# Subtitled monologue, evidence cutaways — rebuild sheet

A 24.9s scalp-cleanser video: a first-person voice track, chopped one clause per beat, runs under six unrelated pictures — flake macro, a pore render, a fistful of discoloured lather, the operator in a studio, his annotated crown, him washing in the shower. 56,077 views · 719 likes · @forbeaut_global.

**Why it works**
No single frame ever completes the sentence, so the caption is the thread and the only way to close it is to keep watching — the picture is free to jump between six setups because the voice never breaks. The clauses do the naming ("your pores", "all chunks of oil!", "Grease,") while the footage supplies filth you can actually see, so each claim is paid off by a picture in the same second rather than argued.

**The beats**

| Time | What happens | On-screen text |
|---|---|---|
| 2.0s | Extreme macro on a wet dark hairline, strands filling the frame, white flakes sitting visibly across them. A dark round object at the bottom edge is too cropped to identify. | *'scalp poop' just started* — italic script, no black bar |
| 5.99s | Composite: a 3D scalp cross-section (pink surface, black cylindrical plugs standing in the pores) pasted across the upper half; beneath it, live footage of dark hair matted flat with a grey-green substance. | your pores |
| 9.98s | Two bare hands cupping a big lumpy mass of thick yellow-tinted lather, held up toward the lens. Background is pale and fully out of focus — the room is not readable from the frame. | all chunks of oil! |
| 13.97s | Chest-up on a young man in a plain black t-shirt against a plain white seamless background, one hand pushed back through his hair, eyes down. His mouth is closed in this frame. | Grease, |
| 17.96s | Top-down on the crown of the same dark hair, parting down the middle, a white dashed circle drawn over the crown. Plain white background. | prevent hair loss, |
| 21.95s | Same man in a tiled shower, bare shoulders, side-on, both hands working white lather into soaked hair. | for lazy people like me |

*What the frames don't show:* whether he is ever speaking to camera. The captions read as continuous first-person speech, but no sampled frame catches him mid-word — assume voiceover unless you want him talking. The frames also don't show the product itself: no bottle, no label, no pump appears in any of the six stills.

**What carries the value**
The debris, named. Flakes in the opening macro, the grey-green matted scalp, and above all the oversized handful of discoloured lather that the caption calls "all chunks of oil!" — visible filth coming off a head, with the clause chain telling you what you're looking at. The studio and shower beats are connective tissue; the debris beats are the argument.

**Shoot it**
- **Camera.** Six separate setups, no continuity between them. Two are macro (get the phone as close as it will focus on wet hair and on the crown); one is a plain-background chest-up; one is hands-to-lens; one is in a running shower. Handheld throughout — nothing needs a tripod, nothing needs a move.
- **Light.** Plain and even. The studio and crown beats are shot against plain white with flat light; the macro and hands beats just need enough light that texture reads. No moody lighting anywhere — filth has to be legible.
- **Wardrobe.** Plain black t-shirt for the studio beat, bare shoulders for the shower beat. Nothing patterned, nothing branded — the head is the subject.
- **Performance.** None required. Nobody speaks on camera; record the voice separately and subtitle it. That means this rebuilds with anyone who has a scalp and a shower.
- **The one hard part.** The lather handful has to look like a lot and look discoloured. Build it in-hand on wet, oily hair and lift it straight to the lens; don't cut away from it.
- **Text.** Every clause sits bottom-centre on a solid black bar, white with the key words in yellow. The opening hook is deliberately different — italic script, no bar — so it reads as a thought rather than a subtitle.

**Or generate it**

The beat worth generating is the lather in the hands — it's the value carrier and the hardest to shoot.

```
vertical 9:16 close photograph of two bare hands cupped together holding a large
lumpy mass of thick discoloured lather from {PRODUCT}, held up toward the lens and
filling most of the frame, {SUBJECT}'s wet forearms just entering from the bottom
edge, background a pale out-of-focus surface with no readable detail, plain even
daylight, phone-camera look, slight grain, no retouching, no on-screen text
```

**Motion:** handheld and close, the hands lifting the mass toward the lens and turning it slightly so its texture reads, no cut inside the shot and no zoom.

**Text overlay:** one spoken clause per beat, bottom-centre, white or yellow on a solid black bar, sentence never completed inside a single frame — `"{clause},"` → `"{clause},"` → `"{clause}!"`. The opening hook at ~2s is set apart in italic script with no bar: `"'{nickname for the problem}' just started"`.

**Reference:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DU7iLLtGU_P/
