TikTok is an incredible platform for creators. It gives you access to the types of audiences that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. If you make something interesting, that people engage with, it will be spread to thousands, maybe millions of people.
I don’t know the ins and outs of the TikTok algorithm, but for the most part, I think it’s meritocratic. You don’t need swish camera work and big-budgets, you just need good ideas, well executed.
A few weeks back I was filming a showreel scene for a wonderful young actor called Honor Fox, with Durone Stokes filling in as a scene partner. We were having a fun day, feeling creative, so as we finished up the scene, I suggested we shoot a Tik Tok sketch. I quickly went into a different room and wrote a one page comedy sketch. The actors learned it in ten minutes, then we filmed it.
Later that night I released the sketch, and it got one million views overnight, and eventually, was viewed by over two million people. That’s incredible numbers in just a few days.
This week, I released two new sketches. One of them has 800,000 views, one has 5,000. It’s a fascinating way to get quick feedback from an audience. One of those sketches clicked, one didn’t. Where else can you get such swift feedback from a large audience?
The magic of TikTok is that you don’t need fans, you don’t need a follower base. You just need to make something and share it. The app will push your work to a handful of people and if what you do is deemed good by the users, it’ll spread. You don’t need a distributor, you don’t need funding from BAFTA, you can create stuff on your phone or camera and get it out there.
Most of us are addicted to social media now anyway. If you’re going to be addicted as a consumer of content, you may as well get addicted as a producer of it, too.
You can view my TikTok sketches here.
