Social media platforms evolve and new competitors emerge, and so the ones we choose to invest time in and the ways we use them should reflect that. In this two-part blog, our former Marketing Officer Sami Abdul-Razzak investigates some of the ways that film exhibitors have been using some of the ‘newer’ social media platforms that are particularly popular with younger audiences, such as Letterboxd and TikTok.
Like films, but smaller: TikTok (+ Reels)
In contrast with my knowledge of Letterboxd, I am almost a complete Luddite when it comes to TikTok. Last year, when I told my partner that I’d started listening to an audiobook about the Roman Empire, she burst into hysterical laughter. Bewildered and slightly annoyed, I asked “What’s so funny? The Roman Empire is no laughing matter…” Once she’d gathered herself, she eventually explained that ‘men being asked how often they think about the Roman Empire’ was a popular TikTok (the answer is apparently ‘often’ a lot of the time). The discovery that I fell so easily into common male stereotypes was obviously a great disappointment to me, but the knowledge that I was painfully out of touch with contemporary culture came as little surprise.
There have been occasional suggestions over recent years that the ICO should get a TikTok account, suggestions which myself and my colleagues have swiftly and vigorously batted away with rebuttals such as “What would we post?”, “Surely we don’t have the time to make that kind of thing” and “What on earth does ‘FYP’ mean anyway?”.
My team’s reservations are likely the same sort that cinema marketing staff will have when considering whether to plunge into this murky new online space. But as with Letterboxd, I think there are potential benefits from doing so (with certain caveats!) – especially if young people are an audience area you’re looking to grow. So, for this blog, I’ll speak to someone much more knowledgeable than me to find out how exactly TikTok works, as well as a cinema that has invested significant time into producing short-form video content.
Misshapen strawberries and sinister penguins: A Beginner’s Guide to TikTok
To find out how TikTok works, I spoke with my ICO colleague James Calver, the youngest member of our team and the person who told me what ‘FYP’ means so that I could make that joke two paragraphs ago.
SAR: Hi James.
James Calver (JC): Hi Sami. What is this?
SAR: It’s a blog about social media and you’re contributing to it.
JC: I see… can I just –
SAR: James, please could you give me an overview of TikTok and its main features?
JC: TikTok is a relatively simple platform. It’s a video-based social media, with most content shown in portrait format, which you can scroll through at your own pace. Much like other social media platforms, you can engage with these videos in very familiar ways, such as liking, commenting and sharing. If you’ve ever spent time scrolling through Instagram Reels, it’s very similar to that (for those unfamiliar, this is the name given to short-form videos on Instagram). Like Instagram, you now have verified profiles for public figures and major organisations, so you know where most of your content is coming from.
The difference between TikTok and other social media platforms is that, the majority of the time, you’re not curating the stream of content yourself through the people you follow, and will spend most of your time as a user on your ‘For You Page’ (FYP). The videos you watch are curated by the app’s algorithm, which makes decisions on what to show you based on a multitude of factors, but is primarily focussed on showing you videos similar to content you’ve watched in the past. The algorithm is designed to keep you engaged, constantly ‘doomscrolling’ until you forget your own name, and is often criticised for how addictive it can be.
When it became TikTok, the platform had a similar rise to Vine, growing at astronomic rates through user-made content. A lot of the content you see there today has carried on this trend, with comedy skits, travel & food blogs, and day-in-the-life videos. TikToks tend to be short in length, usually no more than a minute, however this can vary a lot for each content creator (videos you record in TikTok can be up to ten minutes long, while videos you upload to TikTok can be up to 60 minutes).
The algorithm that creates your FYP is designed for each individual, so you can often find yourself seeing completely different content to another user. This in turn means it’s very hard to try and understand what a specific audience is currently tuning into on TikTok, in order to try and engage with them as an organisation for example. It’s everyone’s dream to ‘break into someone’s FYP’, but how you actually do that is mostly a mystery.
SAR: I understand that music plays a big role in TikTok. How does that work in practice?
JC: Before we had TikTok, we had Musical.ly – a more bespoke social media that was purely about users creating content around music, such as lip-syncs, or audio clips that were created in the app. When Musical.ly became TikTok, this focus on audio remained a key part of the platform. A lot of the music you hear in the charts today is there because someone used it in some format on TikTok which has started a trend and the artist has blown up.
It’s not always about music and songs though. Several trends started from people using audio from other people’s TikToks. A current example of this is people taking the audio from a video about misshapen strawberries and using it to show off their animals that look a bit scruffy, such as this TikTok from a nature centre in the US. These trends are fuelled by the fact that you can search TikTok via the specific audio track, so as above with music, you can tap an audio track and see all of the video content created with it.
SAR: Thanks James, that is all extremely disturbing, though informative. So please continue. How does the video editing aspect work? Do you do that within the app?
