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Rachel of Rachel’s Room works on each video for up to 20 hours.
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Remi Bader got her start making “realistic try-on hauls” for her TikTok followers. Last month, she revealed she underwent a drastic weight-loss surgery. Cue the chaos. (Shoutout to
, whose piece on this helped inform the episode!)TikTok didn’t succeed because it was a perfect fit for our culture; it transformed culture to fit its format. It’s now so fast and easy to make videos that our collective taste has shifted away from, say, the high-definition, expertly-edited comedy sketch in favor of shaky videos someone takes of their TV playing Parks and Recreation.
Things are different in Rachel’s Room. The creator, who joined TikTok after reaching a crossroads in her career as a teacher, has set up camp on what users colloquially call “TikTok Premium,” or the side of the FYP where creators treat their thirty-second videos with the care and attention of feature-length films. Rachel can spend up to 20 hours conceptualizing, filming, and editing one of her fashion videos, which have gained a following for their signature camera angles, swoops, cuts, and playful animations.
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“I've always been into art, I've always been into design. I've been getting into web design, I've been getting into music, I've been getting into these more creative aspects that I've always set aside to work on that teaching passion,” she tells me over Zoom. With the encouragement (and camera equipment) of her boyfriend, Rachel decided on January 1 that this would be the year she put herself out there. She’s already surpassed her initial goals while also pioneering a new form of art on the platform. We speak about her choice to treat TikTok as an artform and why it’s important for artists to adapt to changing mediums—no matter how short.
How did you get started making videos?
I started making videos for TikTok on my phone, and mind you, I was very resistant to TikTok because I am not an addictive person. But I do really get into one thing at a time, and I have had moments on Instagram where I'm like, "OK, you know what, maybe I should slow down, maybe I should delete the app because I'm going at it too hard." I think the term is “doomscrolling.” I wanna make stuff that's interesting and fun and cool and creative and inspires people to make changes in their lives and be the best version of themselves. So when I did TikTok, I was like, “I can't be hypocritical. This has gotta be something cool, creative, fun.” And so I started making these videos. I was working with some other companies around me to try to promote people and boost myself and find different things to talk about online. Fashion is something that I'm passionate about as well as sustainability. So that was my little outlet, and then my boyfriend was like, "You know what, let me see if I can film something for you with some of my nice cameras and some of the stuff that I use for the jobs that I do." He's like, "Let me just try to edit some stuff and see how it looks." And then the insane edits were born.
I love it. Had you done video art before?
Yes and no. I myself, I've always enjoyed making videos when I was younger. There was this app, I think it was called VideoStar. When I was in middle school, my friends and I would make music videos on VideoStar and it would take a song and it plays while you record so you can hear it and dance to it and make all these interesting cuts and effects, stuff that was very akin to TikTok. And then in high school we'd have to do the video, projects and stuff like that, and I always really enjoyed that, but I never really took that as seriously as I could have. And then my boyfriend, he works in the world of video editing, producing, filming, so he's been awesome to show me things and guide me and inspire me to do more of that.
Making music videos in middle school is a canon Gen Z/millennial experience.
For sure.
You mentioned you're resistant to doomscrolling and things like that, but how much of a social media user were you before this?
Not much at all. I had Instagram and I had YouTube. All my YouTube videos were just school projects that I had done, and my Instagram I just kind of filled with art that I've done. I have a plethora of hobbies and I do a lot of different styles of art, so I would post that kind of stuff every now and again, but I try not to make a huge habit of it because I never really, I guess, believed that I would be able to. Maybe I just didn't believe that my stuff would be something that people would wanna see.
Was your first experience with making art and putting it out there basically on TikTok?
Yeah, and everything I post on TikTok, I also post on Instagram, and then whatever I can post on YouTube, I'll post over there as well. I'm hoping to specify a little bit more on the different platforms and make content specifically for each of them. For example, long form content, I would love to start for YouTube, and then continue to do more photos and that kind of stuff for Instagram.
I came across your videos as they were exploding. Has that been the case since the first video?
