Camera height carries the format

Height matters more than lens or distance. It's the first thing a frame-read checks, and it's the thing that makes a shot legible as a format before a word is spoken. These were read off real winners, frame by frame — not reasoned from first principles.

GRWM / storytime

• Phone PROPPED on the vanity at CHIN height, slightly below eye level. Zero camera motion — propped, not held.
• Head-and-shoulders to mid-chest, a little air above the hair. Products kiss the bottom edge of frame.
• Eyeline OFF the lens — on the mirror, or down at products. Eyes close mid-application. Only occasional lens glances.
• ONE brush in ONE hand crossing the face with motion blur. Never two.
• Light: neutral bright window daylight, or genuinely dim bedroom. Never studio key, never amber-cozy.
• Set: plain wall or door. No string lights, no plants, no macramé — all AI tells.

Podcast

• Static camera ON the desk at CHEST height, level straight-across — not elevated, not looking down.
• Waist-up with modest headroom. Desk surface, mic-boom base and a water glass in the lower foreground.
• Body angled 30–45° toward an UNSEEN host; eyeline on them, never the lens. It's one side of a conversation, not a monologue.
• Mic: compact black SM7B-style on a black boom entering a lower corner. Never a big silver scissor arm across the frame.
• Set: bright lived-in room, bookshelf with MIXED random books — not colour-sorted, not identical blank spines. Both of those happened and both read as fake.

Street

• HANDHELD at chest height with real sway and micro-jitter. A locked-off street interview reads staged immediately.
• Two-shot: medium-wide, both people from mid-thigh up, a step further back than feels right.
• Interviewer is just a hand and a tiny wireless mic entering from the lower corner.
• Bright real daylight, real storefront depth.