# ANOMALY Knowledge · Making Viral Videos

Source: Course 3 of the ANOMALY curriculum (4 lessons, Research & Character, Handmade, Wow-Factor, Problem-Solving). This is the factual reference for how ANOMALY videos get made: pick a character, find a winning concept, recreate it frame-by-frame with AI, edit to match the original's rhythm.

## Research First (before making anything)

- Look at competitors: which accounts, which concepts, which platforms they're on.
- Take the account links and winning videos to Claude and Gemini. Ask what character would work best for this product, and whether to copy their concepts directly or run something fresh.
- Confirm you can actually source the product (AliExpress, or message a supplier) before building anything around it. No point designing a character and concept for a product you can't ship.

## Character: Why It Matters

**Core principle: the character attracts an audience that looks like them.** This is the single highest-leverage decision in the whole process, it can double your views.

- Race/identity: a white creator selling a USA flag pulls white buyers. Running a creator that no competitor in that niche has used opens up a whole audience they aren't reaching.
- Gender/age: a young good-looking guy attracts older women. A hard-working young woman attracts older men. An older character attracts older viewers. Pick the character that pulls the buyer you actually want.
- Freshness: a character no competitor has used makes the algorithm treat your video as new content, you can run the exact same product and concept as a competitor and still go viral, because the visual is different.

### Creating the character

1. With all your research in the chat, ask Claude what character would sell this product best and attract the ideal buyer.
2. Generate the strongest option with GPT Image 2 (via Higgsfield), good for a clean character close-up.
3. Make it real, not perfect: no blurry/generic background, don't make the character too pretty or too polished. A relatable person reads as authentic; a model-perfect face reads as an ad and kills the organic feel.

### Consistency rule by video type

- **Handmade / personal-brand products:** keep ONE consistent character across all videos so the audience recognizes them, this is what builds a personal brand.
- **Wow-factor and problem-solving products:** character matters less; you can run a different character each video.

## The Recreate Workflow (same process for all three video types)

Never invent a concept from scratch. The process:

1. **Find a winning concept.** Find a video already going viral, a competitor, or anyone running a similar product/concept. Don't guess at what works; copy from what's proven.
2. **Break down why it worked.** Drop the video into Claude and have it analyze the hook, the pacing, and why it keeps people watching. You need to understand the mechanism before you recreate it, not just the surface.
3. **Recreate the images, scene by scene.** For each key shot (hook, middle, end): screenshot that moment from the original, give it to Claude along with your character reference photo and product photo, and have it write a prompt to recreate that same shot with your character and product. Generate with **Nano Banana Pro at 2K**. Keep your character + product in every prompt so the look stays consistent across shots.
4. **Animate each image.** Send the finished images back into the same Claude chat, it already analyzed the original video, so it knows how each shot should move. Ask it for a video-generation prompt per image. Use **Seedance 2.0** (or **Kling 3.0** if you want a cheaper option), the two take different prompt styles, so tell Claude which one you're using so it writes the prompt correctly. Keep the motion small and real; don't over-animate.

### The confirm-first rule

Claude must show you all image and motion prompts FIRST and wait for you to confirm before generating anything. Scan each prompt, verify it actually serves the scene, then approve. Never blind-generate a whole batch, this avoids wasting generation credits on prompts that don't match the source video's shot.

## Video Shape by Product Type

- **Handmade:** hook → build clips (watching the product get made by hand) → end result. The build is the whole draw. People watch because they believe it's really handmade.
- **Wow-factor:** hook → buildup (tease) → reveal/payoff. The product does something unexpected; that reaction is the whole sell. Character matters less here.
- **Problem-solving:** hook → problem → end result/before-after. Some of these skip a long build entirely and are just a clean before-and-after. Show the pain, then the relief. Keep claims honest, comfort/relief framing, never a "cure" claim.

## Editing in CapCut

1. **Load the original as reference.** Put the source viral video on a track in CapCut, this is what you're matching the rhythm to.
2. **Get a fresh copy of the song.** Shazam the audio they used, find it on YouTube, download it fresh via a YouTube-to-mp3 tool, and line it up where theirs sits. Use fresh audio, not audio ripped from their clip.
3. **Cut to the beats.** Mark the beat points in the song, then place your recreated clips on those beats so your video's flow matches the original's pacing exactly.
4. **Add the text hook.** Use the **TikTok Sans** font. Match the structure of their on-screen hook but rewrite it for your product; keep the emoji's function but tweak the emoji/wording slightly rather than copying verbatim.

Once a couple of videos are made this way, the build clips and end-result clips become reusable assets, each new video after that gets faster to produce.