Transcripts
1. Introduction : People have gravitated
towards TikTok because it's a platform that allows you
to show your authentic self. TikTok is a useful tool, and it's going to be one
that's going to continue to grow and dominate the
social media space. How's it going? My
name is Josh Otusanya. I'm a comedian and
content creator with over 4.9 million followers on TikTok, and I'm excited to
share with you some of my tools and tricks for success that I've picked
up on the platform. I love to help people. A lot of the content I put out is
geared towards self-help, self-improvement, life advice, and I use comedy to drive home a lot of the points I
make in those videos. Tricks to wake up happier
every single day, part 4. When you wake up, say out loud three things
you're grateful for. Your thoughts drive your action. You can have the
blurriest camera. You can just have rolled out
of bed and have a thought or idea on your mind and put
that out into the world, and there's a lot
of things that I've learned since I've
started creating content, and I would love
to share some of my tools and tricks for success. In this class,
you'll learn how to generate ideas for your
first TikTok video, script your first TikTok video, shoot your video, and
then publish it online. You should take this class if you've been
curious about TikTok, or curious about
content creation, or you just need a
few pieces of advice on how to get started in
the world of social media. All you need is your cell
phone or ready to go. I cannot wait to see your
first TikTok videos. Feel free to leave them in the project gallery down below. I'm so excited you've joined the class. Let's get started.
2. Getting Started: TikTok is the fastest-growing
platform in history. What I love the most about
it is its authenticity. You don't need a
lot to get started, you don't need the
fanciest camera, or the best lighting, all you need is something to
say, and people will listen. How I got started on TikTok
was pretty interesting. I had a lot of experience
posting videos and content on a lot of different
platforms to no success. I ended up discovering TikTok through a lot
of mutual friends. To be honest, the first videos I posted on
there were not very good. I didn't do as the Romans
do on the platform. I actually would take YouTube
videos and post those on the platform without really thinking about what
content on TikTok is like. If you don't know what content to start putting up on TikTok, the first thing I
recommend is to first identify your hobbies
and your passions, what things do you do in your free time or what
are you interested in? Then from that list of ideas, you can narrow it down
based off of what you like the most or just overall
competitiveness. When I first started on TikTok, I was talking about
Zodiac signs, which is something that is completely far removed from
what I talk about now. Top five Zodiac signs most likely to fall in love
with you quickly. Number 5, Aries, number 4, Leo, number 3, Cancer, number 2, Libra, number 1, Pisces. The main idea is to get started and just get
some ideas out there. As previously mentioned,
I'm a comedian who also has a lot of interest in
self-development, life advice, and personal improvement, so a lot of the videos I was making as I was
discovering my niche was really me trying to find a way to blend the
two worlds together. You'll see in some of my videos here that I was
trying to find a way to deliver a piece of information
and highlight it with either a skit or some
kind of comedic element. In this first video here, it's essentially me talking
about a remedy that my parents who came from Nigeria had for
curing a sore throat. I thought it was a
interesting value add, like a good life tip, but I also thought
that there was a mild bit of comedic
components in there as well. But yeah, this was me essentially trying to find
a way to discover a niche. In this video here, this is when I was
playing around a lot with the green screen
effect on TikTok, where you can import
a picture behind you, and this was getting
even closer to me finding ways to deliver information in a short
and concise way. But this was also a period
of time where I hadn't figured out how to weave in
the comedic components yet. The greatest
quarantine date ideas. Have a floor bed
or balcony picnic, have a cook-off with
random pantry ingredients, have a board game tournament, watch movies you've always
been meaning to watch. In this video here, this is where I
was getting a lot closer to figuring out my setup, my structure, and how I
want to make these videos. Everything is straight
to the point, I like the setting and
the scenery of the video. This was one of the formats of videos that I actually
still do right now. Five signs you found a
friend for life: Five, they genuinely want
what's best for you. Four, you can be yourself
because they won't judge you. Three, they stick up for you
even when you're not around. Two, you can be brutally
honest with each other. One, they just understands you. Now, the most important metric you should focus on
is your watch time. You want to keep people watching your videos for as long as possible because the longer you can keep people
watching your videos, the more TikTok will reward you, and when TikTok rewards you, that means you get access
to the For You page, and the For You page is
where you want to be. The four page is
where everyone will see your videos and
you'll get your likes, your comments, your shares,
and also followers. The For You page is literally front and center
when you open the app. When you open the app and you
see a video on your screen, that is a For You page, and it's an endless scroll
of videos in your feed. If you see a video in your feed and you don't like it and you swipe away quickly, that's going to be
a low watch time, and it'll signal to
the TikTok algorithm to push that video out
a little bit less. Long story short, keep people watching and get all the rewards and the benefits
you're looking for. Now that we've covered the most important metric on TikTok, next up, we're going
to start generating some ideas so we can start
making those TikTok videos.
