Why Mark Rober & MrBeast Hired These YouTubers (Sticks Interview)

We're willing to do something crazy to make our dream come true. You guys have reinvented how to succeed on YouTube. We had just bought 3,000 dollars worth of plane tickets. We were on the way to the airport without telling our wives who were flying to America. What? You said a date to premiere a movie for Ryan Trayhan in one week that you hadn't even filmed or edited yet. Those nuts. That takes serious balls. But we also had this offer from Mark Robo. If we were part-time with him, we could fund our YouTube channel. This is where the negotiations began. You guys have helped Mark Robo go from 25 to over 60 million subscribers. And now you're making trailers and commercials for the biggest YouTubers. That's when we got to the DM for Jimmy. And that just like completely shocked us. I think you guys will be remembered as the Spielbergs of YouTube. How do you make a movie about Mr. Beast that tells the full truth? We don't want it to feel like a Jimmy puppets. Is a movie gonna cost 20 million dollars? So. we say it again? Alright, make sure you subscribe and ring the bell because we have so many big videos coming up from interviews to studio tours. And if you haven't already, then go to whiteyhackpack.com to get our free YouTube Hack Pack with all our best tips, tools, and templates to grow on YouTube today. From our intro and thumbnail templates to our 100 viral ideas for any niche. We constantly updated as we interview more creators so you have the latest and greatest for free. Alright, now back to the video. Alright boys, welcome to this show. I'm so excited to have you guys. It's so good to be here. This is the dream. I feel like you guys are like the creators of the moment right now. What? Oh yeah, like the movies, commercials, like the projects you have coming in. And I can't believe you haven't really done podcasts. So it's just an honor to be able to download it. Yeah, this is one of the firsts we've done. Yeah, thank you. Of course, so I love going through the libraries of YouTubers who I interview and just looking at where the turning points were. I know Taylor Swift has her ares tour, but I think you guys have your ares too. And so I pulled some of your videos and tell me if this is accurate. I think you guys have these three ares where you made these videos like short films, cinematic videos, which I think a lot of videographers and photographers like struggle to make on YouTube to get traction. And then you started making these creator movies. And now you make these like epic commercials, they don't even feel like commercials. I'm just wondering if you could share some of those turning points. Yeah. And some of those oh shit moments for you guys. Okay, the big one. Let's go like when we went viral. We'll take you back. We'll take you back. So this paper boy short film was on an old channel of ours. Yeah. And Lucas and I have been making short films like all the time, all the time. We just make a bunch of them and just post them to YouTube, never expecting them to go viral. This was one of the first that went viral and we didn't even realize it. We checked YouTube one day. Yeah, we posted it for God about it. One day some of our family members came over and were like, oh, we'll show you a short film like a show Intel. And we turned on YouTube and it was like a hundred thousand views. And we watched it climb to like nearly two millions, like on 1.9 right now. Yeah. So I was like, oh my gosh, like short films, maybe they can like go viral on YouTube and got us really excited. So then, you know, we had to do other work to like survive. And then we're like, what if we just put our heads together and like try and make films every now and then. That was really this era. Like the cold order. And were you getting paid for these films, like somebody commission or you do your own early passion projects. Yeah. You were like coming up with the ideas, filming them and trying to submit them to first of all, like what was the plan if there was any. The first like era of short films, we were working on them without our church media team. So we were like kind of creating these like hopeful like short films that we could play with like along with like a sermon at church or something. And then we would just post them on that channel. And then eventually we kind of started working, you know, I was shooting weddings a lot. Lucas was doing business videos and wedding videos. And that's kind of this era when we were like, let's team up and create like a brand new channel called sticks. In any spare time we could get, we were like, okay, let's write a film, let's get some crew together. It was always like zero budget, maybe like $100 here and there. Just to like, you know, make something. Yeah. So that was a side hustle at that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like luckily, like shooting weddings gives you a lot of time throughout the week. Yeah. Working on the weekend. So we had kind of the week like just to work on this channel. Oh, if I had a penny for every YouTuber started out by doing a wedding video. Exactly. Like, you know, felt a bank like. It's kind of OP because you can just work throughout the week on your channel. And then you work extra on the weekends. Yeah. I had like a slightly different thing because I was doing weddings, but also business videos. And I was like trying my best to like get a big deal. To just buy me a month of like working with Curtis. So there was one time where I got like a pretty big deal. Was it like 30 K or something? And we're like, okay, let's spend the next three months. What if we just tell like last year wives, wives, can we please have like two months where we just like work on YouTube? And they gave it to us. And we were like, that's kind of what we made. Yeah. That's when we started making short films like one after the other. Interesting. And we knew we had a like a ticking time clock to like try and make something work. Yeah. One for the show and for the dough. Yeah. Yeah. Classic. And then when did it start to make sense that like, wait, wait, wait. Maybe we should be making more trailers about YouTube. Because I think there's another moment that I wanted to call out, which was, I saw this one video that you guys made, which was we turned a news headline into a movie. Yeah. And it was actually one of the uploads right before if Eric's life was a movie. Yes. And I'm just curious because it's like, it's almost one degree of change. Right. Exactly. And it's like, when did that start to click on like, wait, wait, wait, okay, news headline. I can understand what you guys were trying to do there. Like news headlines. People talk about the movie to a movie. It shows your chops. Yeah. But take me through how you got there. And then ultimately made that other switch to talk about. We really thought that one was going to be the one. Yeah. So I mean, we thought every single one was going to be one. But I think it was the beginning of 2023. Yeah. It was the start of the new year. We thought like the videos we were making with like, you know, we turned a news headline into a movie. We were trying to think of how we can make short films go viral on YouTube. Yeah. Because we really believed in this idea of like, YouTube and Hollywood coming together eventually. And we wanted to be at the forefront of that. And so we kind of made these videos like we made the social network. Or we made an entire web series without a script. And just like, probably these short films with packaging that was like YouTube friendly. So we knew like, packaging was going to be the thing that would change everything. Because we thought we were pretty good at making films. We enjoyed the level we were like making these films. But there wasn't like a foolproof plan for a filmmaker to go viral. Yeah. So we were like, there's got to be a way to package this really well. And really it actually started with the idea for the Mr. Beast movie before any of the videos we posted on the channel. So we came up with the idea to make Mr. Beast his own life movie. And then we kind of worked backwards from that and feel like a social network for exactly Mr. Beast for Jimmy's life. Yeah. Like a buyer pick about Jimmy's. It's a two hour movie we wanted to put it in theaters. It was like this crazy idea when they were like, okay, but we can't do that right now. And how do we get there? And so it was the big idea was like so big that it wasn't helpful. And then we were like, Hey, what if we, what if we did like trailers for YouTubers until we make Mr. Beast his own movie. And so we were like, okay, let's just try it out with Eric. We were like, not too sure if it was going to work. Super low budget and like trying to recreate Eric's life with no money was like so daunting to us. How much did it cost to put that together? Oh, I don't think we've spent $200. The only prop we used was like pizza. So we probably paid $12 for pizza. True. But I played Eric. Right. Lucas had the camera and then we had a shave. Yeah, you played Eric. And then we had a friend helping us out here. We just did everything else. But we really we went too short for those going to work and it didn't really work. Because the packaging. Yeah, it comes down to the packaging. Wait, that video has a ton of views. Now it does at the time. It only had a couple thousand. Really? Yeah. What was the view count in the first seven days when you remember? I think we were excited that it hit like a thousand views. Yeah. In the first week. Yeah, wow, because I maybe just looking your channel and all the hits you've had, I assume that one was a instant rocket ship. No. That one. No, that was a flop. Wow. Yeah. And how did that feel? We thought the idea and the packaging was really really cool. We didn't have the thumbnail and we didn't have the title. That came later. So we just bad, bad YouTube practice. Yeah. So we made the thing. And then we had this trailer to show Eric. But our thought was so small. It was like, let's try and send it to him. Let's try to send it to someone on his team and get like a comment or a reaction. Like send it as a MP4 before you upload or once something is live. We were going to send the link. So once it's on YouTube and see if we can get a comment or some sort of reaction. Yeah. But we didn't realize that that was like too small. And some of our friends were like, why don't you go like fly to LA and show it to him at his pizza party. That was coming up. We're like, we're not like YouTubers. Like we're like, we're filmmakers. And then something clicked. We're like, wait, that's a cool idea. Yeah. So why are we, why are we still here? Like why don't we just buy some plane tickets and go? Like that's a really cool YouTube video. And like for context, he was throwing this 10 million subscriber pizza party. