# Personified mechanism explainer — rebuild sheet

A fully animated 51-second explainer where the subject itself is the character: a hair strand with a face who gets tested, soaked and sealed while a one-word-at-a-time caption runs the voiceover. @realhealthschool · 3,450,158 views · 93,640 likes.

**Why it works**
An invisible mechanism is given a body, so the viewer watches something *happen to* a character instead of listening to a claim — and the character is the viewer, which makes the whole thing feel like a diagnosis. The middle beat converts it into a test you can run tonight with a glass of water, which is what turns a watch into a save and a send.

**The beats**

| Time | What happens | On-screen text |
|---|---|---|
| 4.08s | The character — a long hair strand with a face and arms, rooted in a giant scalp pore — grabs at her own hair, brow furrowed, a tear on her cheek. Towering out-of-focus follicles behind her, warm brown, shallow depth of field. | TO |
| 12.24s | Same character on a wooden counter in a sunlit kitchen, smiling, lowering a single loose strand into a tall clear glass of water. | IT |
| 20.4s | Tighter on the glass. The strand has sunk and lies curled on the bottom; the character stands small beside the glass, hand out, looking at it. | BOTTOM |
| 28.55s | Back in the follicle world. Two glossy olive-green droplet characters — one clambering onto her head and pouring itself over her hair, one at her feet. She stands still, eyes closed. | POROSITY |
| 36.71s | A large amber droplet character perched on her head, amber liquid sheeting down her hair and pooling around her base. She side-eyes it, mouth flat. | SEAL |
| 44.87s | Two versions of the character side by side facing camera — one coated head-to-foot in dark glossy oil, one clean and shiny. Both smiling. | STOPS |

The six words are samples from a caption that changes on every stressed word of the voiceover, not a six-word script — they read as fragments (TO / IT / BOTTOM) because the stills land mid-sentence. **The frames do not show:** the audio, the voiceover script, whether the camera moves inside a shot, or how many cuts sit between the sampled beats. The caption confirms the argument being narrated — three porosity types, low means oils sit on top and do nothing, high means moisture goes straight back out — but the frames alone don't tell you which words land where.

**What carries the value**

The personified subject. Porosity is invisible and boring as a sentence; as a character with a face who gets soaked, sealed and side-eyed by a droplet, it's watchable. The glass-of-water beat is the second engine — it hands the viewer a free self-test, which is the reason to save it.

**Shoot it**

Mostly you can't — five of the six beats are 3D animation and there is no phone version of a hair strand with a face. Be honest about that when you scope it.

The one beat that is genuinely shootable is the test:

- **Camera:** phone on a small tripod, locked, level with the counter so the glass fills the frame vertically. No handheld — stillness is what makes the strand sinking legible.
- **Light:** one window to the side, nothing else. You want the water to read as clear and the strand to read as dark against it.
- **Set:** a plain wooden counter, a tall clear glass, a plain kitchen behind, thrown out of focus. Nothing branded, nothing styled.
- **Wardrobe:** hands only if a person appears at all — no face, no outfit, no personality competing with the glass.
- **Cut:** wide on the drop, then a tight push on the glass while the strand settles. Two shots, that's the whole beat.

Everything else — the character, the follicle world, the droplet creatures — is generated and cut in around it.

**Or generate it**

The beat below is the payoff frame (36.71s): the substance meeting the subject. It's the one a rebuild has to nail, because it's where your brand's thing enters the story.

```
vertical 9:16 3D animated film still, Pixar-style, {SUBJECT} personified as a
small stylised character with an expressive face standing rooted in a giant
soft-textured surface, {PRODUCT} personified as a glossy translucent droplet
character perched on top of the subject's head and sheeting down over it, a
puddle of {PRODUCT} pooling around the subject's base, towering out-of-focus
shapes of the same environment behind, warm brown palette, single soft key
light from upper left, shallow depth of field, macro-lens scale so the
character reads as tiny, no on-screen text
```

**Motion:** slow macro push toward the subject while the droplet character runs down over it — the camera stays low and level with the character, nothing else in frame moves.

**Text overlay:** one word at a time, centred at mid-frame, heavy white all-caps with a hard black outline, swapping on every stressed word of the voiceover — `{WORD}`.

Generate the character once and reuse it as a locked reference across every beat. The whole format collapses if she isn't the same character in the kitchen as she is in the follicle world.

**Reference:** https://www.instagram.com/p/Db8TkobqDiX/
