🎬 #227 The New Directors.
This week is a little thought piece about filmmakers who made their start on YouTube.
Please enjoy
Bry
I believe that this trend is only going to continue, and it actually does it a disservice to call it a trend because these are true filmmakers. I don’t feel like it’s going to be something that passes by and then we’re onto the next. The most recent examples are Kane Parsons, who I spoke about before. He made his feature film debut with an adaptation of his own web series called Backrooms. Curry Baker, obviously, made his feature film debut with Obsession, which I believe was made for around $750,000. It’s now grossed over $100 million at the box office, as far as I’m aware.
These are just two of the most recent higher profile examples. But there’s actually a whole raft of filmmakers, especially in horror, who came up through YouTube, one of which I knew before. On YouTube, he goes by the pseudonym ponysmasher, but his name is David F. Sandberg. He made the short film Lights Out, which exploded on YouTube around 2013. Off the back of that, he got a deal to do a feature length adaptation of his own film. Since then, he’s focused mainly on the superhero genre but he really made his start on YouTube making high concept horror shorts.
But others include Danny and Michael Philippou, who made Talk To Me followed by Bring Her Back, then there is Chris Stuckmann who made Shelby Oaks and Michael Shanks who made Together as his first feature film. Tangential to these is Kogonada who was a video essayist before moving into feature directing, his most recent film being Zi. What makes a lot of sense to me when it comes to directors coming from YouTube is iteration. Before, filmmakers might have to make short films, beg for cash [or self-fund] a low budget feature then pound the festival circuit. What this means in a sheer numbers game way is that there are only so many ‘goes’ at it. Studios would then pick from maybe the hottest films of the circuit - but again these would probably be from great filmmakers but they have only ever made maybe max 10 short films for example, and that would probably have been labelled prolific. With filmmakers coming up through YouTube, they have hundreds of iterations to hone the craft. By analogy it might be like traditional poker players vs online poker players. There were only so many in-person games you could play but the best players these days have played thousands of games before even playing IRL.
But these filmmakers have clocked in many more hours in the proverbial cockpit, even if that isn’t on ‘narrative films’ they’re honing their taste, finding their ‘voice,’ practicing lens choice, blocking, use of sound and sound design - editing and music. All the tools and skills they need for their first feature, they are using constantly in the creation of short films for their channels. Not only this but they’re also building an audience and a brand for lack of a better word. Something that makes signing over the budget for their first film that much easier. This is a super exciting time for me because no longer do filmmakers need to try to convince the gatekeepers to pry open the gates. They can make their own tall gleaming gates that soon will have the gatekeepers themselves coming to peek through.