JC: Video creation in the app is very easy, which is why so much content is being created for the platform. There are quite a few accounts, normally those run by businesses, that will make their content outside of the platform and then upload their already finished videos, but the majority of the user-generated content is created within the app. Many videos are created with filters, and if you see a TikTok with a filter you like, you can click one button and it will take you to your front-facing camera to start recording yourself with that filter. From there you can easily edit the length of your TikTok, add any simple cuts or transitions, and choose the music/audio if you’re not using your own.
SAR: Can you give me some examples of a few recent trends on TikTok, and how these manifest themselves? For example, can you please tell me what is so funny about the Roman Empire?
JC: There are certain trends that have remained ubiquitous since TikTok started, such as Get Ready with Me (GRWM) videos, #FoodTok, and #FilmTok. These are very general trends that make up a lot of the content you might see if using the platform. What most people think of when they hear about trends though are the viral memes that spread through the app like wildfire, much like the trend of people asking their partners what their ‘Roman Empire’ was, which itself originated from a TikTok trend of people asking their partners, generally men, how often they think about the Roman Empire.
To try and highlight the variety of trends on the app, I thought I’d let you stare into my soul by sharing a few from my own FYP:
- ‘Very Demure, Very Mindful’
- People making chickens dance
- Sinister compilations of Feathers McGraw, which became a trend after the announcement of the next Wallace and Gromit film.
- A Quiet Place: Cat Challenge, where people are seeing if their cats could stay silent if they were in The Quiet Place: Day One
SAR: Very curious… and which ancient civilisation do you think could be the next big thing? Maybe we could get ahead of the curve on this?
JC: …
SAR: Thank you for your time.
Surely we don’t have time to do all that?
So, now that we’re all expert TikTok-ers, how might film exhibitors use it? To find out, I spoke with Emma Gray from Broadway in Nottingham. A slight caveat: while Broadway do use TikTok, currently most of their content is focused on Instagram Reels. But as both TikTok and Reels involve producing short-form video content, and because Broadway have invested significant time into this, I thought there might be some transferable takeaways.
Before we hear from Emma, I’d recommend taking a look at some of Broadway’s TikToks and Reels to get a sense of the kind of videos they’ve been creating. Some of my favourites include:
SAR: Hi Emma! First of all – how do you generate ideas for videos, and how do you decide which films to make them for?
Emma Gray (EG): Often the Head of Marketing will let me know which films we want to generate more traction around or what we expect to be big that week. Either that, or he’ll tell me we want to get the word out about a ticket deal, new menu or drink in the Café Bar, or to advertise room hire. The ideas usually come pretty quickly after that. My go-to is the use of comedy, which works very well with our audience, parodying films or presenting styles. Film trailers provide the serious content for our films, but on the budget I’ve got to make these videos, comedy allows space for a homemade feel, whilst still remaining professional. And as an independent cinema we encourage homemade filmmaking!
SAR: I understand you’re an actor yourself so I assume you’re not too camera shy, which may not be the case for a lot of cinema staff! Do you find the Broadway front-of-house team are usually happy to take part? How much do you involve them in the production process?
EG: Depending on my ideas, some of the front-of-house staff have been up for appearing in the Reels but I have found that the more wild the idea, the less likely people want to be involved. Which is fair enough! So to execute my ideas, and usually because I’m limited on time and people have other jobs to do, I have ended up in the majority of the Reels myself. My background in performing definitely helps with this. I grew up making videos like this and I continue to act still to this day.
SAR: Who films and edits the videos? How much time do you spend on one of your videos typically?
EG: As Broadway’s Social Media Coordinator, I have other things to do as part of my job, but typically I will spend an hour or so thinking up the idea and gathering what I need, asking around the building for random objects (such as a leaf blower, wellies, wigs or fake guns), and I’ll then spend half a day or so filming and editing the piece. The more complicated the idea, the longer it takes. I often have to wait for cinema screens or staff to be free to film, so filming is flexible and often done in chunks throughout the day. As there is only one of me, I’ll grab someone available and direct them as to how to film the shots and then when all filming is complete I’ll head back to my office and edit it together.
SAR: Do you use the videos on other platforms too?
EG: We post to Facebook and TikTok as well. We are currently building up our followers from scratch on TikTok. Apart from our Chicken Run reel which has hit 26K views on TikTok, most of our online audience for this content comes from Instagram, but we’re looking to build our TikTok audience in the future.
SAR: How does the engagement of these videos compare with the video content usually supplied by distributors (for example, trailers or social media clips)?
EG: These videos have a more personal feel to them, they say a bit about who we are as an organisation: we’re a creative hub in our city and we like to create fun content for people to enjoy. I hope it shows people that we’re a welcoming space that we invite others to be a part of. Film trailers best suit the cinema screens they are made for, social media is our space to be playful, whilst also remaining professional and creating content that people connect to. The comment section is always an encouraging read that reflects we’re doing something right.
SAR: Thank you Emma, that’s been very useful. I look forward to your next video!
Thank you for reading this blog. This is the second in a two-part series, you can read the first part (which focuses on Letterboxd) here.