3. Coming Up With Ideas: Now, let's start
generating some ideas. It should be noted that
there are a lot of different types of TikTok
videos you can make. I primarily do a lot of speaking videos and
comedic videos. That may not be what
you're looking to do. If you're looking to do dance or lip syncing or comedy,
whatever it may be, one of the best ways to go about that is to go through
the For You page and get a sense of
what's trending or what other TikTok creators
are doing because one of the biggest elements
of TikTok is the trends and the overall
community aspect of the app. You can look and get inspiration from what other creators
are posting in the For You page and try to spin it your own way, but
take it that way. Or if you do dancing videos, you can look at a dance and
try to learn the dance, and it's as easy as learning the dance and
posting it that way. Now, the way I like to come up with my video ideas is I like to just sit and brainstorm as many different
video topics as I can. To start things off,
set a timer for three minutes and start writing ideas and
don't judge yourself. Anything that comes to mind, write it on the piece of paper. Feel free to do this exercise
live with me right now. Or you can skip ahead
and come back later whenever you want to do this
exercise on your own time. I got a pen, I got a notebook, and let's get started
on some ideas. My three minutes are up. I have a lot of ideas. Now, let's decide which idea
I want to move forward with. One of the topics that I lean toward right now is
negotiation techniques. I have a lot of experience
working in sales, so there's some things
that I've learned with closing deals and the art of persuasion that I can touch on. I do like the videos I make
with starting a conversation, mainly because those
are easiest for me to weave in some comedic sketch. What I might do, as I wrote here is actually
branch off of starting a conversation and lean toward strategies for keeping
a conversation going. That's the idea I'm
going to go with. Now we've narrowed down
the idea for the video. Let's get to writing the script for what I'm going
to say in the video.
4. Creating and Simplifying a Script: Now we're going to write
the script of the video. For a lot of my videos,
I write a script, but sometimes there
are things that come pretty organically
that aren't scripted. As you'll see in some
of my TikTok videos, I have a signature laugh, which actually comes from the fact that I am
a stand-up comedian and I do have some jokes where
I do that laugh on stage. I'm a big believer in
having a mix of structure, but also some authenticity
or spontaneity. But for this exercise,
we're going to go ahead and start writing
the script for this video. For this video, I have an idea, it's related to some videos
I've created in the past, but I feel like to talk effectively about
keeping a conversation going, I'd like to have some kind
of sketch or some kind of scene with two
people talking. This script is going to
be a two-person scene that properly highlights how to keep a conversation going. In this scene, I'm going
to make it about two friends that are hanging out and they're having
a conversation, but one of them is
stuck in the point of the conversation
where they don't know what to say next
to keep it going. So far in the script, the character is
going to open up asking his friend
how his weekend was, and his friend is going
to say pretty good. He's with his dog all weekend. This is the part of the
scene where I wanted to try to make it
slightly awkward. The character who's asking how the other character's weekend was doesn't really
know what to say next. The character says,
"All weekend?" Then character 2 says, "Yes." Character 1 says, "Tell
me more about that." There's a brief pause
because I wanted to make it obvious that the
character was trying to figure out how to keep
the conversation going. After character 1
uses the phrase, tell me more about that, character 2 gets
excited and starts elaborating on what
his weekend was like, and then he realizes, wait a minute, I know
what you just did. The purpose of this sketch
is to show but not tell, having character 2 explain why that phrase can be effective in certain
social situations. Then after character 2 explains what
character 1 was doing, he says, "Wow, wait, you just used the phrase tell me more about that because you
didn't know what to say next, and it can be an
effective strategy to use to keep a
conversation going, because people love to
talk about themselves." Character 1 will say, "Well, you're right, but
how did you know?" Character 2 says, "Because
I follow Josh Otusanya." [LAUGHTER] It's like
a little call to action that's funny, and like I mentioned earlier, I'll close it with that trademark laugh after he says I follow Josh Otusanya. Boom, and the script
is completed. A little tip to make
script writing a little bit easier is to first identify, what do you want the viewer to experience or learn
from this video? My goal in this sketch is to
deliver a useful piece of information that
someone can take with them and actually apply
it into their lives. In some TikToks, it could be
