# Locked-frame subtitled monologue — rebuild sheet

A 111.6s talking-head monologue from one seated elder herbalist in a home apothecary room, shot in a single locked frame with rolling speech captions and nothing else — no product, no cutaway, no headline. 261,484 views · 4,902 likes (~1.9% like-to-view).

**Why it works**

The camera never moves and there is nothing to look at but a person, so the only thing that can hold the viewer is the argument — and every caption is cut off mid-sentence, so there is never a clean place to leave. The room does the credentialing before she says a word: a wall of labelled herb jars behind her means the claim arrives from someone who already looks like they'd know.

**The beats**

| Time | What happens | On-screen text |
|---|---|---|
| 8.93s | Locked medium-wide, square-on. Older woman, long locs under a striped head-wrap, big round silver earrings, wooden-bead necklace, loose sage-green linen robe, seated in a wooden armchair, hands folded in her lap, talking to the lens. Behind her: a wooden US-flag wall map, a shelf of labelled herb jars (Echinacea, Calendula, Herbs, Ginseng), books below, a potted plant on the windowsill, daylight from a window at frame right. | NECK |
| 26.79s | Identical frame. Mid-sentence, same pose. | VERY OFTEN |
| 44.65s | Identical frame. Still talking, hands still folded. | HORMONES |
| 62.51s | Identical frame. The mechanism is named with no visual support at all — no product, no insert, no graphic. | RHODIOLA ROSEA |
| 80.37s | Identical frame. Same folded-hands pose. | AND THEIR BODY |
| 98.23s | Identical frame. The only change in the whole video: her right hand lifts into a small gesture at chest height and she leans very slightly forward. Background still pixel-identical. | COMMENT SKIN AND |

Text style throughout: one clause per beat, all caps, heavy white type with **one word in yellow**, in the same mid-low centre position every time. Never a pinned headline. Every clause is cut off mid-sentence.

**What carries the value**

Her — and only her. There is no product on screen, no demonstration, no before/after and no evidence shot anywhere in the sampled runtime. The persuasion is the persona plus the set that credentials it (the labelled herb jars, the books), and the retention is the sentence that never finishes. The last sampled caption starts with "COMMENT", so the close appears to be a comment-to-get gate spoken aloud — the frames show the word, not what follows it.

**Shoot it**

- **Camera.** One phone on a tripod, vertical, at seated eye height, square-on. Set it once and do not touch it — not a nudge, not a reframe, not a second angle. Frame from about mid-shin to a hand's width above the wall art, subject centred slightly right.
- **Light.** Daylight from a tall window at frame right, soft and even, no fill and no lamps. Shoot in one sitting so the light does not shift across two minutes.
- **Wardrobe.** Loose, plain, one colour — sage-green linen here. Nothing that reads as branded or styled. Jewellery is the only accent: large earrings, a bead necklace.
- **Set.** The room is the credential, so build it before you roll: a shelf of labelled jars at shoulder height, books on the shelf below, one plant, one piece of wall art. Everything else bare wall.
- **Blocking.** Hands folded in the lap for the whole take. Save one small hand gesture for the last beat — in this video that gesture is the only movement in 112 seconds, and it lands on the call to action.
- **Post.** Burn the speaker's own words in as auto-style captions, one clause at a time, all caps, white with one yellow word, same position every time. Cut every clause mid-sentence.

**Or generate it**

This one needs no shoot and no performer — one still frame, animated to a voice track, reproduces it exactly. Worth saying plainly: the frames here are *consistent with* a generated presenter rather than a filmed one (the body pose is identical across 89 seconds, the book spines carry unreadable text, the set is never disturbed) — but that cannot be confirmed from stills, so treat it as a reason this format is cheap to rebuild, not as a fact about the source. What you still have to supply is a voice and a script; nothing else in the format does any work.

```
vertical 9:16 photograph, {SUBJECT} seated square-on in a wooden armchair, hands
folded in the lap, talking straight to the lens; medium-wide framing from mid-shin
to a hand's width above the wall art, camera at seated eye height, subject centred
slightly right of frame; behind them a cream-walled home room with a wooden
wall-mounted US-flag map, a shelf of labelled glass jars of dried herbs at shoulder
height, a row of books on the shelf below at frame left, a small potted plant on the
windowsill at frame right; soft daylight from a tall window at frame right, warm and
even, no fill; lived-in but tidy, phone-camera look, slight grain, no retouching, no
on-screen text; {PRODUCT} is never in frame at any point — it is named in speech only
```

**Motion.** Camera absolutely static for the entire runtime — no push, no reframe, no cut; generate every beat from the same seed frame so the room is pixel-identical, and let only the face and mouth move, with a single small hand gesture held back for the final beat.

**Text overlay.** One clause of the speaker's own speech per beat in the identical mid-low centre position, all caps, heavy white type with one word in yellow, always cut off mid-sentence and never a pinned headline: `{CLAUSE WITH ONE WORD IN YELLOW}` — the mechanism beat is the named ingredient alone (`{INGREDIENT NAME}`) and the closing beat is the gate clause (`COMMENT {WORD} AND`).

**What the frames do not show.** The six stills start at 8.93s and end at 98.23s of a 111.62s video, so the first nine seconds and the last thirteen are unsampled. If a hook card lands and drops inside that opening — which is common and which these frames can neither confirm nor rule out — this is the same structure as `new:dropped-hook-fixed-monologue` and should be filed there instead. The stills also do not show what follows "COMMENT SKIN AND", whether a product ever appears in the tail, or what is actually being sold; the post caption ("Sis, this is not what you think! Listen 👂") does not name it either.

**Reference:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DV1l9ZvCbOv/ — healthylifestyle.mary
