These are viral TikToks I made for LAist that have been epic and life-changing for me as an artist (I don’t want to give spoilers, it’s better if you just watch)!
During the 2020 election, NPR station LAist wanted to help our audience vote, so we made a lot of community engagement content to support that. I was part of the original TikTok team which was essentially four people trying to make it through an incredibly tough news cycle without burning out. This idea was one I came up with that made everyone laugh which was a levity we were grateful for at the time. It energized us. One teammate taught us how to optimize the wording for the caption, another showed us how we could connect the concept to a trending sound. I got the materials, built the props, and shot the videos. Together, we did something special.
I loved every second of making these and I was overjoyed when we had such positive engagement. The first two TikToks have 9 million and 1 million views respectively (and helped us gain 10,000 followers overnight)! Just before Twitter became X, NPR retweeted our reel which drove 45,000 unique impressions to our site (just from one tweet)! I can’t express enough how it was SO FUN to make all of these!
There should be three videos on this page. If you only see one and you’re not seeing the TikToks right away, I recommend refreshing this page! That should make them appear!
This Instagram post was one we did a couple years later to promote local elections. It had good numbers on Reels, and it was an adventure to make. Fun fact: That fondant wall collapsed moments after calling “CUT”! Turns out, that much fondant weighs a lot!