change is the signal that the demo is real footage and not a prop on the desk.
- **Captions.** Burn in word-by-word speech subtitles, one fixed centre position, all caps, white with a yellow box on the word currently being said. Cut every beat so the caption is mid-sentence.
- **Close.** Return to Set A and hold the product up to the lens, label to camera.

Phone-shootable throughout — both setups are a phone on a small tripod for Set A and handheld for Set B.

**What the frames do not show:** whether the camera moves inside any shot, how many cuts sit between the six sampled beats, whether there is any b-roll not caught in the sample, and what is actually being said. The green jar's label is only partly legible — the fingers cover it — so the product name is not readable from the frames. The caption's exact font is not identifiable from stills.

**Or generate it**

```
vertical 9:16 close photograph, {SUBJECT} in a plain blue crew-neck t-shirt and clear-framed glasses, purple nitrile gloves on both hands, leaning into the top-right of frame while holding another person's raised arm so the bare underarm fills the left of frame, a thick translucent layer of {PRODUCT} spread across the skin with one gloved finger pointing into it, plain white-walled room behind, flat even indoor light, phone-camera look, slight grain, no retouching of the skin, no on-screen text
```

*Motion:* handheld at arm's length, close on the treated area, drifting only slightly as the gloved hand points into it — one continuous take, no cut inside the beat.

*Text overlay:* running word-by-word speech captions in one identical centre position for the whole runtime, all-caps white with the word currently being spoken boxed in yellow — `"{SPOKEN FRAGMENT}"` with `{CURRENT WORD}` highlighted. Every beat lands mid-sentence; no beat ever shows a complete sentence.

**Reference:** https://www.instagram.com/p/Da0j6CDR5KR/
