# Subtitled monologue, evidence cutaways — rebuild sheet

A 53-second talking head in one room, selling a withheld home remedy behind a comment gate, with one overhead cutaway as its only physical proof — 175,033 views, 3,887 likes.

**Why it works**

The subtitle never finishes the thought: every beat names the remedy a little more and then defers it again, so the only way to close the loop is to keep watching and then comment for the answer. The single cutaway is placed exactly where the claim would otherwise sound invented — it hands the viewer something to look at right as the speech gets abstract, then returns to the face before anything can be verified.

**The beats**

| Time | What happens | On-screen text |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 4.24s | Arm's-length front camera, chest-up on the speaker seated in an open-plan living room — white ceiling above, glass partition and wall clock left, houseplant right, flat daylight. Talking to the lens. | **Hair Loss** (large, top) · `hair loss is a billion dollar industry` |
| 12.71s | Identical framing, identical room, still to the lens. Nothing has changed. | **Hair Loss** · `this secret remedy for free` |
| 21.18s | Identical framing, one hand rising into the bottom of frame. | **Hair Loss** · `the ultimate remedy is just` |
| 29.66s | Cutaway — overhead on a white speckled countertop: a bare hand holding an unlabelled clear plastic bottle of clear liquid, a metal bowl of green sprigs behind it. | `some parts of Europe` |
| 38.13s | Back to the identical talking-head frame, hand raised near her hair. The big headline is gone and never returns. | `i know it sounds too simple` |
| 46.6s | Same frame to the end, hand gesturing low in shot. No product, no second location. | `formula to make it even stronger` |

**What carries the value**

The withheld answer. Each subtitle defers the remedy one more beat and the post caption collects the payment: *"Comment 'hair' to see the real cases, before/after pics and detailed guide!"* The cutaway is the only physical evidence in the piece, and it shows an unbranded bottle and some green sprigs — nothing is labelled, nothing is measured, no before/after appears anywhere on screen. **Where the frames go quiet:** the six stills sample 6 of 53 seconds, so there may be more cutaways between them; and nothing in the frames tells us what the remedy actually is or whether it is ever named out loud.

**Shoot it**

- **Camera.** One phone at arm's length, chest-up, held or propped and not moved for the entire runtime. Same seat, same angle, same distance from first frame to last — the return to the identical frame after the cutaway is what makes the piece read as one take rather than an edit.
- **The one cutaway.** Shot on the same phone, straight down over a plain light countertop, one hand in frame holding the item. Daylight only. Nothing styled, nothing branded, no label facing camera.
- **Light.** Flat, soft, front-facing daylight from a window or open room. No lamp, no ring light, no shadow shaping.
- **Room.** A real lived-in domestic space with depth behind — a doorway, a plant, a clock. Do not clear it, do not dress it.
- **Wardrobe.** Plain dark sleeveless top, small everyday jewellery, no styling, no change between beats.
- **Delivery.** Straight into the lens, unbroken, hands free to gesture. The speech has to be written so that no single sentence completes the promise before the last ten seconds.

**Or generate it**

```
vertical 9:16 phone front-camera photograph of {SUBJECT} chest-up, seated and
talking straight to the lens in a real open-plan living room — white ceiling
visible above the head, a glass partition and a wall clock at the left edge, a
leafy houseplant at the right edge, floor and rug soft behind — plain dark
sleeveless top, layered fine necklaces, flat soft daylight from the front,
phone-camera look, slight grain, no retouching, no on-screen text. No product is
in frame at this beat: {PRODUCT} appears only in the single overhead countertop
cutaway later in the runtime.
```

**Motion:** camera fixed at arm's length for the whole beat — no push, no reframe, no cut; only the speaker's face and hands move, and every talking-head beat is generated from this same seed frame so the room matches exactly.

**Text overlay pattern:** two layers. Top third, first ~40% of runtime only — `{PROBLEM}` in one or two words, very large, bold italic cream type with a dark outline, then dropped and never brought back. Lower third, whole runtime — one lowercase speech-subtitle line that changes every beat and is always mid-sentence: `{PROBLEM} is a billion dollar industry` → `this secret remedy for free` → `the ultimate remedy is just` → `{PLACE}` → `i know it sounds too simple` → `formula to make it even stronger`.

**Reference:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DcRAQytAN5c/