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. You could have hooked us up. Yeah. You could have been the answer. We know each other. Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] Party and at Sophie Stadium. Yes, it was a big deal. Yeah, big deal. We just had this crazy idea that we could hijack this party Just imagine like we rock up talk to someone. Can we sneak this like trailer onto the big screen? We play this in front of everyone I don't know what we were thinking honestly it doesn't sound that crazy like like now in Iraq and how he like kind of Collab with creative way bigger than I feel like The crazy part it was four days out. That's what the crazy part was so we were like in Sydney The only flight that would get us there meant we had we'd have to leave that day. Yeah, so we decided Morning of the morning of who were like Let's buy tickets right now and drive to the airport. So we were buying tickets on the way And what we didn't realize is we needed to also have our visa Estavisa, like Sorted before we got on the plane. We realized that when we arrived there So we're looking up like how long does it take to get approval and it's like it could be up to 72 hours Oh my but we had just bought $3,000 worth of plane tickets Long story short the plane is about to take off the planes about to take off in the next like 20 minutes So you need to squeeze 72 hours of approvals or like bureaucracy Yes, but then within an hour we'd both get approved So then we sprint through like security all the way through the airport and we get there like 30 seconds late the plane is just taking off and we were like What what did we just do like we just spent $3,000 we were willing to just go to the other side of the world on a whim And we went home actually like wait, do we just like Break through something like you talk about those moments of like change where like you realize something I think that felt for us that was like a huge moment where we kind of realize where we're willing to do Something crazy to make our dream come true like us like exiting the airport that day was like It should have seemed like a loss like an L but it felt like the biggest win because we we were we realized how far We were willing to go for our dream and that for us was like the biggest breakthrough moment Yeah, like we put our money where our mouth is and that was like if we're willing to do that What if those are some planning for the next time and actually some execution? So yeah, this was our first viral video. Yeah, which was we surprised Ryan Tran with his own movie So tell me about that one like what went on behind the scenes like why was that attorney point so when the Eric video got posted We did get a comment from Eric and that was super encouraging to us bro What yeah bro what and that was all he said but what was cool was like we saw it get like Up to like 5,000 views on its own and and that was big for us Because we were getting like under a thousand for all our little short films Yeah, and a few of our friends are telling us just try this again and do something like this again Yeah, all the comments will work the comments are like this is a good idea, but like It'd be cool to see like Eric watch it Yeah, and so we're like okay Let's do this again and focus on the reaction of the person we're showing Yeah, like try to really make it special for the creator and like get it to them and we realized that was the core of What made these videos special? So we again a huge risk. We didn't have any connections with Ryan, but we bought tickets to America this time We got on the flight and we hadn't we hadn't made the film yet But we flew to Austin and connection by connection like tried to get in touch with him As thing is because we were crazy enough to do that that people were like oh I can like I can get you in touch with Ryan because we flew from like the story was we just flew from Australia We're trying to show him a movie about himself which you hadn't created what was some of those initial DMs like like what were you reaching out? What were you seeing so from the Eric video? We had Kind of a connection with Eric's manager Zach. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, so we're also part of creating now, which was Eric's Group with the way youtubers learn and you know, there's a creator education platform That's a way better than that Zach co-founder with him. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so we knew that our only connection was we can go to the creator now head quarters Maybe find Zach there, but he wasn't like he's a busy guy, so we weren't like messaging him or anything We just knew that he had seen our previous video and that was it So we're like fighting the headquarters on Google maps. No, no, so we told we told the creator now community were coming to America And then finally enough they reached out and said oh, if you're coming swing by and we had a we had like a 12 hour layover in LA So we're like this is perfect. So we went to creator now But what we didn't know was if Zach was gonna be there or even have time to talk to us. Yeah, and then As we were leaving like just before we were leaving he gets out of a meeting and says hi to us and then We just shot our shot. I was like where we came all the way here to find Ryan Trayhan to show him a movie Can you put us in touch? And then he was like look if you make a video like a short quick video? I'll send it to him and that's all I can do which is very helpful and we're like we can do that We're like yeah, we can do that. So then we went straight to was it Santa Monica peer? Yeah, and just like try to make the funniest goofy as like like invite video to send straight to Ryan Trayhan a selfie video Like at this point, you're not making something that it is just just on an iPhone like vertical like a like a quick It's like a YouTube short. Yeah, yeah, and then we sent that to Zach and then we flew to Austin Still not knowing if we were gonna meet Ryan or get in touch with him When we got to Austin started to prep the first day of the shoot for Ryan's movie We get a text from Zach saying Ryan's down. Let's put you in a group chat. Wow. That was the craziest moment That felt like breaking through a bubble of like imagination and into the real world of like this can actually be possible Yeah, yeah, yeah, and then what happened like you got in the group chat with Ryan and at that point are you also simultaneously Making the movie about him. Yeah, so we're asking somebody like what like how are you balancing while we're in Australia We kind of prepped some of the pieces so we got like this doppelganger we found on tiktok that looked exactly like Ryan We flew him down from Nebraska to meet us in Austin. Wow, and we had one friend who was local in Texas who helped us out on the shoot and Then yeah, when we when we got in a group chat with Ryan, we kind of teed up like a good date That would work for him and then from there we like for the premiere. Yeah, I'm a movie that you have even started So then we kind of worked back from back with from there. I got all right. How many weeks are we talking? Oh? This is like a We went in America for a week and a half what yeah, wait you got you said a date for a premiere for a movie that you hadn't started You're like you're gonna give yourself a week and a half. Yes. Yes. Yeah, let's know we film had it Find a theater it was not so it was non-stop working like shooting every day We did we've never played anything in a theater before really and there's like a certain way you have to have like a fight like a DCP file Ready and all this stuff how to get this thing played in a cinema and also we'd know one like knowing what we're doing Like the cinema owners were just confused But we asked like every cinema in the area also trying to make it reasonable like driving distance for Ryan Wow, and it was a miracle that we got a cinema like The night before he was coming. Yeah. Was it the night before yeah? How did that even happen? What like Ryan was like he had a set date and time that was gonna meet us And we didn't have a cinema for him to even come to Wow, so I think the reason we were we were willing to work so hard up until that point was because we knew the idea was so good We had a Ryan in the video. We just have to nail everything which had to try work our hardest to make it all work And it paid off big time dude You know what I really believe when it comes to YouTube? There's nothing more motivating than a deadline and an audience 100% even if that audience is one person. Yeah, 100% yeah, that is crazy I didn't realize like all the pressure that was behind that video. Oh, it's like it feels like that for everybody either Yeah, and I think that's what makes the video is interesting. Yeah, it's like the risk that we're willing to take on and the face Step that we're willing to take on is really the what makes it interesting for us to watch like we don't know what's gonna happen in this video genuinely like looking back at this video We love that there's like a 27-minute video about us like taking this huge leap of faith and documenting every step of the way until the end the payoff is just so fun to look back on and At this same time like are you writing the script and researching and locations counting because I think in many ways Like you guys have built the perfect YouTube channel What and I'll tell you why but you've also built the hardest YouTube channel because I was just going through all all the steps that you guys have Okay, all right, you have to research every single thing about the gas. Yes, like kind of like I have to do but like I'm not renting out a theater You know like okay, then you have to film a movie about them cast scout