# Subtitled monologue, angle cuts — rebuild sheet

A 74.6s skincare pitch: one man alone in his own bright apartment hallway, talking straight to the phone for the whole runtime, holding two products up to the lens and closing on where to buy — 563,711 views, 6,421 likes, posted by kskinbydavid as a declared ad.

**Why it works**

The speech is chopped into one short clause per beat with exactly one word burned in yellow, so the viewer collects the argument as a string of keywords — SKIN, ALLANTOIN, EXFOLIATES, AMAZON — without ever being handed a finished sentence to stop on. Because the room, the angle and the man never change, there is nothing to look at except the next word and the thing in his hand, and the single framing cut from wide to close reads as the pitch getting more urgent rather than as an edit.

**The beats**

| Time | What happens | On-screen text |
|---|---|---|
| 5.96s | Wide, full body. Presenter in cream t-shirt and grey shorts in a long white hallway-living room — tall windows camera-right, framed art on the left wall, sofa and low table behind. Two photos of frogs, one dark and one pale, composited as bordered stills into the empty lower-left of the frame. | `SKIN` (yellow) |
| 17.89s | Same wide framing, same angle. He now holds a white pump bottle at waist height, label to camera. | `TRY ` **`ALLANTOIN`** (ALLANTOIN yellow) |
| 29.82s | Framing cuts to chest-up close — same room, same angle, everything just bigger. He holds a pale-green lidded jar up beside his face, label to the lens, mid-sentence. | **`TRY`** ` THIS QUIA` (TRY yellow) |
| 41.75s | Same close framing, jar still raised beside the face. | `IT ` **`EXFOLIATES`** / `HYDRATES` — two lines, EXFOLIATES yellow |
| 53.68s | Same close framing, no product in shot, hand gesturing low, still talking to the lens. | `THE ` **`TIME`** ` OR` (TIME yellow) |
| 65.61s | Same close framing, pointing down and out of frame toward the link. | **`AMAZON`** (all yellow) |

What the frames do not show: only 6 stills across 74.6s were sampled, so any cuts between these beats are unknown. There is no audio here, so what he actually says is known only from these caption fragments — and the fragments never form a complete sentence. Nothing is applied to skin, and no before/after or result appears in any sampled frame. Whether the wide-to-close change is a punch-in, a second camera or the presenter stepping toward the phone cannot be told from stills.

**What carries the value**

The caption chain. One clause per beat with a single word in yellow does the persuading, while the product is only ever raised to the lens — never opened, never used, never proved. The ingredient name (ALLANTOIN) is the closest thing to evidence in the piece, and the last yellow word is the retailer.

**Shoot it**

- **Camera:** a phone on a shelf or tripod at chest height, square-on, in one room, and it does not move for the whole take. Shoot the whole pitch once wide (full body) and once close (chest-up), same spot, same angle — then cut from the wide to the close about a third of the way in and stay close. No second location, no cutaway.
- **Light:** daylight only, from a big window off to one side. A bright white room with depth behind the subject — a hallway, a long living room — so the background falls away pale and reads as somebody's real home.
- **Wardrobe:** plain, domestic, unstyled. A single-colour t-shirt and shorts. No branding, no set dressing, nothing that says "shoot".
- **Performance:** talk continuously to the lens for the whole runtime. Hold each product up beside your face, label to camera, when you name it — then put it down. End pointing off-frame at the link.
- **Text:** burn in your own speech as subtitles, one short clause at a time, centre-low, all caps, white with exactly one word per card in yellow. Never let a card complete a sentence. Make the last card the retailer name.
- **Optional hook inset:** on the first beat only, paste one or two bordered reference photos into the empty lower part of the frame while you stay on camera. They sit inside the shot — you never cut to them.

**Or generate it**

The beat worth generating is the close-up with the product raised beside the face — beats 3 through 6 are all that frame.

```
vertical 9:16 photograph, {SUBJECT} standing chest-up close to a phone camera in a long
bright white apartment hallway, tall windows on the right throwing flat daylight across
the room, framed artwork on the left wall, a pale sofa and low wooden table visible
behind, plain cream t-shirt, holding {PRODUCT} raised beside the face with the label
turned to the lens, mid-speech, phone-camera look, slight grain, no retouching,
no on-screen text
```

**Motion:** camera locked at one angle in one room for the whole runtime; the only move is a single cut from full-body wide to chest-up close partway through, after which the framing never changes again — only the presenter's hands and the product move.

**Text overlay pattern:** one clause of speech per beat, centre-low, all caps, white with exactly one word burned in yellow — `TRY {INGREDIENT}` → `TRY THIS {PRODUCT}` → `IT {BENEFIT} / {BENEFIT}` → `{RETAILER}`. The clauses never complete a sentence, and the last one names where to buy.

**Reference:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DbbKEo2xSX3/
