# Subtitled monologue, evidence cutaways — rebuild sheet

A 92-second expert monologue: one woman, one desk, one bookshelf, talking straight to camera under rolling speech subtitles, with clinical macro photos of the problem pasted into her frame early and the product held up at the end. 762,767 views · 19,424 likes.

**Why it works**

The ugly evidence arrives before the explanation — two macro photos of damaged, pigmented skin composited into an otherwise calm, authoritative frame, so the viewer has *seen* the problem before it is named. Everything after that is a caption chain that reclassifies the viewer's own routine as the cause (cause → plain name → technical mechanism → verdict), and because the frame never moves, the words are the only thing that can hold attention, which forces every clause to earn its beat.

**The beats**

| Time | What happens | On-screen text |
|---|---|---|
| 7.35s | Wide-medium locked frame — woman in a pink knit top at a glass desk, warm bookshelf behind. A macro photo of dark, mottled pigmented skin is composited into the upper-left, overlapping her. She is mid-sentence. | If you've dark patches on your bikini line |
| 22.06s | Identical framing. The composited photo is now larger and centred over her upper body — irritated skin with visible ingrown hairs and raised bumps. | They tug and they cause ingrowns |
| 36.77s | Same locked frame, no inset. Talking to the lens, one hand raised near her chest. | That's your darkness |
| 51.48s | Tighter framing of the same seat and set — she fills more of the frame, shoulders cropped. The only framing change in the sampled beats. | These are your tyrosinase inhibitors |
| 66.18s | Back to the wider frame, identical to the first three beats. Hand raised, fingers pinched. | But if nothing else has worked? |
| 80.89s | Same wide frame. She holds a tall tan carton up on the right, label to camera — a "V" monogram and "Body Smoothing Exfoliator" are legible. | For faster results you can use a chemical exfoliant |

*From six stills across 92 seconds, these are the beats I can prove. What the frames do not show: whether the evidence photos come back between the sampled beats, how many distinct framings are used in total, whether there are cuts inside a beat, and the smaller line of label text above "Body Smoothing Exfoliator" — it is not legible at this resolution. There is no on-screen text at any beat other than the subtitle line.*

**What carries the value**

The two clinical macro photos pasted into the expert's own frame. They make the damage physical and unpleasant on screen before a single mechanism is named, so the caption chain that follows lands on something the viewer has already seen rather than on a claim. The expert's authority sells the fix; the photos sell the problem — and without the photos this is just a person talking.

**Shoot it**

- **Camera:** phone on a tripod, vertical, locked at chest-up-plus-desk height, square-on. It does not move for the whole video. Shoot the entire monologue in that one framing, then reshoot the whole thing a second time from the same position slightly tighter — that gives you one clean angle change to cut to in the middle, which is the only camera event in the piece.
- **Set:** one seat, one surface, one background with visible credibility props behind (the original uses a filled bookshelf with matching spines and small warm practical lights). It never changes, so it only has to be right once.
- **Light:** soft frontal key on the face — a window or a single softbox in front — with the warm background lights doing the depth. Nothing dramatic; the face has to read as calm and professional.
- **Wardrobe:** one plain solid-colour long-sleeve top, no pattern, no logo. Same outfit start to finish. Hair and makeup finished, because the credibility is the product here.
- **Evidence photos:** get real macro shots of the actual problem, cropped square-ish, and paste them flat over the upper part of the frame during the problem beats only. They are not cutaways — the speaker stays visible behind them.
- **Subtitles:** burn in one spoken clause per beat, two lines, centred in the lower third, identical position and typeface every time.
- **Close:** hold the product up beside your face, label to the lens, in the same locked frame. No cutaway to the product.

**Or generate it**

```
vertical 9:16 photograph, {SUBJECT} seated at a glass-topped desk in a warm
study, a wooden bookshelf of matching book spines and small warm practical
lights behind them slightly out of focus, soft frontal key light on the face,
mid-sentence talking to the lens, hands resting or raised in a gesture, clean
but unstyled camera look — with a rectangular macro photograph of {PROBLEM}
composited flat into the upper-left of the frame, overlapping the subject,
no border shadow, no on-screen text
```

**Motion:** camera absolutely locked at a wide-medium seat framing for the whole runtime — the subject talks, the evidence photo appears and disappears inside the same frame, and the only camera event in the piece is a single cut to a tighter version of the identical setup partway through. Generate every beat from the same seed so the room and the seat match exactly.

**Text overlay pattern:** one spoken clause per beat, two lines, centred lower third, same position and face every time, running as continuous speech —

> "If you've {problem} on your {body area}" → "They {mechanism} and they cause {symptom}" → "That's your {plain-word name}" → "These are your {technical mechanism name}" → "But if nothing else has worked?" → "For faster results you can use {PRODUCT category}"

**Reference:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DY407Hxsf67/