locations get props and do it all within like three days on a budget Yeah, yeah, okay, then you have to edit it. All right, that's like you know a whole nother thing sound design score color You have to find the creator and convince them to show up on a certain date and time to spend time with you You have to rent a theater. I didn't even realize that's like you know as hard as it is and then you film BTS While you're doing all of this there's there's easier ways to like get a couple million views on it But where were some of the things that you learned through the process of making that movie about Ryan like Cuz I think you guys sit in the middle of this Venn diagram that I drew here of YouTube and movies That's awesome. That's literally what we like that's our channel when we started the channel We like we want to be the bridge between like movies Hollywood and and YouTube and like see it somewhere between that So that's crazy that you have that during so so yeah, what did you learn throughout that that process and how to that kind of go into your experience with Ryan once he saw it. So the cool thing is about halfway through the shoot. I was up late at night thinking like, what are we going to say to Ryan when he's sitting there next to us? This is a big opportunity. I don't want to just show him the movie and go home. And then I came out with the proposition and I came to cut the next one and I was like, what if we say, we'll put your name in the credits of the Mr. Beast movie if you get us a meeting with Mr. Beast? And I think that works so much so well because it not only gives us a purpose to why we're doing this and it gives the audience context to our larger goal, but also just in a retention sort of way, you're waiting not only for Ryan's reaction, but then we'll answer the question at the end. Yeah, will he unlock our bigger goal, which makes it's not just context, it's also it makes every little thing we do in this video, like a touch to our biggest dream. And it shows why we're trying to work so hard to get this done. So you can't look away until you see that answer at the end. That was our fun way of like retention without you know, trying to be too like fast with the cut. So trying to be like, you know, treating the audience like they don't want to pay attention. That's genuinely, if you follow each step of the story, you'll hooked until you get to the end. Yeah, Ryan seems so gracious and I saw in that video, you guys recorded video that he then sent to Jimmy. Yes. Where did things go from there? At the same time, we were making this. We're also in talks with Mark Rubel because we applied for a role with him to produce his shorts. Oh, wow. So literally the same night when we got in the group chat with Ryan, we got a message back from Mark Rubel's team saying they'd love to interview us. And this is from a job posting you just saw. Yeah. Yeah. And he posted a job posting and we just applied and sent in some of some shorts that we made for him. And so the day, yeah, Ryan texted us, we had a meeting with Mark Rubel while what a day. Yeah. It was literally like back to back calls and like we just spoke to two of like our favorite YouTubers. Yeah. The span of two hours. Yeah. And that is a side story for the stick's law was like our video was like already taking off. And our channel was like becoming itself like a thing. But we also had this offer from Mark Rubel to like work part time for his channel. Which there's so much in that like this is I want to talk about that more. Yeah, go ahead. Okay. I think it's an untold story is how you fund all this. Yeah. So put it in perspective, how much would you estimate like that movie for Ryan costs, like cinema costs, like at the, obviously you guys are putting a ton of your own time, like flying it, like how much of that cost? We recently launched a whole new collection of our created apparel with hoodies, crew necks, ball caps, t-shirts and more and it was all made possible thanks to today's sponsor Shopify. I mean, if there's one thing that sticks myself and a ton of other creators have in common, it's that we love using Shopify. In fact, sticks use Shopify to sell these amazing creator movie posters and now with the new Shopify sidekick, you have an AI powered assistant right at your fingertips that's trained on all of your products. You could ask it anything like write my product descriptions or organize my merch into collections or set up my payments and I'll do it all in seconds like watches. I'm going to ask sidekick to set up a promo code for our created store and it does it like that sidekick can also analyze your sales and even suggest ideas to improve your conversion with step-by-step instructions to take that work off your plate. That paired with a new AI store builder which lets you generate images and builds your entire website in seconds means it's never been an easier time to start and scale your business on Shopify. So if you're a creator or just have an idea to start a business, check out Shopify and best of all, you'll get a free trial by using my link below so you can see why so many top creators use it and love it. All right. Now back to the video. There are some slides and all the production stuff like as we're going from Australia to America. I think it was like 25k or something like that for Ryan's one, yeah, or maybe less. No, I think it was like 10k, but with the flights. So it was, I remember saying to our mom, guess how much we spent on this whole thing as she was driving us to the airport and I said, okay, that's right. So then by the end of it, the thing is with that one, we had no help. It was like no crew just a friend and he was lending us gear and it was, and we also stayed with a friend. But then we spent no money on like locations, just a couple props. Yeah. So you pulled a lot of favor. So the real cost is actually much higher probably. Yeah. Yeah. Which we find out in the next coming as we're saying to pay people like normal people should yeah. As it gets expensive. Yeah. So yeah, Mark Robors really wanted to hire us and we're like, this is such a crazy opportunity. And we say, yes, we take it on and we're like, okay, what if he was looking for one short creator like someone to like head up shorts because he was just starting to get into it. Like an ideate and edit to take over the whole shorts part of his channel. Got it. For like time. Yeah. Ideate, right with him. Edit, produce. He hadn't really posted any shorts before. So it was like really from from scratch, like figuring out what Mark Robors shorts look like. Yeah. And like, what do you guys think like is it should should we get into this like should like his shorts, like should I do this? And we were saying like, of course, like we'd love to like work with you and see how like what is a Mark Robors short and like what could you do with shorts that helps you connect to your audience more. And after that call, he was like, all right, let's do it. So we were doing that. That's crazy. It's crazy. These two kids from Australia just got a dream job with Mark Robors, like we were so, we felt so blessed. Yeah. That was well. And what was going on in your mind at this moment? Was it the opportunity to learn but also keep your own stuff going and using the money for this to find? Because I think this is like a constant thing that creators find themselves. I was in the same boat, like starting my YouTube channel. We were spending so much on our videos. I had to take like side gigs and jobs just to pay for it. Yeah. And the biggest thing that I think is like a win-win is like if you get a gig with a creator that you could learn from. Yeah. So Mark Robors. I mean, that's the best. That's like the best grad school that pays you tuition. Yeah. Exactly. So were you guys thinking about continuing the stick's channel as you're working with Mark? Or did he ask you to shut it down to do everything full time for him? Because I could see it going both ways. Like you're working for something that they're giving you salary, like they would expect your full attention not to go to your channel, but their channel. So how did that work? So this is where the negotiations began. Okay. So he was looking for one full-time shorts creator. And as you can see, we are two people and we said, okay, what if we pitch him on, he gets his full-time creator, but we both do it part time. So you get two creators part time to make up a full-time role. And we sent that back to Mark and we're just like, please, please, let this work. Because if we were part-time with him, we could fund our YouTube channel because these videos are so expensive to make, it's not paying itself off. So he comes back saying yes. And then we're like, okay, this is our new thing. Like let's stop the weddings in the business videos. We got, we're working for Mark part-time and our channel. And that's it. Wow. And also another element to like working for a creator that it really verifies you to working with more creators, like, you know, like having a resume that looks really good. But like, even with Ryan, the same day we spoke to Ryan and Mark, they were actually together in person in SF, like they were together in person at Mark's Crunch Labs warehouse. And so they both talked about us to each other. And instantly we were verified for both opportunities. Isn't that crazy though? Like, Ryan was at Mark's Crunch Labs that day that we got put in a group chat with Ryan. And he said, oh, these are, he's no Mark saying, I'm just about to talk to these, you know, two Australian brothers who might do my shorts. And Ryan's like, oh, this two Australian brothers are trying to make me a movie right now, like the same people. So instantly they both just get, like, we're just verified to both of them. Yeah. Such a great opportunity. But our thought process going in was, like, because we definitely believed in our channel enough to just go full time as well, we, we weren't, um, we weren't scared that it was going to take off. We were ready to go all in, like what we learned in the Eric video. But we did think, like, how cool would it be to learn from Mark Robo? Have some money to help fund out our channel and learn, like, learning from Mark Robo encompasses a bunch of things, like how he does his videos, but also how he runs his