Making Bangers Is Hard

Intro

Here I am thinking about all of the choices of my life that led me to this point. What do I mean? At the point that I am writing this, I have animated about 109 shorts over the course of 4-5 years. That’s a lot of ‘content’ and I’ve learned a very difficult lesson in the process of making all of these shorts:

Making a ‘banger’ is hard!

Who’d Like A Banger In The Mouth?

When I use the word ‘banger’, I should say firstly that this is slang (I now have a growing audience of internationals so I have to clarify). Banger usually means something that’s ‘very good’. “Oh that song was a banger”, as an example.

Secondly, in the context that I’m using it (social media content) bangers shouldn’t be confused with high quality videos as I believe they also include additional variables such as ‘virality’, ‘trendiness’ and the like. This sounds counterintuitive, but let me cook (that’s one for the zoomers). I would consider a short that is high quality one where the artist and/ or their team have spent a significant of time putting polish into their work at every level of production. In addition quality also comes with an applicable technical knowledge that increases the overall product. As an example, there is a difference in technical knowledge from an animator that is in high school, vs a professional that is employed in the industry.

What I call ‘bangers’ I would qualify succinctly as “popular crowd pleasers”. The simplest way to illustrate this is with pop music. A banger would come from a musician like Drake (pre-beef with Kendrick Lamar) or Beyonce (though, not limited to people in this echelon). Yes these artists put out high quality work as well, but that comes second to the impact of their product. “Hotline Bling” was a banger with very little in the way of quality aside from a good ear as to what is catchy. It’s a repetitive and simple song, but it gets everybody moving and when it came out it was a smash hit. One of the defining aspects of a banger is that it captures a cultural moment, or instigates one and ingrains itself in a larger cultural context.

With both of these interpretations in mind, it should make a bit more sense as to where I’m going. Quality can make a banger be even more of a banger, but the relationship isn’t necessarily reciprocal in the inverse. Sometime’s you can have something be really good, but the niche is too small (think movies that are ‘cult classics’). Every once in a while something that is so high quality comes along and breaks new ground but it is rare. A good recent example is the anime ‘Demon Slayer’. While the story is fairly average (I’m not throwing shade, I enjoyed the manga, but it’s not ground breaking) the animation is phenomenal. A large part of its virality was how the first season’s last few episodes ended with stunning  action sequences. That said, it’s a risky maneuver and many times things don’t work out as well if you’re betting everything on quality.

In The States We Call It Sausage In The Mouth

Presently, I’ve had a couple of shorts that could be seen as bangers (in relation to the size of my social accounts). While reflecting on their performance, what I find interesting is that I would have never expected the shorts that took off, to do so. I don’t think it’s possible to predict if something will be a banger. In fact, guessing how the masses view something is a fools errand. That said, what you can do is be mindful of how things are trending. Whether a particular subject is increasing or decreasing in popularity can be helpful in molding what type of content you want to make or avoid. If there’s a subject that’s losing popularity YoY, it might be best to avoid it, and vice versa: if it’s gaining traction, it might be wise to embrace it.

A good rule of thumb is to figure out if the subject is emotionally charged. That type of content will net you a lot of engagement, good and bad, so be prepared for it. Hot button topics tend to strike at the heart of a person’s identity, and if you make something that could be perceived as critical or supportive, you’ll be putting yourself square in the scopes of potential haters and enemies. There’s a little more you can do too. Another variable that is important to keep in mind is to understand what each platform you are publishing on your content wants. Storefronts might want sales, social media sites might want watch time and so on. As an example for social media sites, many will push certain features and ‘heat’ accounts that make use of said features (heating means giving the account more organic reach). If you time your content well and make use of heating in your favor, you might experience explosive growth in a short time.

In the context of my own content, the shorts that did really well seemed to have come from the time when Youtube and Instagram were pushing short form content, as a means to compete with TikTok. During this time views and organic reach were crazy because they wanted to attract more creators to their platforms. I caught a bit of that wave, but unfortunately I wasn’t able to cash in all the way due to the slow production time it takes to animate my shorts.

The final thing I’ll say in relation to bangers, is that high quality doesn’t really hurt the chances of a piece of content to have banger potential. If the quality is high enough, it’ll bring people back to watch, in which case you open up an evergreen potential. Which is essentially that your content could slowly grow over time due to the sustained interest of the audience it captured, and potentially getting huge sometime in the future. Good quality content can, and does persist through time, and it’s better to err on the side of producing something with as high as quality as you can, vs just throwing something out there. That being said, sometimes low quality stuff can have a viral potential because there is a charm and authenticity to something that a generalized audience feels they can do. While I don’t think it’s wise to make it your strategy for growth, it can be a good way to explore what subjects are hot, and what kind of stuff like to make, before giving it your all.

Outro

It might be a bit meaningless to dwell on a topic like this, but I think most artists would love to know the secret to consistently making things that explode your popularity. What artist wants to starve? While I don’t think it hurts to ask this question, or reflect on your performance, I think the best prescription is probably the simplest: focus on what you want to make and find joy doing that and engage with the audience that follows. Understanding greater trends and social context is cool and you can incorporate it into your stuff, but don’t lose sight on making things authentic to yourself. It’s the best way to stop burnout and to bring an audience that truly loves what you love and that’s a lot more valuable than the tourists that come and go.

-Until next time-