Recently, I stumbled across some footage from last summer.

They were clips from installing new lights in my garage.

I always have a camera on a tripod when I am working. This way, I have lots of footage I can turn into content when I need it.

So, I decided to make some content about it.

The lights themselves are not that special ($80 Amazon LED tube lights). However, the way I installed them was different.

The video has gotten 5 million views in the last week alone. I'm going to dive into why I think it worked so well, so you can copy the idea.

First, here are the stats.

Take a look at the video the video »»» HERE

Then come back, and we are going to break it apart.

We are going to break it into the topic, the hook, filming, and editing.

Topic

The topic for the video is garage lighting. It’s a topic that is more or less universal, which is key to success here. It will be relatable to a wide audience.

On the flip side, a narrow topic can be more engaging but caters to a much smaller group of people.

What I did is take a broad topic and put my own unique spin on it. I mounted the lights to the garage door, so they moved when it opened and closed. It’s something that you don’t see very often, which sparked interest.

Hook

The hook is broken into two parts.

First is the visual hook. I chose to start the video with something that opened a story loop. I wanted to grab attention by alluding that something was about to happen.

You see a hand moving into the frame with a garage door opener. Then the door slowly starts to reveal something. Humans are suckers for a good reveal. We want to know the whole story.

Think about a cliffhanger at the end of your favorite show. You so desperately want to know what happens that you hit “next episode”. The same thing applies here.

The second part is the text hook. I wanted to frame this as a challenge I was overcoming. So, I came up with some on-screen text that said this:

People love when a person overcomes an obstacle. (Think of any sports movie ever.)

I'll admit that nobody said this to me. But I could just imagine telling somebody about my lighting idea and them scoffing at it. Adding "them" to the text hook added more emotion to it though.

The second part of the text hook was the first line of text in the caption.

This implies that the obstacle was overcome and draws them into the reveal even more.

I also posed a question.

If I could get people to respond to this, it would drive engagement and send signals to Instagram that they should push this content to more people. (They did.)

Filming

Filming this was very simple.

To film it all, I put my camera on a tripod in multiple locations and then recorded the door opening and closing.

I got a shot that was dead-on the door, low angle from the left and right, and a few inside the garage both low and high angles. I did it all on a tripod so the footage wasn't shaky at all.

Super simple stuff. But I'm sure I looked nuts opening and closing the door repeatedly for 20 min.

I shot it all on my iPhone 15 Pro Max. Honestly, it's easier and better than my big $4,000 camera in a lot of ways. Using your phone is a great option.

Editing

This video is all about the big reveal.

I wanted to tease the viewer by not showing the entire lit garage until the very end, forcing them to watch the whole clip to get the payoff.

All the shots before that only show a small portion of the garage.

They are edited together to make it look like the door was opened just once and was filmed from multiple angles.

I wanted it to be fast-paced so each clip is limited to about one second before it cuts to another one.

To add even more drama, each clip has a slow zoom added to it, adding curiosity to the big reveal. Each clip starts at 115% zoom and zooms out to 100% by the end of the clip (Editing in CapCut).

As soon as they see the big reveal, I end the clip.

Then I added some trending music. It was this really cool jazzy tune that I found by this guy: https://www.instagram.com/caleb.arredondo/

Currently, my post has the second most views of any of the 44,000+ posts using it, which is really cool.

The audio is added in the Instagram app just before posting.

Takeaways

None of this is super complicated stuff on it’s own. But, when you put it all together, it creates something that has the potential to explode your reach.

Choose a good topic, craft a solid visual and text hook (copy my format below if you want), and edit clips in a fast-paced way leading up to a big reveal/payoff.

Use this - “Them - You can’t do X.”

You got this.

Sam “loves garage doors” Webster

P.S. I used comments from the post to make more content. One video has got an additional 200k views. I’ll show you how to use Chat GPT to help with this in the next edition of the newsletter.

P.P.S This reel got the attention of two companies that want to do collaborations with me. I’ll keep you in the loop and tell you how you can negotiate deals like this for yourself too.