How I Made My Short Film “Your Reality” Go Viral

Written by Tatjana Anders

My name is Tatjana Anders and I’m an actress turned screenwriter. I never went to drama or film school (I studied business), but I’ve always wanted to be involved in the film industry. After I got my business degree, I ignored my parents’ advice “to get a proper job” and decided to take acting classes instead.

Whilst I enjoyed acting, I quickly understood that the road to fame in this industry is never easy. Before I could even dream about auditioning for the likes of Nina Gold, short films were the best way to gain the film set experience I so desperately needed.

Luckily, I soon was cast in a bunch of short films, which gave me an amazing insight into the independent filmmaker community.

Courtesy of Tatjana Anders

Climbing Mount Everest

As I met more and more aspiring directors and scriptwriters I started to see a common trend. I would watch them spend months, sometimes even years crafting an amazing script, bringing cast and crew on board, and spending their hard-earned money on film equipment, locations, etc. only to submit their edited hard work to a bunch of film festivals and… well… leave it at that. Most of the time they would move on to the next project. And some projects never even made it out of the editing suite.

I couldn’t comprehend that mindset. To me, it felt like almost getting to the top of Mount Everest and then with a few meters to go, deciding that you’d rather go climb another mountain instead.

So when I decided to write and produce a short film myself, I knew I had to do something differently.

I was also lucky to have found an amazing producer that funded half of the film (about £7k). I felt the responsibility to at least recoup his investment.

I admit that I didn’t necessarily have a masterplan from the get-go, and of course, there was absolutely no guarantee that our film would get as successful as it did. But I promised myself that I would at least try to do everything in my power to get it seen by as many people as possible outside the film festival circuit.

Your Reality | Award-winning short film on Gaslighting

www.youtube.com

My Post-Festival Strategy

At first, my producer and I were considering selling our short film to distribution companies or to organizations that might be interested in this topic for educational reasons.

However, selling a short film is tough (although I heard it’s getting easier as the demand for short-form content keeps growing). In the end, we managed to license it for one screening at an event dedicated to mental health, which paid us around £500.

Then we tried VOD via Vimeo, which would allow people to rent or buy the film for £3 or £5 respectively.

It was an interesting experiment, but not very lucrative. The problem with this approach is that you have to promote your film yourself—and who in their right mind would pay £3 for a short film if they have access to endless content across various streaming platforms?

Plus, I had to pay for premium membership on Vimeo, which costs around £250/ year. In the end we just about broke even and I decided to cancel the membership.

YouTube Analytics

I can’t lie—I felt rather discouraged at this point. Whilst it was important for me to recoup my producer’s investment, my priority has always been to raise awareness on gaslighting, so I felt like the only way to achieve that would be to make “Your Reality” available to watch for free.

Luckily, my producer was on the same page. We agreed to give up on the idea of trying to monetize the film and decided to publish it on YouTube.

Did it blow up instantly? Nope. The first two weeks we only got around 400 views… So I decided to give it a push. I shared it with friends, on Reddit, and on every relevant Facebook group I could think of. I also shared it on forums dedicated to gaslighting.

By week 4fourwe hit around 4k views, which felt like a huge success!

And then the comments started pouring in. People were sharing their own stories, struggles, and small wins. I was blown away. I was genuinely rooting for them, especially when they managed to get out of an abusive relationship.

I started replying to as many comments as I could, trying to offer words of support and encouragement.

By month three, we were at 25k views and then something crazy happened. By month four we reached one million views.

Two years later we’re at 6.2 million views and still growing. And the bonus of all bonuses? My producer managed to fully recoup his investment through YouTube ads. In the aftermath of our success, I’ve often wondered what enabled “Your Reality” to get so much traction.

Personally, I believe that it came down to three factors:

Shareability

First of all, the topic of the short film played a huge role. I decided to make a short film on gaslighting and psychological abuse because a close friend has gone through something similar and I wanted to raise awareness. I think the fact that people could relate to the relationship of the protagonist compelled them to share it with their friends.

Runtime

When I was submitting my short film to festivals, a lot of them were put off by the 21-minute runtime. However, on YouTube, it played in my favor, as YouTube rewards content creators who encourage viewers to stay longer on the platform. Also, longer watch times mean viewers are enjoying your content, so YouTube pushes it to more people.

Engagement

The final reason, in my opinion, was the engagement and the number of comments we received. My instinct of replying to comments encouraged more people to share their experiences, which YouTube’s algorithm seems to love.

My next challenge is to turn “Your Reality” into a feature film. We have most pieces of the puzzle ready—a finished script, which I’m incredibly proud of, a talented director, an amazing casting director, locations, budget plan, etc. But, boy oh boy, fundraising for a feature film is a tough nut to crack. I didn’t think it would be this hard. But, as they say, where there is a will, there is a way.

I’m planning to share my experience of making the feature film on my YouTube channel, so feel free to stop by and say hi!