I put in an honest effort to make something that I thought would work on TikTok to promote the new album.  This ends up being the version you see on drop day and a longer version I kept for the website, hosted as an unlisted YouTube video. I think it turned out pretty cool, but the algorithm doesn’t so much.

Last week, maybe just a few days before the release, I was trying to come up with ideas to help promote the album. The basic concepts: something surprising in 3 seconds, snippets of all the songs, feature different ways we consume music, radio station tuning that includes pandemic-related broadcast news, keep it to one minute (oops, too long!). I sat down with my chatbot buddy and we started outlining. (And, as I’m discovering, can potentially lead you down an oxygen-deprived mine shaft while eating your own shit.)

I generated newscaster copy that I had ElevenLabs read out for me using three different voices. I went into Studio One and built out all the audio using the music, sfx, and newscasters for a full minute (and later again for 30s).  Now to video.

TikTokers like crazy shit in the first 3 seconds of the video (isn’t it?) if they even make it that far. I had this idea of like a vintage radio exploding – I would use image-to-vid gen to get cool exploding radios. I used Leonardo.ai for images and video, Runway ML, and Hailuo.

I built a few good gens and started working on the video editing. I thought I’d be building this thing out in Resolve using all gens, but I quickly realized I couldn’t get enough quality video. I needed stock. Vid gen is so frustrating now (three-fingered hands notwithstanding). I turned to VEED.

The exploding radios thing struck the wrong nerve and didn’t fit the album—at all. So… I looked to coffee, deeply satisfying coffee, and coffeehouse vibes. A mug full of coffee comes crashing into millions of pieces. Ugh, the gens (see this below)!?

Still didn’t feel right. 

Ah, a coffee mug falling but landing perfectly in a cushy pillow, not spilling a drop. Yeh, a precarious thing that ends up ok in the end – totally Nostalgia 19. Gen, gen, gen, gen, gen. Leonardo’s new video gen was able to do it!

Cram session to get this video done by Thursday, and then showed it around to a few close friends. Too long for TikTok. You need a 30 sec version. Another cram session early Friday to piece together the shorter version and post it out. Yeah, that close.

24 hours later it’s sitting at an astonishing 44 views! So worth it! Ahem.

Screw you TikTok, one day I will show you. I will find a way to keep my integrity, my soul, and crack your little puzzle. Possibly. Or me and my zero followers will just close my damn account. 

I should have posted the exploding radios.

Final TikTok vid. Don’t watch, you’ll ruin my low viewer count!