Before going to sleep, Marc G., a 31-year-old journalist, has a habit of watching The Simpsons. He doesn't see them on TV, but on his mobile phone. Today is the chapter in which Springfield establishes a monorail, one of the most iconic of cartoonist Matt Groening. He saw it when he was little. And because TikTok offers you the possibility to view it in a fragmented way. A chapter is divided into several parts and you are not obliged to watch it all at once. A trend that is increasingly common among millennials and Generation Z.
"It's as simple as scrolling every time the video ends to be able to continue watching the next chapter. As when it ends it suggests what you like, it's something addictive", says this user. A habit he shares with the Chilean engineer Diego Romero, who especially emphasizes the "immediacy" of the tool. "It reinforces the desire to watch some old film or series, like House, which at the time could be seen on public television. I watch an episode on TikTok and if I like it, I look for the whole series on the official platform where it is available.” Other consumers, like Cristina. P, 28, uses it to "kill time while waiting at the airport or the doctor".
It wasn't long ago that watching a premiere series or movie that wasn't on TV or in a movie theater was completely unthinkable. With the outbreak of the pandemic and the rise of platforms, more and more content is being consumed at home at the click of a button. Cinemas and the small screen have ceased to be those sacred temples of other times. It is true that the public is recovering after the drought left by covid, but we are still far from pre-pandemic figures.
Times are changing and so is the way audiovisual is consumed today. Young people opt for social networks to watch audiovisuals. If before YouTube was the ideal place to watch movies without having to pay, now TikTok, the Chinese vertical network with seven years of life, has taken the testimony among the public. Mobile phones and tablets are the most convenient and used devices to watch tapes in this way. And it continues to gain followers.
Barbie, this summer's box office phenomenon about Mattel's famous doll, is an example of how a blockbuster can land on social networks before streaming. There are several accounts where you can view the film in pieces – there are clips of up to ten minutes – although most are older tapes, such as The Corpse Bride and Eduardo Manostijeras, or television series, such as the popular Friends. This dynamic encourages the viewer to get attached to other videos and enter a loop.
In sociological terms, the tendency to watch fragmented audiovisuals responds to the fact "that these young people were born in an era of frenetic rhythm and are concerned about the time they spend on a certain content, at the same time that they run away from longer works", points out the sociologist and UOC professor, Alba Colombo.
An opinion shared by director Pau Teixidor ( Purgatorio ), who next year releases his new film, Alumbramiento : "On the one hand, this trend has to do with the speed with which we are used to consuming the famous content right now – we need to watch more of it and watch it faster. However, I am sure that if young people are provided with high-quality productions, with interesting stimuli in the development of the story, as Los Javis have done with the series La Mesías, there is a chance that they will enjoy them as they were conceived" .
One of the questions that immediately arises is to what extent uploading this content is a legal practice. "The platform itself, in the rules of the community, reminds users that creativity is the strong point of TikTok, therefore, only their own content should be published", answers La Vanguardia, senior associate lawyer of intellectual property intellectual and industrial of RocaJunyent. The letter also points to the fact that TikTok "does not allow the publication of content that violates the intellectual property rights of others. In addition, they warn that if it is brought to their knowledge that a certain content constitutes a violation of this type, they will proceed to eliminate it, unless there is an authorization from the owners of the rights of the audiovisual work, including there are the rights of the producer". The fact of fragmenting the content "would also be an infringement of intellectual property rights".
Some of the users who upload content distort the material with sound, music or watermarks, with the aim of going unnoticed. Far from avoiding the infringement, "a work would be being transformed without the relevant authorization of its owner", recalls the lawyer. La Vanguardia has tried to communicate with some of them, but they have preferred to stay away. The one who did speak out is the platform itself, which corroborates this dynamic: "On our website, we inform about the intellectual property policy and make tools available to users so that they can report a copyright infringement" and if they do not want their works to be available, they can request it. And they also offer "the possibility to authorize TikTok to make your copyrighted works available on the platform".
Aware of this trend, some producers and distributors opt for this platform as a way to relaunch classics. This is the case of Chicas malas, the 2004 film starring Lindsay Lohan that Paramount uploaded in its entirety (divided into 23 fragments) on October 3rd on its TikTok profile to celebrate Bad Girls Day. A remake of this youth comedy in a musical version is expected for January 12, 2024.
The new habit of consuming more and more fast content contrasts with the current trend in the cinematographic landscape to shoot longer films (up to three and a half hours) such as Los asesinos de la luna, by Scorsese; Cerrar los ojos by Víctor Erice, or Oppenheimer by Christopher Nolan.
In practice, including all the material and removing it is complicated, as Héctor Barrionuevo, a content consultant at TikTok, acknowledges. "Different artificial intelligences are responsible for making a first choice to detect if someone has infringed copyright rights, but there should be many more people working to be able to include all the contents, which are countless".
According to Barrionuevo, TikTok is succeeding now because “it is where the attention is, it is reigning in the cultural sphere and any trend that emerges starts here”. And he mentions his role as a prominent partner of the Sant Sebastià festival or sponsor of the Cannes festival, to bring more people closer to cinema. "There are many initiatives that adapt fragments of famous films such as The Godfather to the vertical. I see it more as a possibility to reuse this material in a creative way and not to monetize it”, opines the consultant, who assures that the average age of users on TikTok has increased to the range of 25 to 34 years.
Figures that are reflected in the study The power of TikTok, prepared by Kantar, which stipulates that 67% of global consumers of the platform are over 25 years old. It is clear that TikTok has become "a great speaker" for both advertising and consumption. An accessible and enjoyable broadcasting tool for everyone who could invest more resources to fully enforce their own rules. "You don't have to upload other people's content, but it can be done, it remains to be seen how long it will last," concludes the expert.
