# Silent procedure → delayed before — rebuild sheet

A grey-studio procedure video: clay is packed onto a full afro, brushed flat into a wave grain, capped with a durag, and only at the end does the video show you the untouched afro it started from — 4,243,087 views, 96,989 likes, 62.9s, caption "AFRO CLAY WAVES".

**Why it works**
The one text moment at the front is a doubt, not a promise — "WAVES??" with an arrow pointing at a head covered in mud — so the viewer stays to find out whether the absurd thing actually works. Then the middle runs with no text at all, in macro tight enough that the material is the only subject, and the before-state is held back to the end so the size of the change lands as a payoff instead of being spent in the first second.

**The beats**

| Time | What happens | On-screen text |
|---|---|---|
| 5.03s | Extreme close-up on the side of the head. Untreated afro at frame left, hard boundary, and right of it the hair coated in pale tan clay and lying flat. Clay-covered fingers press it in. Big white arrow points at the coated area. | WAVES?? |
| 15.10s | Head tilted to camera, face and hair fully coated in clay, eyes and lips clear, eyes to camera. A rounded applicator loaded with white cream held at the hairline. | — |
| 25.17s | Extreme macro, very shallow focus. Clay-covered hands and a bristle brush pressing a dotted texture into the clay, a metal handle edge beside it, a clay-coated head blurred behind. | — |
| 35.24s | Extreme macro of the crown, no face. Hair pressed flat under the clay into one directional grain, a thick raised rim of clay along the top edge. | — |
| 45.30s | High angle, head forward, both hands pulling a black satin durag down. Clay gone; hair reads short and dark with a clear 360-wave pattern. | — |
| 55.37s | Front-on portrait, dead centre, bare shoulders, neutral face, full untouched afro. | BEFORE |

Where the frames go quiet, say so rather than guess:
- **No audio evidence.** Six stills cannot tell you whether there is a voiceover, dialogue or only music. Assume nothing.
- **No camera-motion evidence.** Whether any shot pushes, drifts or holds is not readable from stills.
- **The removal step is not sampled.** Between 35.24s (clay-packed) and 45.30s (clean waves) something washes or lifts the clay off; that beat falls between frames.
- **Frame 3 is ambiguous.** Whether the brush is being pressed onto the head or onto the hand is genuinely unreadable at that focus.
- The creator's own `PHDINWAVES` handle watermark sits top-right from 25.17s onward. It is a channel mark, not part of the format.

**What carries the value**
The clay. A visible material physically pressing a full afro flat and holding a wave grain, shot close enough that you watch the mechanism work — the result is demonstrated, never claimed. The delayed BEFORE is what prices it.

**Shoot it**

- **Backdrop:** one plain mid-grey seamless. Same wall every beat — it is what makes the macro shots and the final portrait read as one piece.
- **Light:** soft, even, frontal. No hard shadow, no colour cast, no window. A single large diffused source in front of the subject and nothing else.
- **Camera:** a phone at subject height. Vary the distance beat to beat, not the position — two macro beats close enough that the surface fills the frame with no face, one mid beat with eyes to camera, one high angle over the head, and the final portrait dead-centre and symmetrical. Shoot the final portrait first, before anything is applied, and cut it in last.
- **Wardrobe:** none, or bare shoulders. Nothing patterned, nothing branded, no jewellery — anything with texture competes with the material, which is the subject.
- **Performance:** no dialogue and no mugging. Hands work, eyes go to camera once, face stays neutral. This is why the format does not need a performer.
- **The rule that makes it a format:** the untouched start state is filmed at the beginning and shown at the end.

**Or generate it**

Most important beat — 35.24s, the macro of the material holding the grain:

```
vertical 9:16 extreme macro photograph, the crown of {SUBJECT}'s head filling the
frame with no face visible, the hair coated in a thick layer of {PRODUCT} and
pressed flat into a single directional grain, a raised rim of the material along
the top edge of the coated area, plain mid-grey seamless studio backdrop filling
the upper third, soft even frontal studio light, shallow depth of field with the
grain sharp and the edges falling away, phone-camera look, no retouching, no
on-screen text
```

*Motion:* camera held very close and near-still on the coated surface, drifting a few centimetres across the grain so the relief reads. The stills cannot show whether the source camera moves, so keep it minimal.

*Text overlay pattern:* open on the procedure already running with a white box reading `{RESULT}??` low in frame and a large white arrow pointing at the treated area · no text at all through the middle · close on the untouched start state with a plain white box reading `BEFORE`.

**Reference:** https://www.instagram.com/p/Da6I9OmoGaj/ — @phdinwaves
