Expectation vs reality split

<direction> A 9-second expectation-vs-reality comedy video about the birthday cake, 1280x720 landscape. Two beats, two registers, one hard cut — no transition, no crossfade. Beat 1 (EXPECTATION): warm gold radial light, letterspaced serif title, elegant italic caption. Beat 2 (REALITY): flat grey light, heavy sans title, deadpan caption. Same subject, same framing, both beats. Banned: transitions of any kind between the beats, sad music cues described in type, extra props in beat 2 — the comedy is register and one failure, nothing else. </direction> <structure> Beat 1 (0-4.2s): the subject assembles piece by piece, perfectly; sparkles; caption: What the recipe promised.. At 4.2s a HARD CUT with a one-frame camera jolt. Beat 2 (4.2-9s): the same subject, lopsided — every piece at its own angle; one small detail escapes, falls, bounces once, and stops; a wisp of smoke; caption: What came out of my oven.; punchline strip at the end: SAME RECIPE. SAME OVEN. (second half in the accent colour). </structure> <build> One HyperFrames composition, both scenes stacked as top-level clips. The cut is a single-frame set that hides scene 1 (autoAlpha, so hidden elements leave the layout entirely) and shows scene 2. GSAP timeline, paused, seek-driven. Render at 30fps. </build> <gotchas> Hard cuts have a hidden rule: every tween on the outgoing scene must be FINISHED before the cut frame, not merely faded. A still-running tween keeps re-asserting its values after the hide and leaks the old scene into the new one — our first render leaked beat 1's sparkles into beat 2 exactly this way. Time the outgoing scene's last tween to end before the cut, and hide with autoAlpha, not opacity alone. </gotchas>