business. Like, what's it like to grow a channel over so long and say, say, sustainable? Yeah. Those things are very interesting to us. Yeah. Like it'd be amazing to like help in how he can and also learn from what he's created. Yeah. So it was just like, we can't turn that down. Yeah. So take me into that era of like sticks now working for Mark Robo, but now figuring out your format of this trailer for creators, renting a theater and doing the BTS like over some of the things that you may have learned from Mark that showed up in your YouTube videos for your channel. Well, one thing before I get to like what we learned from Mark was like we had this viral video pop-off and the question of like What will be our next hit is obviously a thing that everyone thinks about when they have a video go viral? Yeah, this is again after the Ryan Trayhan video pop. Yeah, this what we surprise Ryan Trayhan and so we thought the safest bet is just to do this again with Mark He's even bigger than Ryan and we have the connection and This could be a great way to repeat what we just did and create the consistency so but there was no other options really because We we hadn't had like any connections with other big YouTubers and it was like a no-brainer We'd love to surprise Mark with his own me surprise your boss. Yeah, surprise Yeah, no scary though because like he's like just hired us and we didn't want to like you know treat him like we're just trying to get something from him Yeah, he's super gracious. He's so yeah, he's super gracious Yeah, Mark is wonderful. He was you know, he was really excited to see what we made once we showed him But we just took a risk and we're like we think he'll be okay with this Months into the job where you had that point. Oh, only like three months. Yeah, and that takes that takes serious balls Yeah, I'm okay because I feel like those first few months with any job You're trying to build a great impression. Yeah, boss that you're doing everything for them. Yeah, meanwhile You're like hey look at this thing that we're doing for our channel Yeah, did that like ever come up in conversation like how did you guys like navigate like he was cool with it As long as we were like still pumping out these shorts. Yeah, we kept consistent on the short side I mean we were grinding because we're doing like our main videos Which take you already wrote out all those things that we do plus all the shorts. Yeah, Mark So just like yeah, and then the other side of it's like we're flying from Sydney to America every like a few weeks Oh, you hadn't moved yet. No, no, we were working for Mark remote for like six months. Yeah, wow Yeah, and that's a crazy time difference. Yeah, cuz you will come online around 4 p.m. 3 p.m. from us here on the west coast Yeah, so lots of late nights lots of like trips to America, you know saying by to our wives every couple weeks. It was tough But it was such an awesome opportunity to like capitalize on the growth that was happening. Yeah, and I think back to like Surprising him like taking that risk to surprise him our mentality was like We just want to honor him with like a really cool story like we want to make it a moment for him Yeah, not just get a video out of it Obviously, it's like a win for us But if we can really make it special for him Then it should be okay, and that was on the most emotional ones at least for me watching it Yeah, that was beautifully like the trailer you guys made about his life and also the casting Yeah, like we look out with the casting every time. No, no, you guys work. I am Mad at how we feel you go through so wow and and get just to put it in perspective how much your bouncing how many shorts Are you guys putting out from mark one point a week one per week one per week from Mark's channel then crunch labs one Pooey to two per week two per week. Yeah, in addition to everything you're doing for your channel. Yes. Yeah What else were you guys figuring out about your channel at that point like what was happening from there? It's so funny cuz like it feels like when we said yes to Mark and when we said yes to like flying to America Surprise Ryan something in us clicked like creatively where we just started understanding YouTube Mm-hmm, and like all of a sudden everything we've learned over years just kind of clicked into place and we understood like shorts better We like we hadn't really made shorts before like working with Mark, but we understood them so quickly we kind of Came up with this crazy thumbnail concept that we still love how did how did we come up with this so on the day We had a we had a concept where it was Ryan Like turning to the camera looking playing it on a TV, but when we pulled off the whole movie theater thing We're like it'd be crazy to just get a photo of just his face like just shocked and so that's all we took It was a photo of his face and the actual image was very underwhelming like it wasn't a good thumbnail What I did in Photoshop was like the few touches that spiced it up It made it feel like it was like a movie frame like a bit It's got of like a kind of like a sci-fi look because of so the the few things I did was like if the popcorn was like flying and Mid-Air it just captures like a moment like this action going on. Yeah, and then I think I was like It's it looked great with the popcorn flying but then we're like it needs some more like a pop-up color to like contrast The red and so I was like what if we added like a blue backlight from like to protect the screen and then it's like Signaling that he's watching something as well. And then that nice lens flare is what makes it feel like a bit of a movie Post don't kind of feel and he didn't have any backlight So I just like photoshopped this backlight onto his hair and then he popped and then we're looking at this like Wow, this is really cool. It's not very traditional of like a YouTube thumbnail, but let's give it a try And then when it came to the title it was like we turned Ryan Tran's life into a movie and we thought turned Was like not as powerful a word to be so early in the title and we're trying to like find a more emotional word And then we landed on surprised we surprised Ryan Tran with his own movie and it just like clicked like that's way better because I think we landed on Surprise, but it was still we surprised Ryan Tran with a movie, but then that is ensure that we've all the work We've done to like make it about his life. So then adding with his own movie really. Yeah, it's just like it clicked then and we're like That's it. That's the one. Wow. It's so cool to hear the like iterations of that and how every character truly matters and every Yeah, a little touch in the thumbnail But I think you guys have unlocked something now where it's like Anytime I see a creator that has successful videos that are I fill in the blank It's a game changer. You know, you guys have you can repeat it. You can repeat it Yeah, look at these different formats. You have like if blanks life was a movie You know if Eric's life was a movie if Ryan Tran's life was a movie if Mark Rober's life was a movie And the Chamberlain's like was a movie. It just seems like you guys are really like dialed in with like what's working on YouTube after being so far Remove from that with your first era your first time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, the repeatable thing has its downside Where we uh, I think once we did the Mark Rober one next. Yeah, we were like how do we up? How do we like turn things up? How do we up the stakes? Yeah, we were gonna change the thumbnail and title and just like try something new but I think We just decided that Like we want to make it feel Simmelon and Not really yeah familiar to the audience that it's the exact same thing but with a different creator But on the inside of the video, it's like we don't want to Just do the same thing. It had to be a higher risk So in that video we decided Instead of like organizing with the creator to meet us somewhere We would surprise them completely where they don't even realize they're rocking up to their own permeate And this is our barber one. Yeah, this is Mark Robel very scary So but we felt like we had enough like you know connection with yeah Mark Rober's team To like do it in a respectful way which you guys are now on like yeah Like so yeah, I was going to be you're like on the internal pink like Yeah, like guys what if Mark Rober was next and everyone's like yeah, let's help you out. Um So That was the challenge was like after that like what are we doing each time that feels like a new risk? That isn't just Repeating completely. Yeah, but with a little twist that makes it harder for us because Now that we have a connection with the creator It's not about finding the creator. It's about can we get them to a movie theater without them knowing yeah Um, and there's usually there's usually like natural stakes that come up in the video anyways And we we love to lean into those yeah instead of like contriving the muscles but I think um Yeah, instead of like forcing your own stakes in a video we've learned that like it's better just to dream big and then the stakes naturally follow And so that's kind of what we've been doing with like our whole channel really just like let's shoot for the biggest thing possible And then the content will be amazing because it'll be so hard to achieve it Yeah, what are some of the other like big moments that you guys are making trailers? You're upping the risk so even though for a lot of viewers that thumbnail and the packaging may look the same like now the video Experience this higher stakes like what what else do you guys doing? What are some of those like moments that like things went wrong? As now like there's more pressure more money like bigger names involved moving to america That was huge. I think it was around the zat king video where we moved to america And that was like our wives and never even visited america and they were down to like Just come on this adventure with us and move their whole lives and say goodbye to their family and friends and we all like it was a hard thing for us all to do But um, that was like a challenge because now it's like there's a lot more pressure to like make this channel work And we can't just like revert back to you know Going