No, not at all. I mean, it makes sense because the first things I posted were just videos I had done with my phone and I don't wanna knock my style or my ability to film with my phone or anything, but obviously it's hard to cut through the the noise with a video on your phone and I totally understand that, because if you're scrolling on your phone, you're seeing the same stuff over and over and if that style or that first clip doesn't immediately catch your attention, then OK you might scroll past it. But as soon I had that first video where it's an interesting camera angle and it was quick editing and it was fun music and I put little assets that I drew on Procreate over the top of it, as soon as we did that, it was just like, oh wow, this is getting a lot of views. People are liking it. People like my dance moves and my little interesting style that I did. And that was just really exciting that many people have seen this video and people that I don't know are commenting, telling me all these things. It was just so eye-opening and so cool, and from that moment I was just like, "OK, we need to keep doing that. We just need to keep going with this because people are really interested in it and maybe there's a lack of it out there, and we could fill that gap and inspire people to create work like that."
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How would you describe the style of your videos you are creating now?
I would say there's a focus on fashion and sustainability and lifestyle and in my videos, and I think that the editing obviously is such a big part of them, so it's sort of trying to inspire, educate, and bring attention to things that I care about and things that I'm passionate about, in a way that's fun and engaging and just generally interesting to watch.
And like you said, TikTok is normally very informal. But this is a polished style. Was there anyone you looked to for inspiration?
There's definitely people and edits that I've seen online before where I was like, “Oh this is super cool.” When I'm creating something, I'm sure it's coming from somewhere that I've already seen, but I'm trying to also build my own brand and make stuff that's unique to me so that one day somebody could see a video and be like, "Oh, I wanna edit a video like Rachel's Room and do dance moves" or "I wanna do that cool camera angle like Rachel's Room, I wanna hire her to do something for me." You know, ultimately building this brand where I can make it my full-time thing.
I'd love to hear what the reactions have been like.
We get tons of comments about editing, or the comments will be something like "came for the style, stayed for the editing," or vice versa. I'm just trying to cram as much excitement into the first few seconds so that people can stop and see something different and be like OK wait what's going on here? I think it does help to have such a crisp image that comes from a camera, rather than a phone camera. But the edit starts pretty immediately, there's upbeat music or a title like moving on the screen. All that stuff is interesting to the viewer to to see. Like, "Oh wait, this is different from the last 5 to 10 videos that I just saw."
Is there anything you're daydreaming about turning this into?
There's like 1000 things I'm dreaming about, Kate. You don't even know. Every day I wake up and a new avenue is opening up or a new possibility is now knocking on the door and and so I'm just taking it one day at a time, definitely trying to get a little bit more organized and definitely trying to keep that branding going so that I have those specific things that people return for, like doing a miniseries of sorts, doing any brand deals would be amazing. I wanna be a name in sustainability and I want people to think about my videos when they think about, "What should I be doing for sustainability" or "what's an attainable way to do something sustainable? How can I implement sustainability in my own life?" I wanna be that person and that outlet for people to go to learn and to have fun and to be inspired. So at the beginning of April I set up a whole little calendar for myself and shared it with my boyfriend and made some goals for myself, and there's goals that have already been surpassed because the videos are being received so well and people are liking them so much. It just feels like endless possibilities.
That's awesome. It's such a testament to what is so special about these platforms, that in a moment of crossroads you can wake up January 1st and be like, you know what I'm gonna just put myself out there. And then it actually works. Even, like, 15 years ago, nothing would happen that quickly, if at all.
It's crazy and it's definitely one of those things where you just have to roll with the times. I've seen a few comments talking about the film industry and being like, "the film industry this or that." But this is the way things are now, let's go with it, let's see what we can do with this kind of platform. Sure, it's short form content, but I try my best to treat it like a job and to work on it and give it as much time and respect as you would any sort of long form, serious project. Because at the end of the day, that's what I'm trying to do full time. I'm trying to be able to create stuff in whatever form for people to see, and if short form TikToks are the way that we're doing things these days, it's like, why not why not just give it a shot?
Welcome to the weekly scroll, a roundup of articles, links, and other thoughts from being on the internet this week! Ahead: Chinese factories spilling trade tea on TikTok, an influencer law falls flat, and the definitive answer to the em-dash AI debate.
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