dancing, could be comedy. It could be lip syncing. The value-add there is
mainly entertainment. In a lot of the videos I make, the value is in the
information and the ability to apply it
immediately into their life. The main purpose of this
sketch here is to indirectly explain a way to help keep a conversation going that
you could use right now. After I put the script together, I'd like to do a couple
passes over to see if there's any way I can
condense the script, or maybe even reword a
couple things so that what I'm saying comes out
clearly and concisely. I'll be on the lookout for certain phrases that look like it's just a
few words too long. If I can say the same
thing with less words, then I'll adjust it to that. The first thing I can see
already on the script is, towards the end,
character 2 says, "Hey, you used the phrase,
tell me more about that." I don't need to say
you used the phrase. I can just condense that to say, you said, tell me
more about that. I can actually cross
this phrase out here. Doing things like
this can shave off a few seconds of your video and improve your
overall watch time, which ultimately gets you on the for you page and more views. Another thing to keep in mind in putting together your
TikTok video is making sure the first second or two of your video is a
hook of some sort. Now, I'll be honest, that's
not always a requirement, but it is a best practice, because if you think about what a viewer is
experiencing on TikTok, they're scrolling through
an endless feed of videos, and if they're not hooked, if they don't have a
reason to keep watching, they're just going
to swipe away. Keep that in mind. Try to start your video in some way that can grab the
viewer's attention. I've seen some TikTokers
create some kind of funny scene that happens so
fast that the viewer's like, "Wait, what was that?" It keeps them watching
long enough for the creator to get to the point of what they're
talking about in the video. Now we've put
together the script. We've gone over it a couple times and shortened
it up a little bit. Now, let's get into
the next section, where we'll talk about imagery.
5. Coming Up With Imagery: Now that we have our script, the next thing we're going
to talk about is imagery. Now, currently, I don't
use a lot of pictures or the green screen effect
on TikTok in my videos, but there was a time where I was using
it very frequently, and for the example, if I were to use
it for this video, I would like to try to use
a picture that helps set the scene or the environment of where this video
could be taking place. For example, there are
two friends talking, having a conversation,
so it could be anywhere. It could be an office, it
could be out in a park. We found some good
living room pictures. Use this opportunity,
if you're looking for pictures to
be picky with it. Depending on what you're
using the picture for, I found that if
it's applicable to try to find images that
obviously are clear, but have a lot of different
colors that are vibrant. You want to get as much of
that visual stimulation for the viewer as possible because that helps make
your video more engaging. I feel like I'm shopping
for a home right now. I like this one. I'm going
to go with this one. What I like about this
picture specifically is that it's wide
enough so that if I wanted to zoom in this picture here to show the side of the room where
Character 1 is speaking, I can also zoom into the other side to show where
Character 2 is speaking. But like I said, I may not
use an image for this video, but if I were to use an image, this is probably the
image I would be using, and that's my thought process in selecting the right
image for my videos. If I were to utilize
this image in my video, this is how we would go
about setting that up. So I have the picture here, like I mentioned earlier, I want to be able to have
each character speaking in different sides of the room because it feels a little
bit more realistic. One thing I would do
here is I would zoom in, frame it how I want it. Just do a screenshot of it. I'll do the same thing
on the other side to highlight where Character
2 will be speaking. I'll just screenshot that. Then after that,
we'll go into TikTok, and then we'll put that into
the green screen effect. To get the images into
our TikTok video, first, you'd open the
TikTok app as shown, you'll press the plus button, and when you go to effects. You'll see over
on the left side, you'll see a green box with a picture icon and an
arrow pointing down. You'll click on that and
you'll see your images. One thing you want
to do is first, select the first image
that you want to utilize. I'm picking the first image for Character 1 in
this situation. As you can see here, right, if I were talking
to Character 2, this is exactly how
I would be kind of positioning it just
to give you an idea. Character 1 would be
speaking this way. Then when I want
to do Character 2, I'll select the other image, which is on the other
side of the room and I would speak this way
facing the next character. Now you know how to get your
image set up on TikTok. Next up, we're going to
talk about choosing sounds.
