”I consider myself on my last leg.”
—Brad Pitt at 58
GQ magazine, 2022
“I think that the Internet is going to effect the most profound change on the entertainment industries combined. And we’re all gonna be tuning into the most popular Internet show in the world, which will be coming from some place in Des Moines.”
—Steven Spielberg
1999 Today Show interview (Six years before YouTube was launched)
I had a birthday this week and it seems like every year I get older. Other than having an amazing grasp of the obvious, I’ve decided that when I grow up I want to be a YouTuber. I’m not sure when I first put a video on YouTube, but I do remember doing one in 2010 for this blog that was a spoof on the movie Buried. (I’ll try to track that down.)
While I have a long background working in production, for the first decade of YouTube I used it mostly to find how to do something with either a camera or editing software. I didn’t care if it was Philip Bloom or a teenager showing me something. But I began to see the playing field being leveled. When Vincent Lafort’s video Reverie hit YouTube in 2008 it was the biggest shift in production since The Blair Witch Project in 1999.
Lafort had shown to the world what was possible with Canon’s 5D DSLR camera. Around 2010-11 it seemed like everyone owned a 5D or the less expensive Canon 7D. Around that time an intern showed me Jenna Marbles’ YouTube videos. Casey Neistat started his YouTube channel in 2015 and not long after than a new generation of YouTubers was calling him the Vlogfather for paving the way.
I don’t know exactly where the tipping point was for YouTube, but Neistat’s well published financial success built on the back of his YouTube channel seemed to opened the floodgate for people to start looking at YouTube as an income stream or even a career.
Marques Brownlee (MKBHD) is one who went directly from graduating to college to being a full time YouTuber is quick to point out that it is like professional sports in that there are only a few at the top and most people on YouTube are making little or no money. MKBHD/Brownlee is one of those doing very well as you can see from the studio tour below.
Jimmy Donaldson (MrBeast) said he made no money the first two years of YouTubing and then a dollar a day for the next two years. Last year he (or his company) made $54 million. I imagine he could retire at age 23 more financially secure than 99% of the people in the world.
Not bad since his mom was ready to kick him out of the house just four years ago since he wasn’t interested in college or getting a regular job. Instead he built a YouTube empire.
In the past people have suggested I start a podcast and/or a YouTube channel based on this blog, but it always just seemed like more work that I was willing to commit to. But COVID hit in 2020 and I began reassessing doing a podcast and a regular YouTube channel. Just in the last two months I’ve done a ton of research on YouTube and am hoping to make an official announcement as early as this month. But I’ve had false starts before, but in the meantime I’ll pass on what I’ve learned in the coming weeks for those of you interested in doing the same.
I call it ”My YouTube Retirement Plan” because I think down the road it could be where I spend my time creating content. But there are a lot of moving parts to wrap my head around. But a decade from now I can envison creating content for YouTube (and the like).
Will movie theaters be around 10 years—other than a niche or blockbuster only movies? That’s debatable. Will YouTube (and like) be around 10 years from now. You can bet on that. With CAA completing its acquisition of ICM this week Hollywood is down to three major talent agencies (CAA, ICM, UTA). Hollywood is over 100 years old now— and has been on life support before—but has shown an amazing ability to reinvent itself time and time again. To borrow the words of what David Mamet once said of theater, “Hollywood is always dying, and always being reborn.”
Perhaps the talented and young content creators today will be a part of the next iteration of Hollywood. Consider just this one example of the video $456,000 Squid Game in Real Life—as of today it has 264 million views. MrBeast—at the age of the average film school senior (who is just starting to wonder how he or she is going to pay off their student loans—spent around $4 million dollars producing a version of the Netflix hit. Even if Netflix lawyers decided this was copyright infringement of Squid Games, those 264 million views on MrBeast’s channel would likely cause Netflix executives to say, “How do we partner with this guy and his fan base to help promote Squid Game, Season Two?”
And for those of you not sold on YouTube, think of it like Hollywood around 1912. YouTube is only 17 years old. It’s a teenager raring to go. The YouTube versions of Harold Lloyd, Mary Pickford, and Charlie Chaplin haven’t even come on the scene yet.
P.S. If you’d like to do a deep dive on creating for YouTube here are five places I recommend:
1) Casey Neistat’s Filmmaking & Storytelling
2) Making Compelling Videos That Go Viral, a MasterClass with Marques Brownlee
3) YouTube Storytelling: How to Make Videos that People Share with Colin & Samir
4) Video Storytelling on YouTube and Beyond, Lilly Singh on Skillshare
5) The YouTube Formula (book/audio book), Derral Eves (forward by MrBeast/Jimmy Donaldson
P.P.S. Happy birthday to Tom Cruise who turns 60 tomorrow. No apparent retirement plans in sight for him.
Scott W. Smith is the author of Screenwriting with Brass Knuckles
Screenwriting from Iowa 