# Sticky-line maker demo — rebuild sheet

A 20.76s first-person walk across a hardwood floor pushing a steam mop, with one sarcastic line pinned on screen the whole time — @simplyleonfinds, 7,350,465 views, 119,598 likes.

**Why it works**
The line never changes and no face ever appears, so there is nothing to grant permission to and nothing to read twice — the viewer parks on one sentence and spends the rest of the runtime watching the floor for evidence. And because the line claims *not* to care about clean floors, every second of visible steam, wet edge and gleam argues against it, which is a more watchable job than a claim the footage merely agrees with.

**The beats**

| Time | What happens | On-screen text |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 1.66s | POV angled down at dark hardwood, hard sunlight from upper left, a dull hazy patch across the boards; white cabinets top right; the mop head just enters the bottom edge | POV: When you're not worried about how clean your floors is |
| 4.98s | Walked forward — sunlit band across the boards, dark spots and scuffs, a dull arc of haze mid-floor; head still at the bottom edge | same line, unchanged |
| 8.3s | Mop head fully in frame, wand running down toward camera (control panel, red indicator, trailing cord), visible steam rising around the head | same line, unchanged |
| 11.63s | Head pushed back to the bottom; a broad damp cleaned band lies across the floor with a hard wet edge against the drier boards | same line, unchanged |
| 14.95s | Head pushed forward toward a dark furniture base, its two rotating pads visible at the housing edges | same line, unchanged |
| 18.27s | Closest shot — head just under the caption, the floor ahead throwing a bright wet reflection off the cleaned boards | same line; one word ("your") carries a yellow highlight box in this frame only |

Two honest gaps: **the frames cannot tell you whether there is audio** — voiceover, trending sound or silence. The yellow highlight on one word in the last beat looks like a spoken-caption highlight, which would imply a voice reading the line, but a single still is not proof of that. And **no cut is visible between any two frames** — the six stills are consistent with one unbroken take, but stills 3.3s apart cannot rule a cut out.

The line is transcribed verbatim, grammatical slip and all ("how clean your floors **is**"). Don't correct it on the rebuild — the offhand wrongness is part of why it reads as a real person's caption.

**What carries the value**
The floor changing state in real time under the tool: dull haze → visible steam → a damp cleaned band with a hard edge against the dirty boards → a wet gleam. No debris, no before/after cut, no talking — just the surface visibly becoming a different surface while a deadpan line insists it doesn't matter.

**Shoot it**
- **Camera:** phone, vertical, held at about waist height and angled down at the floor ahead. Walk slowly forward for the full runtime. Push the tool away from the lens and draw it back so it travels between the bottom edge and the middle of the frame — that travel is the only "editing" in the piece. One unbroken take. No zoom, no cuts to a face.
- **Light:** whatever the room has, with one hard shaft of daylight falling across the working surface — the sun band is what makes the haze, the steam and the wet edge legible. Shoot at a time of day when that band exists; without it the change reads as nothing.
- **Surface:** start on a genuinely dull, marked surface and let the first two beats show it. If the floor is already clean there is no video.
- **Wardrobe:** irrelevant, and that's the point — the operator is never in frame. No hands, no body, no face. Anyone can hold the phone.
- **Text:** one line, centred mid-frame, white serif with a soft shadow, set at the start and never touched again.

**Or generate it**

Most important beat — the tool mid-frame with its effect visible and the sunlit floor beyond:

```
vertical 9:16 phone photograph, first-person POV looking down at a dark stained
hardwood floor from about waist height, {PRODUCT} centred in the middle of the
frame with its handle or pole running down toward the camera and its power cord
trailing, visible vapour or working effect rising around the head of {PRODUCT},
a hard band of daylight falling across the boards beyond it, real domestic room
edges (cabinet base, furniture leg) at the top of frame, {SUBJECT} entirely out
of frame — no hands, no body, no face visible, phone-camera look, slight motion
blur and grain, no retouching, no on-screen text
```

**Motion:** handheld POV walking slowly forward, camera angled down at the floor and drifting with the steps, while {PRODUCT} is pushed away from and drawn back toward the lens in one unbroken take — no cuts, no zoom.

**Text overlay:** `POV: When you're not worried about how {clean} your {floors} is` — one line, centred mid-frame, white serif, identical from first frame to last.

**Reference:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DVJ6jgPjwye/