6. Choosing Sounds, Captions, and Hashtags: Sounds on TikTok are
incredibly important, and they can actually be
a huge difference maker in how well your videos perform. Now, when it comes to selecting the right sounds for your video, one of the ways you
can go about doing that is first scrolling
through the For You page and seeing what sounds creators are
currently using. If you see the same sound being used twice, maybe three times, there's a good chance
that sound is trending, and you might want to
consider using it. Another way you can tell which songs are trending currently is when you go and
create your video and you're getting
ready to post, you can actually click on the sounds button in
the bottom left. As you scroll down here, you can actually
get a good sense of what songs are
currently trending. If I click on TikTok viral here, you can see the list
of songs and sounds right now that are the
most popular on TikTok. You can also preview some of
the sounds here by pressing the play button
on each sound and see if it meshes with the
video you're working with. Now, aside from sounds, another important
element of your video are the captions
and your hash tags. Those are very, very, very important tools
you can use that'll tell the algorithm where
to send your videos, which type of people to
send your videos to, because the algorithm
is very smart and it knows what type of videos
people are interested in. You need to let the
algorithm know, I want to send this video to these people interested
in these certain topics. We'll take a look at
some of my own videos so you can see some
of my own captions. Here's an example
of a video where I talked about
fitness/weight loss. I leaned on a lot
of my experience as a former Division 1 athlete. But as you can see on
the captions here, I personally believe
it's best to utilize captions that are
most relevant to the video. There are a lot of
myths out there, just want to bust some of them
out of the way right now. Hashtag such as FYP, or #ForYou, #ForYouPage, there was a
myth going around that those hashtags are
what you need to put in your videos to
hit the four page. That's been debunked.
You're probably better off utilizing hashtags that most accurately describe your video and what your
video is about, because, like I said earlier, the more information you can provide about your
video to the algorithm, the better the algorithm will be able to send your video
to the right people who are interested in the topic being discussed or
highlighted in your video. With that information in mind, back to the script that
I wrote previously, this video is going to be about conversations and how to
keep a conversation going. Immediately on the
top of my mind, I want to utilize hashtags that are relevant to this topic, such as hashtag conversations, or conversation tips, how to
keep a conversation going, that's a slightly
longer hashtag, maybe conversation advice,
maybe social skills, anything kind of in that realm. Outside of the hashtags, in terms of the actual caption or wording I'll
put in the video, I go one of two ways. I either ask a question in the caption because I found
that asking a question can motivate or nudge someone to leave a comment answering the question
in the video, which boosts your engagement, and also helps you get
in the For You page. Or I'll actually just put a generic caption that accurately describes exactly
what the video is about. For example, the caption might read easy trick to keep
a conversation going. A question I might use might be, have you ever tried this
before? Something like that. At the end of the day, you not only want viewers to watch, but you want to entice them or invite them to engage
with your content. When someone's engaging
with their content, they're spending more
time on their content, which obviously adds
to your watch time, but it furthers
the discussion on your video and tells the
algorithm that, hey, this is a popular video, people are talking
about this video or whatever the topic that
this video is about. I need to push this out to more people because
this video is enticing people to stay on the platform and keep
engaging with the platform. We got all the magic
ingredients we need to make this video,
let's get started.