like revert back to Australia so easily So that was kind of like a big leap of faith as well. We had the ongoing thought that like Um, these these videos would lead us to Jimmy These videos would lead us like um doing the mr. Beast movie And that's why we started them because we wanted to make our first feature film. Yeah And so for a while like we're repeating the same format and we love this format It's so fun. It's like the dream getting to make these like little trailers and show it to our favorite creators But then Because we're so tied to this dream of like making our first feature film and making a movie about mr. Beast It's like so easy to get um, you know lost in this pattern of like making content And that's what you need to do to survive in this new country, you know like it's what pays the bills Um, but it was it's so easy to like forget the goal and the mission of why you're doing this And so we had to keep reminding ourselves of like we're doing this because we want to make our first feature film And if it's not moving the needle towards that then we need to innovate in a way. We kind of got four lost into that by Ryan Trayhan, because he messaged us one day saying, I'm gonna release a new, I'm gonna come out with my candy, Joy-Rod. - Yeah. - And I want you guys to make a cinematic commercial for it. - Wow. - And we were like, wait, this could be like what we've always wanted to do, which was what if we cast the YouTubers in movies? And like people got to get to see their favorite YouTuber in a cinematic mode? - And it's like another version of, you know, bringing YouTube and movies together. - Yeah. - They're just in a different kind of bucket or style. - Yeah, so instead of surprising them with their own movie, they are in the movie. And we spend three, four days with them creating a movie and then show them the movie at the end. We thought that was like a great packaging too, but it just takes things to the next level. Now we're not going away making our thing and coming to show it to them. It's like, Ryan's on set or whoever it is is on set with us for three days. Can we make sure they can act? Can we make sure this whole thing can be amazing? - And this is why I think you guys have built the perfect YouTube channel because there's a business model now, yeah. They're hiring you to make a commercial like they would have created agency. And now all of a sudden you have this amazing video that showcases the product, Joyride, for Ryan. Showcase is Ryan in a more elevated way. And then your BTS, it's almost like a commercial for how great you guys are. But it also now gets distribution, right? So you guys have been punching above your weight class, but I could see a future where people come to you not just for you to make the video, but also to get the BTS of that experience. - Yes, exactly. - It's like as much a part of the story. - Yeah. - And I'm just wanting to just, if you could talk more about that and the inflection point of the Joyride ad, it even feels weird to call it an ad, you know? - I mean, we try to call it. - We try to call everything we make a movie. - A movie. - And that's why I think like just going back to it, I think you guys have built the perfect YouTube channel because and it was so hard to get here. But now you guys have a product or a service that people can see. And I think a lot of people like, don't realize, it is very hard to sell chocolate, to sell candy, to sell like, you know, products like as good as they may be. But I think what you guys are doing is like, you're putting out media and then you're like, hey, you could hire us to make more of this. - Yeah, 'cause like for this format, that we surprise format, we're making the BTS and the trailer and basically just profiting from like a brand deal on the BTS or the ad sense. But now it's like, we're doing that again, where we're making the BTS in the short film. - But we're being hired to make the short film and then we can still create BTS. - So it's much more profitable that way, which is great. - Yeah, once everyone saw Ryan's joy ride, then the opportunity's just opened up. Like people were messaging us quite a bit. - Yeah, well, Ryan's so smart for just like, innovating like that, like yeah. I love how he's thinking about always trying something new and on the platform and like shaking things up. - Yeah, he's taking risks and he saw this as like a big kind of like high effort thing that he could do for his audience. But it just allowed us to like, yeah, it's like a portfolio. When you persevere, it'll leads to the next one. - Yeah, so that's really cool. - What were some of the DM's like people like came to you with after Ryan's joy ride, commercial side movie came out? - It's like a bunch of YouTubers wanting like something similar for like products. It's like, it's a great timing as well 'cause so many YouTubers are launching products. - Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - It's like, oh, this is like the-- - We just got the perfect soul. - Brunt of it are like, oh, we're doing something similar. - Yeah. - Yeah. - There's a lot of YouTubers that, you know, in a perfect world, if we had more time, we would have worked with more of them. - But we know how long it takes to make one. - Oh, yeah. - So it has to be very selective. - And Ryan's saying of that quote, like during the gold rush, it's like, who made the most money? It was not the people rushing to find the gold. It was the people selling the access. (laughs) - I mean, you guys are selling the access. You guys are selling the tools to help people dig gold or show their gold in their products. And there's a lot of products, you know? - Yeah. - Yeah. It's successful, but they all need commercials. - Yeah. - And promotion. - And it's like, it's a new way to like get the audience's attention when launching a product. Like, it's so cool to drop like a really high effort. Commercial, you see like streamers doing it when they're like, you know, announcing their sub-a-thons or like-- - Speeds like America tour. - Yeah. - That was such a cool video. - Yeah. - So cool. - His trailer for that was, I mean, very cinematic. - Yeah. - Or a Kai with his mafia thons. - Yeah. - Yeah. - So it's like a known thing that like when you're launching something that's, you want the audience to really take seriously, you should take it seriously. - Yeah, you're allowed to like put more high quality, like high production value. - It's good that there's like a culture on YouTube where it's like, sometimes this kind of movie is expected. - I want to actually ask you guys to look at this clip from the first few seconds of that joy Riot had with Ryan, or this is actually the second one. 'Cause Ryan hired you to make another one. And I think even though you guys are bringing cinema and film to YouTube, you're still respecting the rules and our expectations. And I just want you to talk about the opening scene 'cause it felt like one of Ryan's normal videos. But little did we know. - Hey guys, if you've been watching my videos, you probably know that a year ago, I launched Joyride, my candy. - The idea for this was, what would it look like if Ryan had to make an apology video? And it's like saying sorry, he's just in his bedroom. But then the camera swings around slowly and you realize you're in a movie. - He's held hostage. - He's held hostage. - And I think there's something so interesting about seeing your favorite YouTuber in danger. And then that's the perfect way to start a movie. Like, oh my gosh, get him out. - I want him out. I want him out. - I want him out. I want him out. - I want him out. - I want him out. - I want him out. - Yeah. - He's retiring. - Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Perfect. Yeah. I've had a bunch of different YouTube's and then Scott, like, it was a, so was that like you guys like thinking, okay, we want to make it cinematic, but we don't want to like, you know, do something that just kind of like breaks the rules of YouTuber. Like how do you guys think? I just thought that was a great way to turn the, you know, that far has come in. It would have been very jarring if we just started it cinematic. Yeah. And so even Ryan agreed like we need to make it feel like it's just another video. And then you get, like, we subvert the expectations and now they're on for the ride. They want to see like what this movie is because they were tricked. And I think when you, when you trick the audience like that, sometimes it can, sometimes it doesn't work when they don't like the, the result of what, how they were tricked. - You have to trick them with a better surprise. Like, this is a better video than what you clicked on. - And then they feel like they have so much trust in the director or the creator. Like, oh, they, they tricked me. Like, I'm, I'm all in. If they, if they, once step ahead of me, then I think this video is going to be amazing. I think that's what makes people lean in. - Like when you switch into cinematic mode, it kind of captures like what our channel's about, which is like YouTube and movies. And like that moment where we switch is like the funnest part for those videos. Because - really a fun with it. - Yeah. How else do you think about like blending those two worlds of like cinema and, and YouTube when you're making your own videos, when you're making these commercials for YouTubers, like tell me more about it. Because I think too many filmmakers swing way to the right. - Yeah. - You know, and then it's like, well, this is too high brow for what this platform is. - Yeah. - Context defines content. And so many YouTubers, like maybe too many retention kinds, it just feels too low breath. Like, you guys are in that sweet spot. How do you feel about it? - Yeah. One of the things we decided like when we started the channel together was like, we don't want to be an education channel. And we love education channels. - Wow, thanks guys. - We don't want to be a filmmaking. - A filmmaking. - A filmmaking. - Got it. - Education channel. