# Borrowed hook, own demo — rebuild sheet

A purple teeth-corrector video that opens on someone else's shock demo and then hands the rest of the runtime to the poster's own bathroom run — 26.66s, 981,350 views, 24,876 likes, no on-screen text anywhere and an empty caption.

**Why it works** — The first two beats spend someone else's most extreme image (a mouth forced open by a dental retractor, every tooth painted violet) to buy attention no ordinary bathroom shot could earn, then cut away before it wears out. The four beats that follow are the same procedure done the boring domestic way by the poster herself, so the viewer arrives at a plain home demo already sold on the spectacle — and the violet-to-white colour change closes it without a single word on screen.

## The beats

| Time | What happens | On-screen text |
|---|---|---|
| 2.13s | Front-camera selfie, plain off-white wall. A woman with a clear dental cheek retractor holding her mouth wide open, teeth and gums fully exposed, eyes wide and rolled to the side, hair scraped back, black t-shirt. A purple pump bottle held beside her face, label to the lens — mirrored, so front camera — reading "…Corrector · 30ml \| 1 fl oz". | none |
| 6.4s | A notch tighter, same woman, same wall, mouth centred. Retractor still in, dark violet gel now painted across every front tooth with a small brush in her free hand. | none |
| 10.66s | Hard turn. A different woman, blue-tiled bathroom, white panelled ceiling, cool daylight, black t-shirt, hair up. She holds a tall boxed product close to the lens and slides the white tube out of the carton, talking to camera. Box wordmark mirrored, reading "JAYSUING". | none |
| 14.93s | Same bathroom, closer on her hands at chest height. Dark violet paste squeezed from the white tube onto a plain white toothbrush with pink bristles. | none |
| 19.2s | Close on her face, brushing. Violet foam covering the teeth, brow furrowed, lips pulled back. | none |
| 23.46s | Very close, the room behind gone dark, a rectangular LED light panel held above frame by her own hand. Wide smile, visibly white teeth, the white tube held up beside her face. | none |

**What the frames do not show, and I have not invented:** there is no audio in a contact sheet, so I cannot tell you what either woman says — the second one is plainly mid-speech at 10.66s and 19.2s, so this is textless, not wordless. I also cannot see how many cuts sit between the sampled beats. That the first act is *borrowed* is an inference, not something the frames prove: a different person, a different room, and a different package add up to a second source, but two creators shooting a collab would look the same. The two packages are visibly not the same object — a purple pump bottle marked "…Corrector" versus a boxed white tube marked JAYSUING — but the frames cannot tell you whether they are the same brand under different SKUs.

## What carries the value

The violet on the teeth. A colour that has no business being in a mouth, held on screen through four of the six beats — painted on in act one, squeezed out in act two, foaming in act three — and then cashed out as the lit white smile in the final frame. Nothing is claimed and nothing is labelled; the colour going on and the result coming out is the entire argument.

## Shoot it

A phone and two rooms. No crew, no tripod.

- **Camera.** Front camera the whole way, held at arm's length by the person in shot. Both labels in the source read mirrored, which is how you know. Nothing zooms — you reframe by moving the phone and cutting hard. Two setups only: a plain wall for the opener, a real bathroom for the rest.
- **Light.** Act one: flat, even, front-on daylight against a blank wall, nothing styled. Act two: whatever the bathroom actually has. For the last beat only, hold an LED panel or ring light above your own face so the teeth are the brightest thing in frame and the room falls to black behind you — that one lighting change is what makes the payoff read.
- **Wardrobe.** Both women wear a plain black t-shirt and hair pulled back off the face. Worth copying: it is what makes two unrelated sources read as one video, though I can't tell from the frames whether that was deliberate. No makeup needed on the demo half — the second woman has none.
- **Props.** A clear dental cheek retractor for the opener (that prop *is* the hook), the product, a plain white toothbrush.
- **Order.** Shock image first, hard cut, then unbox → apply → work → result. Do not open on the product.

## Or generate it

The beat worth generating is the opener — it is what buys the video.

```
vertical 9:16 front-camera selfie photograph, {SUBJECT} at arm's length against a
plain off-white wall in an ordinary room, a clear plastic dental cheek retractor
holding their mouth wide open so the full set of teeth and gums is exposed, eyes
wide and looking off to one side, hair scraped back flat off the face, plain black
t-shirt, {PRODUCT} held up beside their face with the label turned to the lens,
soft even daylight from the front, phone front-camera look, slight grain, no
retouching, no on-screen text
```

**Motion** — handheld front camera at arm's length, essentially static with the whole face and {PRODUCT} in one frame while only the free hand moves; the next beat is a hard cut a notch tighter, never a zoom.

**Text overlay** — none. There is no on-screen text at any beat in the source and the caption is empty, so the absence is the pattern to reuse: the borrowed opening image does the job a hook line would otherwise have to do. Adding a caption to this one would be fighting the format.

**Reference:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DVT0JlvkfUU/ — @eutauana_barbosa
