# Captioned steps, comment gate — rebuild sheet

A woman in her 60s gives away a whole DIY hair routine on camera — the water left after boiling eggs, steeped with the shells, decanted into a spray bottle, sprayed on her scalp — then gates the "full protocol" behind a comment. 38.91s, 192,967 views, 6,832 likes, @juliehairhacks.

**Why it works**

She withholds nothing on the free thing: every step is named and performed, so the paid thing behind the gate reads as bigger rather than as a toll. The captions are speech fragments that are mid-sentence at every single beat, so there is never a clean place to leave, and the back half puts her own hairline in a locked macro band under her — the claim and the body making it are on screen in the same second.

**The beats**

| Time | What happens | On-screen text |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 3.11s | Open field, golden hour, fence line behind. She stands frame right in a black tank, long grey curls loose, tipping a big stock pot so cloudy water pours onto a drain grate at her feet, pointing down at it. Handheld phone at her own height. | the water after you boil eggs. |
| 9.34s | Same field, same frame. She has crouched down and lifted the emptied pot toward the lens so the eggshells in the bottom show; still pointing, still talking to camera. | that almost nobody talks |
| 15.56s | Cut to a covered porch — timber rafters, house siding at right. Close on her face talking straight to the lens, a big glass jar of eggshells steeping in yellow water held up into the bottom of frame. | It penetrates |
| 21.79s | Frame becomes a two-band composite and stays that way to the end. Top: she sprays a clear plastic spray bottle into her own hairline. Bottom: locked macro on a hairline and part, grey hair, downcast eyes. | spray bottle, |
| 28.02s | Same composite. Top: she pinches and lifts a section of her hair while talking. Bottom: the same hairline macro, unchanged. | the shedding stops and |
| 34.24s | Same composite. Top: she holds a long length of her hair out toward the lens, mid-word. Bottom: the same hairline macro, unchanged. | Comment yes if you want my |

**What carries the value**

Her own hair. Long, dense, grey, completely unstyled, held out to the lens — with a locked macro of her own hairline sitting under her for the whole back half. The recipe is free and complete; the body that recipe supposedly produced is the only thing being asserted, and it never leaves the screen. The gate lands after the value, which is why it does not read as a toll.

**Shoot it**

- **Camera:** phone, handheld, at the operator's own height — no tripod. Two setups only: an outdoor wide for the open, then an arm's-length close on a porch or in shade for the rest. From roughly the halfway point the frame is a two-band composite: operator in the top band, a locked macro of the body area being treated in the bottom band, and the bottom band never changes framing again.
- **Light:** low sun for the outdoor open (it is what makes the pouring water read); open shade under a roof for everything after, lit from the open side. No lamps, no fill.
- **Wardrobe:** plain dark tank, nothing branded, no styling of any kind. The hair is the product — it must look untouched.
- **Props into frame, not on a table:** the pot, the jar, the spray bottle are each lifted up into the bottom of the shot by the operator while she keeps talking. Nothing is ever set down and shot separately.
- **Text:** burned-in speech captions, one clause per beat, centred low, white with a heavy shadow, one word per card larger and bolder than the rest. Every card is a fragment of a running sentence — none of them stands alone. The last card is the comment gate, and the post caption repeats it word for word.
- **What the frames do not show, so do not assume it:** the audio is not available here, so the captions are being read as speech subtitles from their shape, not confirmed as such. Whether the lower macro band is the same woman or a second borrowed source cannot be told from these stills. Whether there are extra cuts between the sampled beats, and whether text appeared before 3.11s or after 34.24s, is also not visible — six stills across 38.91s is what was read.

**Or generate it**

```
vertical 9:16 two-band composite, seam across the middle.
Upper band: {SUBJECT} standing on a covered timber porch, plain black
scoop-neck tank top, no styling, long loose unstyled grey curly hair past
the shoulders, holding {PRODUCT} up in one hand and spraying it into their
own hairline while talking to the lens; timber rafters overhead, house
siding and open dry field visible behind, warm late-afternoon daylight
coming in from the open side of the porch, phone-camera look, slight grain,
no retouching.
Lower band: locked macro close-up of the same hairline and part, individual
grey hairs sharp, forehead and downcast eyes just in frame, even daylight,
phone-camera look, no retouching.
No on-screen text.
```

**Motion:** upper band handheld at arm's length, drifting slightly with the operator as they spray and talk; lower band absolutely locked and identical for the whole back half — generate every beat of it from the same seed frame.

**Text overlay pattern:** `{the overlooked everyday thing}` → `{that almost nobody talks about}` → `{the mechanism}` → `{the delivery method}` → `{the result}` → `Comment yes if you want my {full protocol}` — one clause per beat, every card a mid-sentence fragment, one word per card set larger and bolder.

**Reference:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DcjWZNwp4HT/
