If you’ve been doing TV, Film, Commercials, or something resembling those, you likely place your work on a pedestal. 

And you should. It’s hard to create something that moves others, let alone something worth watching at all. So much needs to happen to go right.

The script finessing. The cast & crew collecting. The pre-production madness. Location scouting. Politely negotiating with whoever gets in your way. Creating budgets, call sheets, shot lists, contact sheets, equipment rentals, invoices - it’s so much.

So when we see low effort TikToks or insta-reels, while we’re entertained, we balk at the ease of making something so simple. We think because it’s just some guy on his phone at his house that it’s a piece of cake. Or it's total shit.

But have we tried to do it? Have we gotten over our snooty filmmaker attitude, taken off our hipster tortoise shell glasses and just made a video without making excuses?

I sure hadn't...until 3 weeks ago.

Since I was hired at 37signals, I approached all videos with a filmmaker hat on. However, we recently decided to dive head first into Tiktok, as it feels like too great an opportunity to pass up. Time to throw on the content hat.

Because speed is the name of the game, I’ve had to completely overhaul the workflow I’m use to. No more conceptualization and scriptwriting for 1-2 weeks. No more casting and crewing. No more nice cameras or lenses. No more 1-2 weeks of post-production to make it perfect.

This attitude partially breaks my heart to embrace, as teamwork and craft are the best part about producing film and TV. It also turns 10 jobs into 1, eliminating jobs and skillsets from the process entirely. This puts people out of work and swallows career paths. I don't love how fractured the media landscape is becoming, but it's out of my control what direction it's going in. This is part of the process and always has been - if I don't adapt, I risk getting left behind.

So now I must ask myself: How I can make an idea happen as fast as possible, with just enough to stick the landing?

*The following links all go to a TikTok I've made in the last 3 weeks for 37signals. This work wouldn't be possible without the writing talents of Alex Baia and leadership of Glenn Pajarito, Head of Marketing at 37s 🙏

“But it’ll look worse!”

Doesn’t matter. Actually looks better because people want authenticity over perfection.

“But it’ll feel cheap!”

Great! That’s more relatable.

“But the sound will be shitty!”

Ok, use a lav mic so it’s good enough.

“But we need actors!”

No you don’t, just do all the characters yourself.

Forget ‘but.’ Embrace ‘do.’ 

I’m surprising myself with how much I enjoy this process. It’s taking a lot of the complicated and bloated parts out of production and empowering me to just make things. Which is really all we want right? To stay in the creative headspace as much as possible.

It was a little hard to detach from what I know, but once I just did it, I felt like I should have done it a lot sooner. 

You should try it. Just try. Give yourself one day to make a video about something you like that’s one minute or less. Let go of the perfection. Everything doesn’t need to be in 24 fps, framed perfectly, with a shallow depth of field. When you use a phone, you realize how unimportant (and impossible) it is for it to ‘look good’ and you can just say ‘fuck it, this looks bad’ and move on.

I bet you’ll have way more fun than you know...so go!