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Filmmaking education channel specifically. - Like here's like five lenses you could try. - Yeah, we love watching that. And like we love the tech. We love kicking out on like cameras. But we, for what we wanted to do, we wanted to make movies. Is that the quickest way of getting there? Probably not. - Also, is it what we enjoy doing? Like the reason we want to make movies is to entertain. So we knew we needed to like make a channel that entertains. So that people are more excited about. Seeing our actual work. So it was all about how do we get them to excited to see our work? So then that they're not just excited to see how we did it. But actually watch what we love making. But then also the pool of audience for a filmmaking tutorial channel is much smaller than entertainment YouTubers. Because you have like a small niche within a niche that you're trying to reach or you could try and go as broad as possible. So that was the goal. Like, let's go as broad. There's something as a filmmaker that's just like, you know, it's there's tension because you don't. Yeah. You know, like a lot of filmmakers might like these kinds of thumbnails. Or even just like the intras of the BTS or like we're willing to play the game that YouTubers play that YouTubers have like perfected because we know it's going to lead people to watch our films. But we also don't find it as a compromise. Like we find we're trying to find the beauty and try and find like how can we actually entertain people and making a really interesting behind the scenes video that that might not be like the perfect filmmaker way to do it. But really capture some's attention because I think we try to balance that really well. On the other side of that is like, I think if you compare our YouTube videos, YouTube style videos to other YouTubers, I think BTS style videos. You'll see like they are more reminiscent. of movies and inspired by movies, like the first act is usually like some sort of high scene where we're collecting characters to help us get into the second act. And then the second act is us like making doing like creating the thing and then the final act is like this big finale. But there's a lot of times that we'll like try to get inspired from the media or like the medium of movies. Yeah, which is cool because like I think the best art or the best like the way that you can like get really inspired well and create something unique is when you're getting inspired from a medium outside of the medium. Yes, yeah, like movies like the coolest movies are like when they're inspired by a book. Yes, and then the coolest YouTube videos are when they're inspired by a movie or a book or like a comic book or something like that. And yeah, I think there's like that's what we try to do without videos is like be inspired by movies. I couldn't agree. I always like to think that like remixing across mediums and eras are always the most interesting. So like when I was interviewing Zach King, he's like, yeah, I got inspiration from Buster Keaton. And most people on YouTube or TikTok are in terms of don't know who that is. Yeah, but actually if you look at some of his videos side by side, he's elevating that art form from 100 years ago. So I think you guys are it's interesting that like you guys are finding inspiration in uncommon places. Yeah, I know that's a lot about long form. So I want to talk about how you guys make shorts because you made shorts with Mark Rober for years. So I want to ask you to break down one of Mark Rober's shorts that you guys made a lot of fun. This is one of my favorite shorts. This is a slinky and this is the world's first infinite slinky staircase. And I made it because as a kid, I was right there. So I think shorts, it's any YouTube video, but shorts especially it's great to start with something very simple, very recognizable. Everyone knows what a slinky is. So in like Mark Rober fashion, this is a slinky and then two seconds in, you're subverting their expectations and showing something that you haven't seen before that's unfamiliar. And now everyone's hooked because you're like, how did he make that thing? How did he turn something I know and love into something way cooler. It instantly went from relatable to completely unrelated in like two seconds. And this wasn't the first time we did it. We tried this on the jello short. It's like this is a pound of jello and this is 10,000 pounds of jello or something like that. I was the egg one was like, this is an egg, but this is an egg that was soaked in vinegar. American accents are coming through. But yes, but this one really banged because I think it's just such a simple captivating intro. And then engineering is a great medium for telling a story because you have something that you want to create and then you try to like overcome the obstacles to create that thing. So really the meat of these Mark Rober videos is Mark trying to overcome obstacles to create this magical amazing invention. And then we geeked out on how to like tell those stories. So it would be how do we find the cause and effect in his engineering like journey, which he does it really well like he was already doing this. He does this in his long form, but we just found it really fun to create these little stories out of the bills. So and if you can make it as relatable as possible where like it's a childhood memory that he's trying to like, you know, create like a full circle moment where he's like trying to yeah. So for example, for this, he's saying let's just keep watching it. And I made it because as a kid, I would always try and see how many stairs I could get my sleep you declined. So his goal is to see how many stairs his link he can climb down and that's his that was his goal since being a kid. So if he can create this thing, it's going to achieve a lifelong goal that probably a lot of kids can relate with. I see a parallel kind of like with your lifelong goal to make a movie. You know, now it's like in a short, but about. I mean, if you can make it as like meaningful as possible, people will relate way more. Like we on YouTube sometimes think I it's just like a fun random video, but like we like to try and find a meaning that everyone could connect to. Like in, I don't know, like really good music artist or like filmmakers, they'll find a universal connection first and then get into the story. Yeah, and that's exactly what we did. So we've we've gotten the crazy hook. We've got the crazy. We've got the relatable. Climb down with my record, sadly, always maxing out at seven or eight. I decided now that I'm an engineer. It was time to avenge this childhood frustration to set an unbeatable world record. That male tilted it just the right angle. The problem with that is there was very little repeatability because the landing services were inclined unlike actual stairs. So to solve that issue, I tried an actual escalator. And although that works. So basically the rest of this short is him trialing different methods until he gets it right and gets one step closer each time. And so he's adding different parts to this build until he nails it and you get to the final invention. So it's a really clear like story structure of him trying to crack the code on what this build is and how he can avenge his childhood frustrations. What's the creative process with Mark to make that short? Like are you guys scripting it? Are you guys doing a like a test shoot with you like in Mark's place as you go through it? Because like everything has to hit for a short to do this well. Like what is that process to get there and produce like one of these two of these every week? Yeah. Yeah. At first when we were still in Australia, we would shoot the whole thing with ourselves as stand-ins. And we'd send it to Mark and he'd give us notes or tell us what he thought. And then as when we moved to America, it became a lot easier. We were shooting with him. And so we would kind of have an ideation meeting together and he would kind of say I'd love to do a short about this. I'd love to do a short about this. Can you go write that? Yeah. So we would come up with the ideas together. And once he gets it into his list, when we're like, okay, we're shooting these ones this week, we just talk about like the intro really quickly. What's that angle here? And Mark will throw some ideas, we'll throw some ideas and then we'll pick like, okay, that's a good starting point. Then we go away, write the thing, come back, show Mark, he'll tweak it. And like by like, we really got close to like writing in his voice, which is always a tricky thing to like perfect, because as a creator it's like, that's the one thing that you have that is really hard to train. Right. Like teaching someone else to write in your voice is very difficult. And so we were trying to like, we really wanted to get it really close for him. So it made it as easy as possible for everyone to make these shorts. And so it was fun like sending Mark scripts and he'd be like, I wouldn't say like that, I'd say like this. Well sometimes the nailing it and he'd be super dry after a little bit. He was like really like happy with how we captured his voice. And he's like, you guys are doing this really well. So that was like a good moment where he started trusting us more. We were able to do more. And that's when they kind of just started taking off. Yeah. Were there any notes that Mark gave you guys on your videos, your drafts, your scripts that was memorable? I mean, because it's like, you guys in a room is like three YouTube geniuses that work. Like, was there anything that you learned from Mark when making this like very tactical that comes to mind? I mean, literally one of the first shorts we created with him was the modified bowling ball. And that was actually a trial short that we made as an audition as like out as an application. And it's like one of his best performing shorts today. And that was like a real moment for Mark to be like, well, these guys like nailed it first try. And we always talk to you like, how did that happen? But yeah, like he would give really good notes trying to think of some. In general, it was like little little things about how he would say something. Or we would try and take a stab at the like science explanations. And then he would tweak those because we have no clue about science. Because I asked because I think there's more up-and-coming creators that are going to be your positions working for the bigger guys before. You know, they grow themselves. And I think one of the hardest things, and