7. Shoot Your Video: Now you're ready to shoot the video and if you're
feeling a little bit nervous. I know I felt nervous, especially when I first started making content on TikTok, honestly, take a deep breath. Take a massive breath
and exhale slowly, this is fun, you're
doing this for fun, and it's nothing you
have to stress out over. Remember, it doesn't take a
lot for you to get started, and this is a
platform of values, authenticity so have fun, and we're going to walk
through this together. Now we have everything we need to create our video,
come with me, I'll show you how easy it is, we're going to create
the video that we just scripted out earlier, let's go. Now we're ready to
make our TikTok video. I have my script here,
and as you can see, I have my ring light
set up with my phone, and I do have an external
mic connected to my phone. You don't need to use
all of these things to get started it's
completely optional, when I started, the only thing I was using was just my phone. But for this video,
I'm going to use some of the equipment that
I decided to bring. I'm going to start recording all of the lines for
Character 1 first, and then I'll switch
over, change outfits, and record all the lines for Character 2 and we'll
start recording. Bro, how was your weekend?
That was a good one. All weekend. Bro, how is your weekend? All weekend. I'm going to re record
that line because I didn't really like
how it sounded when I played it back, all weekend. Bro, how was your weekend? All weekend. That one's better. Tell me more about
that. Bro, how is your week- tell me
more about that, perfect. What do you mean? Bro, how
was your weekend, actually , What do you mean? Trying to deliver that line in a couple of different ways
to see which one I like better. What do you mean? I like that one
better. Okay, you're right, but how do you know? Those are all of the
lines for Character 1, I'm going to
re-watch all of them just to make sure I like
the clips that I selected. Bro, how's your
weekend? All weekend. Tell me more about
that. What do you mean? Okay, you're right,
how do you know? Cool. Now I'm going to
move to the other end of the couch so I can record
Character 2 's lines but first, a quick wardrobe change. Nice. I'm going to move
everything over to the other end of the couch
to simulate Character 2. I'm going to keep everything
set up the same with the ring light we're
going to keep it simple and yeah,
let's get started. Similar to Character 1, I'm going to run through all
the lines for Character 2, and I'll take multiple takes if needed and adjust from there. Pretty good. I was with
my dog all weekend. There's no better
feeling than when you record a line perfectly
the first time. Sometimes what I like to do is I like to before I
record the line, I want to act out in my head how I want the character
to act before I shoot it. Well, my girlfriend
and I live together, but she had to go out of town. Wait, I see what you did there. Perfect. You said the phrase, tell me more about that. It's an effective phrase to use if you don't know
what to say next in a conversation because people love talking about themselves. I'm going to record
that one one more time, just because when
I played it back, I heard a little bit
of background noise, so I'm going to do
another one for safety. You said the phrase,
tell me more about that. It's an effective phrase to use if you don't know
what to say next in a conversation because people love talking about themselves. Now is personally
my favorite part of recording these videos, you're going to
get to see where I do the evil laugh to close out my videos but the last line of Character 2 is basically
a call to action, saying that he learned this
information from following me so we'll record it and we'll do the
evil laugh for you. I follow Joshua Tusania
[LAUGHTER] We'll check it, we'll see if I like that take. I follow Joshua Tusania [LAUGHTER] Do another
one for insurance. I follow Joshua Tusania
[LAUGHTER] Good. I like both of those
takes so now we've gone through all of the lines for
Character 1 and 2 and next, we're going to edit the clips and we're going to make
the video look beautiful.
