# Running caption over borrowed cutaways — rebuild sheet

An 89-second gut-and-skin argument built almost entirely from footage the poster never shot — another creator's clip, stock photos, a screenshot of published papers — with a small cut-out of the presenter pinned into every frame. 1,195,444 views · 36,891 likes · @drkaranrajan.

**Why it works**

One narration is chopped into caption fragments that are mid-sentence at every single beat, so there is never a clean place to leave — the viewer is always one line short of the point. The borrowed material does the rest: a full-frame screenshot of real journal papers buys authority no self-shot footage could, while the pinned presenter cut-out keeps six unrelated sources reading as one argument instead of a scrapbook.

**The beats**

| Time | What happens | On-screen text |
|---|---|---|
| 7.11s | Borrowed clip full-frame — a blonde woman in a grey tee, front-camera selfie in a dim room, straight down the lens. The presenter cut-out (bearded man, dark jacket with a crest) sits small in the bottom-left corner. | "It was the sugar." |
| 21.34s | Black frame. A macro photo of an acne-covered cheek and jaw fills the left half; the presenter cut-out is composited over its right edge, mid-gesture. | "that dysfunction." |
| 35.56s | Full-frame screenshot of a published research-paper listing on white — three journal citations, author lists, blue DOI links. The presenter cut-out sits over the middle of the page, partly covering the second title. | "and reduced" |
| 49.79s | Black frame. Stock photo of a white bowl of broccoli, fork lifting a floret, a yellow "30g" stamped on it; presenter cut-out over the bowl. | "30g" · "30 grams or more" |
| 64.02s | Black frame. Blue bacteria illustration top-left, a red heart icon and a stock photo of raspberries below; presenter cut-out to the right. | "love polyphenols," |
| 78.24s | Black frame. Stock photo of an older woman head-in-hand at a desk, a photo of a woman touching her face below it, a glowing green intestine graphic at right; presenter cut-out centre. | "When you're" |

**What carries the value**

The caption that never finishes. It is mid-sentence at all six sampled beats — no full stop the viewer can leave on — and it is the only thing tying six visually unrelated sources together. Under it, the borrowed proof does the persuading, above all the paper screenshot: it looks sourced, so the claim reads as reported rather than asserted.

Said plainly, from the frames alone: there is no product anywhere in this video, no demonstration, and no shot the poster clearly staged himself. The presenter never gets the full frame at any sampled beat.

**Shoot it**

You barely shoot this — you assemble it. What you do shoot is one element:

- **Camera.** One locked chest-up frame of your presenter against a plain wall, phone on a shelf or a small tripod, lens at chest height. Shoot the whole narration in a single take; you only need them talking and gesturing, because the frame is going to be cut out and shrunk to about a third of screen width.
- **Light.** One window or one soft lamp, straight at them, flat and even — hard shadows make a cut-out look pasted. Nothing behind them matters; the background is being removed.
- **Wardrobe.** Plain dark top, no pattern, nothing that matches the black backdrop the cut-out lands on. In the source it is a dark jacket with a small crest.
- **The rest.** Everything else is collected, not filmed: screenshots of published pages, plain stock photos, simple graphics, and a credited clip from another creator (this post credits its opening clip as OC in the caption). Lay them full-frame or on plain black, and drop the cut-out into whatever corner is empty.
- **Caption rule — this is the format.** Write the narration as one continuous script, then cut it into fragments so that every card on screen is mid-sentence. Same position every beat. Never let a card land a full stop where a viewer could leave.

Two things the frames cannot tell you, so don't assume them: whether the presenter cut-out was ever animated or the camera ever moved (all six beats are consistent with a static plate), and whether the presenter's own frame ever takes over full-screen between the sampled beats — at 14-second sampling, shorter moments are invisible.

One judgement call for the maker: the source presenter is a credentialled doctor, and the frames cannot show how much of the lift comes from that. Structurally, nothing here needs a performer — the argument runs on the sourced screenshots and the caption — but if your rebuild makes health claims, the sourced material has to actually say what your narration says it says.

**Or generate it**

The beat worth generating is the borrowed-authority beat (35.56s) — the paper screenshot with the cut-out over it.

```
vertical 9:16 composite, borrowed-authority beat: a full-frame screen capture of a
published research-paper listing page — plain white background, three journal
citations with author lists and blue hyperlinked DOI links — filling the whole
frame; a cut-out of {SUBJECT} in a plain dark jacket, chest-up, mid-gesture,
background fully removed, composited over the middle of the page at about a third
of frame width; flat even light on the cut-out, flat screen-white behind it,
phone-camera look on the cut-out with slight grain, no on-screen text. No {PRODUCT}
appears in this beat — the borrowed page is the entire picture.
```

**Motion:** No camera of its own — the borrowed page holds absolutely still full-frame and the {SUBJECT} cut-out stays put where it is composited, gesturing but not travelling; only the caption line changes.

**Text overlay:** One line of running narration in the identical lower-centre position at every beat, white bold sans with a thin dark outline, each card cut off mid-sentence and never resolved: `{clause}.` → `and {clause}` → `{clause},` → `When you're`. Occasional yellow number stamp (`{amount}`) burned directly onto a borrowed image.

**Reference:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DSsZLOTjXr1/