I'll share my perspective, like hiring and growing our team to nine people now. It's like hard to find somebody who will learn my style. My voice, such that when I'm reviewing something of theirs, they've gotten closer to what I would have done. If I was like just pouring over that versus the other things that I'm not balancing. And you guys seem to have got it like that. So I'm wondering, like, were there other things that you did to try to like pick up on like what would make like a good Mark Rover short? Not being Mark Rover yourselves. I mean, we would watch all his videos just like every single one, just even in our spare time. Just to really immerse ourselves in how Mark speaks, what he, like how he tells a story. And I think that's one of the most valuable things to like be a creator. Like someone who genuinely knows how they, how they talk. Like he's vocabulary, how he likes to banter. Even the inflections and how he says a line. We would write things and highlight and bold, like how he would say emphasize a word. Like what? Like what's this one? This is like pull up. Yeah, maybe in the slinky one we'll find. Yeah, yeah, a moment. It's like in every video, there's like a funny inflection. And I made it because as a kid I would always try and see how many stairs I could get my slinky decline down. With my record sadly always maxing out at seven or eight, I decided now that I'm an engineer. It was time to avenge this childhood frustration to be set, to set an unbeatable world record. And it's like sometimes when we're writing it out, we have to say it in like a mockery back. change there yeah yeah but like it helps us like pitch it to mark on how it should be sounding like because he always like it's a very like natural thing for him the way he talks yeah but he's fine tuned it over the years and like if you look at his earlier videos he'll be like quite monotone and and it's very similar all throughout but now he like peaks he's like yeah like he's insane yeah yeah yeah like saying this is it yeah but then sometimes like and then I went to the do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do you sound crazy no it actually I think I think maybe the more specific it's like it's every creator has their own melody yes and we figured that out pretty quickly and then like I think from they could really trust us with helping write the scripts more yeah can we see one of the early maybe we'll put it before we literally have a before and after of one of our first shorts when it's us doing it oh my god this is a floating hot dog and I have nine more items that oh senator instead of a hot dog we're holding a banana wow this is a floating hot dog and I have nine more random items that probably shouldn't be suspended in midair this is a floating hot dog and I have nine more items that probably shouldn't be suspended in midair yeah it's cool to see the behind the scenes and like props to mark I mean it's like it takes a great manager not just a creator to be able to see that talent and grow and give you guys notes so you know you guys were part of a team that helped mark roger go from 25 to over 60 million subscribers pretty crazy I mean like it was a point every week he was just hitting a new 10 mil milestone and we're just like making these like 10 mil it was and it was through the shorts like like obviously there was a team with us mocks like you know genius strategies and stuff but to see how shorts help the subscriber count go up so quickly with a wild yeah yeah it's I mean yeah shorts obviously drive a ton of subscribers and the way you guys were like doing some the call to actions was really genius and again mark the whole team they deserve a world of credit for creating this environment I'm curious to go back into like your story like what were you guys thinking at this moment where like things are now flying high at the day job you know who are the mark and your youtube channel is crushing at this point you've done a few commercials for creators yeah right like joyride yeah um unspeakable Nick D Giovanni like you guys have done a few commercials now that business model of of sticks as a advertising agency I hate using that phrase but just to put it in terms um for other folks to understand that's taking off what's your decision making process at at that point in terms of do we continue with mark do you go all in on your channel like like that is a champagne problem yeah i mean mark was super gracious the whole time even letting us like you know try tockle both and he is the biggest fan of our channel and like loved every time we posted and seeing our videos um yeah they came a point where we were just like we can't do both of them forever and we wanted to like end on a high with mark and not like we wanted to keep the the product that we're producing for him really high and we started to see like our channels becoming more demanding um also it's just our dream like to chase our own channel we knew we wouldn't be working for someone else for too long yeah and mark would say like i'll have you as long as you guys will stay and then we just realized like 2025 we need to go all in on our channel we have like so many ideas such a dream we want to make movies the hard part is mark is this guy who's works for apple until he hit ten million so i'm gonna say like how do you tell the guy who's done that yeah like that we want to stop at less than a million yeah so what were those conversations what like did he like try to up the pay like create incentive i mean like if i were hiring you guys i would try to do everything i can to create a structure where you know we're all growing together yeah you had a good you had a good pay structure so like we were incentivized to stay in in a very good way like very generous of him to like give us that opportunity so we had to like deny that really good long term kind of like um benefit and say like because we believe in mark journals so much and crunch loves it's such a it's like skyrocketing so it was very hard to jump off that ship but we do know there are ways we can collaborate with him in the future and there's definitely some some stuff cooking up some stuff cooking up because there's like a world where we said note to that job offer initially when we applied to it the mark that marks initial job yeah and it should be a short thatters yeah and i think i'm like it's so yeah you really have to like swallow pride to take a job for someone else when you really want to do your own thing yeah and i'm glad we did because it's like there's definitely so many moments where we look back going i'm so it was so worth it to like work with him and the amount of stuff we learned and yeah it was like it was a great fun but like working for my career was still a dream so yeah it was easy to swallow Alfred but no but i mean everybody that that's the number one thing that i find when hiring people or creators are up and coming is that working for another creator or working a creative job and obviously like mark robert like that is like the pinnacle of what that looks like but any job where you could learn um kind of accelerates your dream when you go towards it versus delaying it because you're putting it on hold because you're just exposed to so many blind spots like people that have come on our team and like you know like they're now like working at other companies i still try to look after them or connect the dots and i think there's a lot of goodwill when you do a lot of good work yeah yeah clearly you guys have done that yeah thank you thanks okay so you you left your full-time jobs uh with mark robert and then tell me like how do things like pick up with mr. beast like for this movie like we didn't even talk about that yet like that that's the craziest chapter of like this big story so far like yes okay okay so take me through that and i have a lot of questions about where this movie for like mr. beast is that now because in the past few days weeks like things that like moved so fast yeah i'm excited to be talking to you guys at this inflection point but yeah when it things like start to pick up with Jimmy it's so poetic like the the week i think or like a couple weeks between us leaving mark um that's when we got the the m from Jimmy wait you guys honestly wow i keep saying you guys have like serious balls because you left your job before you heard from Jimmy yeah i thought it was all the way around no yeah we said we were saying we told him like i think in like october 2024 like hey starting in January 2025 we'll probably want to like do our own channel but yeah it was a symbol it was December 2024 Jimmy DMed us yeah and that just like completely shocked us because maybe in our videos it seems like we have a connection with Jimmy through like uh mark robert or something but we'd never spoken to him we'd never DM dim we didn't have his number i had never met him and he reached out to us and DMed all about Instagrams DMed us on Instagram just the all personal ones and then the sticks account and we were just like is this real or is this like one of those scam accounts it is amazing when Jimmy wants to get in touch with you and then you get on that call it's usually a facetime audio call yeah like i don't like yeah like it's it's amazing how uh like like high touch and like you know when when he wants to get in touch with somebody it happens yeah obviously yeah yeah um but but yeah where did it go from there so we were um we were actually on this shoot for this nick the Giovanni project yeah and it was the night we kind of arrived in Boston we got settled into Airbnb and then i checked my friend like is that real and i showed Lucas and we start filming just in case it's real and there was a message from mr. Beast and he just said howdy and we were like what like everything we'd been trying to do even before our youtube channel like his comes to this and not that a DM from him is everything but it just showed that we were trying to like we we started out with this goal of like making mr. Beast movie yeah and look how close we are right now look how look how we've we've jumped up the attention of like the world's biggest youtuber so that one DM meant a lot to us and and just the fact that we we never tried to DM him or like try and get to through to his team because