8. Edit Your Video: Now we're going to
edit the video. Typically, I like to edit these videos right after I record because it's
fresh in my mind. The first thing
we're going to do here is click the adjust clips button up on the top right. The first thing I want
to do is make sure I'm cutting the clip short
enough so that it starts and ends right at
the beginning and right at the end of each word or sentence that the
characters are saying. The way I go about cutting
out the dead space is, as you can see here, I kind of slide these adjust
clip bars up and down. The more I slide
it to the right, the more of the clip I have, but I'm going to
slide it back down here to cut it off right
where I want the clip to end. In this clip here, what I'm going to do is I'm actually going to
leave a little bit of dead space before
the character says, tell me more about
that because the space beforehand shows
that awkward moment where you don't know
what to say next, and I want to be able to
convey that to the viewer. In this section here, so this was a scene that I
actually recorded twice. The explanation of the
character, saying, hey, you used, tell me more about that and explains
why it's important. I recorded it twice, so I'm
just going to select the one that I like the most and
just delete the other one. You said the phrase,
tell me more about that. It's an effective phrase to use if you don't know
what to say next in a conversation because people love talking
about themselves. You said the phrase,
tell me more about that. It's an effective phrase to use if you don't know
what to say next in a conversation because people love talking about themselves. I like this one more. I'm going to select this one. I'll delete that one. Similar to before, I do have
two clips with the closing. I follow Josh O Tuana
with the evil laugh, so I'm just going to
choose the one I like the most and delete the other one. I follow Josh O Tuana. Yeah, I'm going to
delete this one because as you can see here, I was already
laughing before I did the laugh because I
was anticipating it. I want to have that
element of surprise, so I'm going to get
rid of this one. One thing I like to do
with the last clip, especially when I have
that laugh at the end is I'll cut the laugh
a little bit short, so it's not quite satisfying. The reason is because
it actually promotes rewatch time because a lot of
the comments I'll get are, oh, Josh, why isn't
the laugh long enough? Please. I do that on purpose, mainly to promote comments, but also to promote
the rewatch time. One thing I'd like to
add in my videos is text or subtitles in the
video because I like my video to be as inclusive as possible so that if someone is watching the video
and they can't play sound or maybe they might
be hard of hearing, they'll be able to at least
read and follow along. So I'll click the text button here and I'll start
typing in the text, like a transcript for
each character's lines. Just like the clips, you want to adjust the text so that the duration
that the text is on the screen matches
the length of the clip. It's also important that when adding text to your
videos that you're placing the text in an area that will be very clearly
visible by the viewer. Oftentimes, a big
mistake I see is sometimes some creators
will put the text in an area that will
get cut off when the video is published or
it's just very hard to read. Make sure you're
putting the text somewhere in the middle region, as you can see on the
screen here, ideally, because that's how
you can ensure that the texts won't get
cut off at all. What I'm doing here is the scene where the character is
explaining that, hey, you use the phrase, tell
me more about that, and explains why that's a good phrase to use
in conversations. It's a lot of texts
that he's saying. Typically, I like to
avoid just typing a massive paragraph of text
in any part of my video. I'll typically break it out into separate text
bubbles that pop up. Typically, because I
feel when viewers see massive text boxes that
look like a lot of reading, it just might indicate, oh, this might be a
stressful watch it might take a lot of effort
for me to digest this video, and they might
potentially scroll on. That's just a personal thing. I've seen other
creators do otherwise, but that's just how I
like to go about it. This will be the last
line in this video. Perfect. That's
exactly how I want it. One thing I always do in a lot of my videos is
in the very beginning, I like to go to the Effects tab. Let me just show you on the
Effects tab on the bottom. I click on transition and I add this horizontal
woo across the video. It's something that
I've done for a while, and I guess it's one
of the trademarks in a lot of my videos.
Completely optional. There's a lot of
effects you can use, but that's just something
I'd like to add to the video to spice
it up a little bit. We went through getting
ideas for the video. We went through writing
and shooting the video, and we just edited the video. Next up, we're ready to upload.
Josh Otusanya, Content Creator & Stand-up Comedian
