# Day-count self-test — rebuild sheet

A 6.9-second skin diary: the same forehead, same tight crop, four numbered days, then the bottle. 5,555,898 views · 64,462 likes · @vanillau_uu.

**Why it works**

The crop never changes and the body part never leaves the screen, so the only thing the eye has to do is compare — Day 1's marks are still in memory when Day 7 arrives. The headband changes on every single day (satin bonnet → white terry → pink bow → hair down), and that costume change is what makes the days read as four separate mornings rather than four takes from one afternoon.

**The beats**

| Time | What happens | On-screen text |
|---|---|---|
| 0.55s | Tight close-up on the forehead, satin sleep bonnet, four or five dark raised marks on bare dry skin; the product's nozzle comes in at frame right against the skin | Day 1 |
| 1.65s | Identical framing and wall, white terry headband, marks still there on dry skin, bottle at frame right | Day 2 |
| 2.75s | Identical framing, pink bow towel headband, forehead wet with visible mist droplets, marks faint, bottle at frame right | Day 5 |
| 3.85s | Identical framing, hair down and held back at the hairline, forehead misted and glossy, no marks visible, nozzle up at the hairline | Day 7 |
| 4.95s | Hand holds the bottle upright, centred, label square to camera, same wall — no skin in frame | — |
| 6.05s | Same bottle tilted and turned in the hand, label still to camera, slightly wider | — |

**What carries the value**

The same forehead in the same frame across four numbered days. Not a claim, not a voice, not the product — the comparison. The headband change per day is the honesty device that makes the comparison believable, and the uneven day numbers (1, 2, 5, 7) read as a real log rather than a countdown someone designed.

Worth being straight with whoever rebuilds this: the Day 5 and Day 7 frames show skin that has *just been misted* — wet and glossy. The frames cannot tell you how much of the improvement is faded marks and how much is sheen. If you want the comparison to survive scrutiny, shoot the day frames on dry skin before application, not after.

**Shoot it**

- **Camera.** Phone, vertical, handheld at arm's length. One fixed distance you can hit again every day — hold the phone the same way, same arm extension. The forehead fills the lower two-thirds; eyebrows sit at the bottom edge, no mouth in shot. Nothing moves inside a beat.
- **Same spot, every day.** Plain pale wall, same wall, same time of day. Flat even daylight from the front, no hard shadow, no lamp. If the light changes between days the comparison dies — that is the whole shoot.
- **Wardrobe.** A different hair covering every single day and nothing else different. Bonnet, terry band, towel bow, hair down — cheap, obvious, and it does all the work of proving the days are separate.
- **Skin.** No makeup, no filter, no retouching, no smoothing. Day 1 has to look bad or nothing after it means anything.
- **The product is in every day-frame.** It enters at frame right and touches the skin — same entry, same side, every day. Then two clean hero shots of the bottle at the end against the same wall.
- **Cost.** This is a real seven-day shoot. Sixty seconds a morning, but you cannot compress it, and it needs a body with a change actually happening on it.

The frames do not show whether there is a voiceover or music, whether the camera drifts inside a beat, or whether there are cuts between the day frames beyond the four we can see — those are open and should be decided at the edit.

**Or generate it**

The beat that matters is Day 1 — the raw before state that makes every frame after it readable.

```
vertical 9:16 phone-camera photograph, extreme close crop on {SUBJECT}'s forehead
filling the lower two-thirds of frame, eyebrows at the bottom edge and no mouth in
shot, hair fully covered by a satin sleep bonnet, bare untreated skin with several
distinct dark raised marks left completely unretouched, {PRODUCT} entering at frame
right held close to the skin, plain pale off-white wall behind with a soft shadow,
flat even daylight from the front, slight grain, no filter, no on-screen text
```

**Motion:** handheld at arm's length, barely moving — the frame holds on the marked skin while the hand brings the product in from the right; no zoom, no pan.

**Text overlay:** `Day {n}` — serif, black with a thin white outline, centred in the upper third, identical size and position on every beat. Skip the numbers unevenly ({1}, {2}, {5}, {7}) so it reads as a log, and drop the text entirely once the product goes hero.

Generate every day-beat from the same seed so the wall, the crop and the face match; change only the headwear and the skin.

**Reference:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DVThLMDiJ2n/
