# Pinned line acted out — rebuild sheet

A 45-second one-take desk scene: a guy tries to cold-call off a phone lying in front of him and slowly falls apart. 3,826,731 views · 189,885 likes · @wamis.sales · caption "Cortisol is at its peak 😭🙏 #sales"

**Why it works**
Two lines of text up front tell you exactly what you're about to watch fail, and then the text disappears — so the only thing left to watch is how badly it goes, and the answer keeps getting worse. The other half of the call is never on screen, so the viewer fills it in themselves and stays to see the reaction that proves what was said.

**The beats**

| Time | What happens | On-screen text |
|---|---|---|
| 3.61s | Hunched over the desk, hands clasped at his mouth, staring down at the phone. Nervous, pre-call. | Real cold calling gone wrong<br>POV: you learned sales from reels |
| 10.82s | Sat up, palms pressed together in a prayer gesture at his chest, talking down at the phone. | — |
| 18.03s | Leaning in, hands balled into one tight fist at his chest, pitching harder. | — |
| 25.24s | Both fists up either side of his chest, mouth wide open, eyes wide. The peak. | — |
| 32.45s | Head down, chin tucked, forearms dropped on the desk. Defeat. Camera has drifted lower and tighter. | — |
| 39.66s | Sat back, face screwed up mid-shout, arm swinging across toward the phone. Camera now wider. | — |

**What carries the value**
The escalation. One performer, one frame, climbing from nervous → pleading → shouting → collapse, all played to a phone with a live call on its screen. No product, no demo, no transformation — the reaction is the entire payload.

Two honest gaps: the six frames are stills, so **there is no audio evidence here** — the other side of the call is never shown, and whether it's heard on the real video can't be told from the frames. And the setup text is present at 3.61s and gone by 10.82s, so it lasts somewhere inside that gap; the frames can't say exactly when it drops.

**Shoot it**

- **Camera.** One phone at desk height, roughly chest-up on the performer, propped or lightly handheld. It never cuts and never reframes on purpose — the framing wanders a little across the take (tighter by beat 5, wider by beat 6) and that drift reads as real, so don't fight it. Shoot it as one continuous take and let the performance find the beats.
- **Foreground.** The phone lies flat on the desk in the near foreground, screen up, screen facing the performer so it reads upside-down to camera. A laptop edge sits bottom-left. Both stay put the whole take.
- **Light.** Daylight through a frosted window camera-left, flat and unmodified, plus whatever the ceiling gives. Nothing added.
- **Room.** Plain home office: dark wood desk, dark wood cabinet behind, off-white walls, black mesh office chair. Lived-in, not styled.
- **Wardrobe.** One outfit for the whole take — here a red-and-cream horizontal-striped polo and wire-frame glasses. It has to match across every beat because there are no cuts to hide a change.
- **Performance.** This is the shoot. Cast someone who can escalate over 45 seconds without a cut. **This format does not work without talent** — there is nothing else in the frame doing any of the persuading.

**Or generate it**

The peak beat (25.24s):

```
vertical 9:16 phone-camera photograph, chest-up on {SUBJECT} seated at a dark wood
desk in a plain home office, both fists raised either side of the chest, shoulders
forward, mouth open mid-shout, eyes wide and aimed down at {PRODUCT} lying flat on
the desk in the near foreground; laptop edge bottom-left of frame, frosted window
camera-left throwing flat daylight across the face, dark wood cabinet and a black
mesh office chair behind, off-white walls, {SUBJECT} in a red-and-cream horizontal-
striped polo and wire-frame glasses, unstyled, slight grain, no retouching, no
on-screen text
```

**Motion:** handheld at desk height, essentially held on one framing with only small unintentional drift — no cuts, no zoom, no reframing for the performance.

**Text overlay:** two lines, centre of frame, white with a soft shadow, on screen for the first few seconds only and never again —

```
Real {situation} gone wrong
POV: you {learned it the wrong way}
```

**Reference:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DV9sWDpEf7p/
