Texas City Hall TikToks 2020
How a TikTok-selfie event turned into an exploration of Texas City Halls
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Every year in August, ELGL puts out a call for local government folks to take a selfie in front of their respective government building, #CityHallSelfie. I’ve done that since 2017, but I wanted to change it up and create something new for 2020 — a #CityHallTikTok.
I thought video could add a whole new dimension to event, and wanted to experiment with TikToks platform to jazz things up a bit.
Here’s mine from this year at Dallas City Hall:
After that, I decided it would be fun to go to other Texas City Halls, and get a glimpse into what a selfie, er, TikTok of their City Hall might look like.
I started with short trips around Dallas-Fort Worth, then branched out to 2–3 hours trips outside DFW metro. It turned into a pretty COVID-safe activity that I could do on the weekends, and has kind of become an obsession for me over the last few months.
Sometimes I do research on the City Halls, sometimes I just wake up and go with no plan. Not all City Halls get the TikTok treatment, some of them just end up in my Instagram Stories or main posts. I am documenting all the City Halls on a google map, so I know what I’ve seen and when. I’ll probably share the map sometime in 2021.
I always take my iPhone and phone stand with me, and start capturing as much video as I can as soon as I arrive, so that I don’t think too hard about what I’m seeing.
The goal is to capture about 2–5 minutes of footage for a 15 second TikTok. The only 2 criteria I have are capturing the front of the building, and appearing in the video somehow to fulfil the selfie part — I’m mostly running or jumping in and out of frame. Then I just make the rest up based on what I think is interesting about the building.
I like to capture multiple City Halls on the longer road trips, and take different routes to and from farthest city I’m visiting for the day so that I visit places I haven’t been before.
Sundays tend to be the best time to capture because there aren’t cars in the parking lots of the City Halls, and nobody’s on the highways early in the morning.
I usually publish the TikToks when I get home after I’ve had time to edit or on Monday and Tuesday depending on how much editing I have to do.
I chose to stay with one music artist this year — Lomelda (aka Hannah Read) who is from Silsbee, Texas. I really love her voice and thought it would make sense to have a Texas voice to go with my documentation of Texas City Halls.
I’m planning on capturing a ton more Texas City Halls this year, and turning it into some kind of physical artifact or learning tool.
Here’s my collection for 2020, in chronological order from August-December. In total, I TikTok-ed 15 Texas City Halls.
Euless
Waxahachie
Balch Springs
Prosper
Pilot Point
Pottsboro
Gun Barrel City
Corsicana
Paris
Wichita Falls
