# Transformation hook → mechanism explainer — rebuild sheet

A man tells his own hair-loss story to his phone in his own rooms, opens on a Before/After of his own hairline, hands the middle third to two supplied explainer graphics, and comes back to camera for the close — 107,616 views, 468 likes, 50.65s.

**Why it works.** The result is settled in the first beat: a two-panel Before/After sits in the corner while he holds up the product that *failed* him, so the viewer accepts the outcome before a single claim is made. Everything after that is justification rather than persuasion — the ingredient graphic and the follicle cross-section give a change the viewer already believes something to point at, which is why the middle third can be brand-supplied assets and still land.

## The beats

| Time | What happens | On-screen text |
|---|---|---|
| 4.05s | Shirtless, own living room at night, arm's-length front camera. He holds a white-and-blue bottle reading "5% Minoxidil Foam For Men" up into the lens. Two white-bordered headshots of him are composited across the lower third — thinned hairline left, filled-in hairline right. | Before.  After. |
| 12.16s | Different room — rustic wooden ceiling beam, white panel door, stone counter. Now in a blue tee, still holding the same minoxidil bottle out to the lens, other hand pushing his hair back off the front of his scalp, face screwed up. Handheld, closer. | — |
| 20.26s | No person. Handheld close on an open white tray on a wooden table: rows of silver-capped vials of green liquid labelled ALPHA, top row clear, one slot empty. | — |
| 28.36s | Full-frame supplied graphic — plain green field, six rendered botanicals, each captioned. | Peppermint Oil · Licorice Root Extract · Eclipta Prostrata Extract · Panax Ginseng · Ginger root Extract · Rosemary leaf extract |
| 36.47s | Full-frame locked 3D render: scalp cross-section, one follicle bulb below the surface with a red vessel running into it, dermal layers beneath. No labels. | — |
| 44.57s | Back to the living room of beat 1, camera now high and pointing straight down. Arms open, mid-speech to the lens, two white ALPHA boxes set on the floor in front of his feet. | — |

**What the frames do not show, and I have not filled in:** there is no audio in a contact sheet, so what he actually says at any beat is unknown. No burned-in subtitles appear at any of the six sampled moments, but the samples are ~8 seconds apart, so absent-everywhere is likely rather than proven. The two graphic beats carry a small brand watermark cropped at the top edge that is not legible at this resolution. Where the two graphics came from — supplied by the brand, licensed, or made — is not visible either; they are simply not shot on his phone.

## What carries the value

The two-panel Before/After of his own hairline, planted in the corner of the very first beat. It is his head, volunteered, next to a product that didn't work — and everything downstream is explanation for a result the viewer has already accepted. Take that inset out and the piece is a man describing a product.

## Shoot it

- **Camera.** A phone, held in the hand. Beats 1, 2 and 6 are all arm's length or closer; nothing is on a tripod and nothing is stabilised. The only deliberate camera choice in the whole piece is the last beat — the phone held up high and pointed straight down at the speaker, which is what makes the close feel like a different scene without a different location.
- **Rooms.** Two of your own, plus the return. Beat 1 and beat 6 are the same living room; beat 2 is a bathroom. Nothing is dressed or tidied — sofa, plant, TV, a stone counter, a door.
- **Light.** Whatever the room has. Beat 1 is dim lamplight at night; beat 2 is warm overhead. Do not add a light; the unlit look is what makes the Before/After read as a person's own photos rather than a campaign.
- **Wardrobe.** Shirtless on the hook beat, so the scalp is the only thing to look at. A plain solid-colour tee for beats 2 and 6. The change between beat 1 and beat 2 is what sells them as separate days.
- **The one thing you must have.** A real before photo and a real after photo of the same person, same crop, composited side by side with the words *Before.* and *After.* under them. This format does not work without it — that is why it is not replicable without a person whose own result you can show.
- **The middle third.** Product b-roll on a table, an ingredient graphic, and a mechanism render. None of it needs the talent, and none of it needs a set.

## Or generate it

The beat to get right is the hook — beat 1, with the inset.

```
vertical 9:16 handheld phone photograph, {SUBJECT} shirtless in their own
living room at night — dark sofa, a plant on a low white shelf, a TV and a
floor lamp behind, a painted ceiling beam overhead — holding {PRODUCT} up
into the centre of the lens at chest height in one hand, arm's-length
front-camera distance, warm dim lamplight from behind, phone-camera look,
slight grain, no retouching, unstyled, no on-screen text; two white-bordered
headshot photographs of {SUBJECT} composited side by side across the lower
third of the frame
```

**Motion.** Handheld at arm's length, drifting slightly with the breath while {PRODUCT} is held steady toward the lens — no zoom, no reframe, no cut, and the two-panel inset stays fixed in the lower third for the whole beat.

**Text overlay.** Beat 1: a two-panel photo inset in the lower third, one bold white word under each photo — `Before.` / `After.` · Beat 4: six labels scattered over a plain coloured field, one under each rendered item — `{INGREDIENT}` ×6, no headline · every other beat carries no text at all.

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