# Clause-chain mechanism demo — rebuild sheet

A 17.8s wordless-to-camera demo: a man brushes his own scalp, taps the flakes out onto a dark surface, and a one-clause-per-beat caption explains the mechanism over macro and animated cutaways. 3,924,335 views · 48,297 likes · @forbeaut_global.

**Why it works**

The caption is one sentence broken across six cuts — "What is this? / Lifts flakes off / These flexible pins / removing built-up flakes / Even if you shampoo / No buildup" — so the sentence is unfinished at every cut and the viewer reads their way to the end. Meanwhile the shots keep switching register (his own head → hard debris proof → macro of the working part → 3D cutaway → his head again → product to lens), so each clause lands on a different kind of evidence instead of repeating the same one.

**The beats**

| Time | What happens | On-screen text |
|---|---|---|
| 1.42s | Chest-up on a young man, black t-shirt, bare off-white wall. Head tilted down toward the lens so the crown faces camera, face almost entirely hidden; one hand presses a black paddle brush into the hair at the crown. | What is this? |
| 4.26s | Hands only. Both hands hold the brush bristle-side down over a matte dark surface, tapping it; small white flakes are scattered across the dark surface below, clearly readable against it. | Lifts flakes off |
| 7.11s | Macro of the brush head upright in one hand, filling the frame against near-black: rows of short black flexible pins with blue tips, a fingertip pressing into them. | These flexible pins |
| 9.95s | 3D animation, not filmed — thick brown hair strands rising from a pale surface, white flake shapes lifting and breaking away at their bases, black background. | removing built-up flakes |
| 12.79s | The man again, same black t-shirt, head bowed so the crown faces camera, hair clean; grey tiled wall behind — a different room from beat 1. | Even if you shampoo |
| 15.64s | Close on the brush held up to the lens, pin face to camera, filling most of the frame; his eyes and brow visible above it, the rest of the face covered. | No buildup |

Caption style throughout: white bold sans in a solid black box, lower third, replaced on every cut. Beats 4 and 5 break onto two lines; the rest are single lines.

**What carries the value**

The white flakes on the dark surface. It is debris the brush pulled out of his own hair, tapped out against black so it can be counted — unfakeable in a way a claim isn't. The pin macro and the animated cutaway are there to explain *how*; they don't prove anything on their own. Rebuild this and the flake shot is the one beat you cannot cut.

**Where the frames don't tell us**

- Whether the camera moves inside any shot — the contact sheet is stills, so movement is unreadable. Shoot it locked and you match what can be seen.
- Whether there's a voiceover. Nobody is shown speaking to camera in any frame, and no beat reads as a talking head, but audio isn't in the sheet.
- Beat 5's room reads as a bathroom from the grey tile, but no fixture is in frame to confirm it.
- Beat 4 is CG and did not come from the same shoot. It has to be made or sourced separately.

**Shoot it**

- **Camera:** phone, vertical, four setups. (1) head height, close, subject tilts the crown toward the lens. (2) close and slightly high on a dark tabletop, hands only. (3) macro on the working part of the product, hand-held upright. (4) product held up to the lens with the face soft behind it. No camera moves needed.
- **Light:** soft, even, frontal indoors — no visible window, no hard shadows. The one exception is the macro: a single light raking across the working surface so the texture reads.
- **Surface:** the debris beat needs a matte dark surface and nothing else on it. Matte, not glossy — a shine will eat the flakes.
- **Wardrobe:** plain black t-shirt, no logo, no jewellery, and it stays the same across every beat with a person in it. Face is never the subject; it's hidden by the tilted head in two beats and by the product in the third.
- **Talent:** none needed. No dialogue, no performance, no expression is ever readable. One person willing to bow their head, plus hands.
- **The animated beat:** one macro CG shot of the mechanism doing its job. If you can't make one, that clause has to move onto real footage — don't shoot a fake substitute.

**Or generate it**

The beat worth generating is the debris proof at 4.26s.

```
vertical 9:16 macro photograph, {SUBJECT}'s two hands holding {PRODUCT} bristle-side down just above a matte dark surface and tapping it, a scatter of small white flakes fallen across the dark surface below and catching the light, no face and no room in frame, plain dark background behind, soft even indoor light from the front with no visible window, shallow depth of field, phone-camera look, slight grain, no retouching, no on-screen text
```

**Motion:** camera close and near-static on the dark surface — the only movement is the hands tapping {PRODUCT} and the flakes dropping and settling into frame.

**Text overlay:** one short clause per beat, black box, white bold sans, lower third, replaced on every cut and reading in order as one sentence — `What is this?` → `Lifts {debris} off` → `These {working part}` → `removing {the problem}` → `Even if you {what they already do}` → `No {problem}`.

**Reference:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DUSce_UAa53/