we wanted it to be like something like mutual that he wanted to talk to us yeah so we were always just like you know let it happen if it happens um which was just a big surprise like getting that DM yeah yeah and to put that in further context the goal when you guys like made that video with Mark Robert and it was like Mark said i'll put you in touch with Jimmy when you hit five million subscribers yeah right yeah and you guys are at one i know and and he reached out yes exactly crazy yeah like we we had this channel goal we still have it but we have this channel goal of like getting a meeting with mr. Beast when we hit five mil and we got that meeting before we hit one mil yeah so just crazy i'll quickly that happened yeah and tell me about that meeting with mr. Beast yeah what are you guys talking about like yeah how does it go so we had that initial call with him a couple weeks after he tried after a couple weeks after he DMed us and we basically pitched him the idea on the phone and we we didn't know if he had heard about it yet or what he thought but his reaction was just like like huge green flags yeah like that whoa so like you're just like yelling into the phone and we were like oh this is actually like he sees it as a really good idea and that's just a compliment for like coming from someone as like smart as Jimmy like if he thinks there's a good idea then it is like yeah you know what I mean yeah um so then he invites us to his studio in Greenville yeah and so we we rock up and you see it in our video we're just like You know we're just here to hang out but we want to talk about the movie like we want to see. what his reaction to be if we talk a little deeper about what we are planning to do. And so he creates some time for us, gets us in a room in his studio. - And he was so generous with this time. We did not expect, we thought we'd have like 10 minutes with him and be super grateful, but we hung out the whole day. - That is the most amazing thing. When Jimmy's excited about how he gives it space and time and I've experienced it's like, it's amazing given how big he is. - Yeah, it was crazy. I mean, we watched like, he gave us this thing peak of all the beast games episodes. So like 3 a.m. or watching that is of course. - Yeah, so that's fun. - And how do you go into that? Like are you preparing with like pitch materials, a script, like like you guys are very thoughtful when you get your moments. Like what did you do in those, you know, meetings with Jimmy to kind of share the idea of your movie, the vision, like to kind of move the conversation. - Yeah, I mean, luckily we'd been thinking about it for the past like three or four years already. We had this pitch deck planned before we started this channel, before the channel took off. But we kind of made the decision like in the hotel the night before like, I mean, we don't have to show him this pitch deck. Like our channel is the pitch deck. Our goal, our drive like all the videos we've made is all he needs to know if like we can do this or not. And there's also an element of like, do we need to like prove this to Jimmy or are we still gonna do it without his like, you know, without his yes. So that's always like an interesting element to all this. It's like we're making a movie about a real person and we definitely want their blessing. But not necessarily like, want to make it with Jimmy. So there's just the tricky, there's a, there's an interesting element. That's very real that we need to like still figure out. - We knew it was more about building trust and like sharing our concept for this thing. And then if he's cool that he's gonna just let us run with him, which was what happened. He was just like, oh, this sounds great. Like, let me know how you go. - Yeah. - And that was the perfect kind of like balance of, yeah. - But also he was like, very interested in like partnering on it. - Yeah. - So it's still in the works. We don't know how it's gonna end up. - It's true. - But it's exciting either way. - Yeah. - I mean, there's a lot of people who would hate for us to partner with him. There's a lot of people who would love for us to partner with him. - But that's all irrelevant. It's more like, we just want to tell the story. We want to tell. And whatever lets us get to that is gonna be the avenue. - Yeah. How do you walk that line to make a movie about Mr. Beast, not for Mr. Beast? Where you guys are telling Mr. Beast full story. Like the full truth, like everything that's happened. Like how do you go about doing that? And maintaining like the, yeah, like all the stuff and like has happened. - Yeah. - Like the way we're thinking about it has storytellers is we want to look at the truth and the accurate kind of like telling of his story and then find something in it that we want to tell. And that's what's guiding us. So we're not too worried about, you know, the public's perception or like what he would like to be put in it or stuff like that. We're just wanting to write what is in our hearts to write. Now when you're also like, we're building a connection friendship with Jimmy, we want to honor that. We, you know, we definitely see that as like something to value. - And we also, oh, it's the audience not to like side like side with one way too much. So it's actually like, that's probably been the hardest part of like walking that line of we're trying to document our journey on YouTube and document our journey to making this movie as raw and as authentic as possible to our audience. But then also have like real stakes with like this, you know, we have a friendship with Jimmy and like we want to make sure that we're keeping that trust. - Yeah, but yeah, we also, when it comes to like, just being an unbiased like trusted story here, we don't want it to feel like a Jimmy puff piece. So like we don't want to feel like it's a beast production movie. - Yeah, 100%. - It's not. But there are, there are ways to work with Jimmy and the team to make this the best story that we want to tell. - Accuracy and, you know, hearing parts of his story that aren't on the internet. - Yeah, going deeper. - There's an incentive for everyone to work together on it. - I mean, I feel that on a personal level because anytime we do our behind the scenes to Jimmy, we try to do the same thing. Like how do we share the full story? And then I was telling you guys like, we just wrapped this 45 day shoot with Jimmy to give his docuseries about his life and making of beast games and they let us everywhere. - Wow. - You know, and we had like, you know, six to seven like camera ops like on the ground, like for the 45 day and just like capturing everything. 'Cause like, you know, Jimmy's team like really just wanted to share like how things like happened with the show and how things get done. And, and I'm just excited to see like what you guys find and what you focus on. - Yeah. And, and we've noticed that he's been very vulnerable. - Yeah, like you can ask anything, you can, you know, just find out what you wanna know about my story. It hasn't been any like barriers. So that's a good sign. - Yeah. - No, it's a beautiful thing and I just can't wait to see what you guys, you know, put out. Is the movie gonna cost $20 million? (laughing) - I mean, we put that in the title 'cause it looked good. - Yeah, but yeah, that's within the range of like, what this could be, we need to like create a real like budget for it. So we don't wanna say yes or no. - I mean, the good thing is we've learned how to create something really awesome with just like a few dollars. And so, yeah, I think the more money we can work with, the better we can make it. I think we have this feeling that it's just gonna smash. - Yeah. - But, there's the only time we'll tell, really? - I think it will. I mean, the like, also the way it's being framed, like the social network, but for Mr. B. It's like, how are you funding it? Like, trying to get that $20 million. Are you trying to go down the studio route? Like, are you trying to self-fund, like crowdfund? Like, what are you guys doing to make that movie happen? Is Jimmy helping? Is that off limits? Like, like, taking it through like the business of making a movie that big? - So, the good side of this is we feel like we have more options than we need, which is crazy to say. Like, we've had studios reach out and had good conversations. - Already, already. - Wow. - Like, are we talking about the big studios? - Yeah, like, I would say them, but like, some of the big studios that make the big movies that we all watch, like reaching out to our favorite movies. - Like, one of them, one of them accidentally emailed like my childhood email, like a massive movie studio, sent an email to like, my personal like, email, like, creative, like, hey. - If he didn't check it, we wouldn't have, like, had this game. - I checked the spam folder and it was there for some reason. - Like football fan, like, 95, like, get it, yeah. - It's like my hot mail, and so lucky I checked it. But, yeah, I mean, there's like-- - What did the email say? - They saw your YouTube video, like, what was that point of, 'cause to cross that barrier into a studio-execent inbox or awareness, takes another thing, especially for YouTuber. Like, what was that email? - Yeah, it was something about like, we've seen your YouTube channel and like, we love what you're doing and your YouTube video is a crazy, we love the idea of like, the space movie, like, let's talk about and see how we can make it happen. And, like, that's crazy, like, what's it saying? - And so, we're trying to digest that, but also not move too far, so we make the wrong decision. So, which, we're still in this place of trying to work out how we want to fund it. - Because what we can say is like, we want full creative control. We want to make sure that we're distributing in the way that we like. And we also, yeah, we also don't want to be too tied down, 'cause when you up the budgets, there's strings attached. So, we're really like learning and trying to figure out the best way to make this particular movie. - Yeah, yeah. - And it's our first time doing it, so yeah. I mean, that's the hard part, like, we've made these trailers before and we feel like we're getting great at that, but like, making a feature film is obviously a different beast. - I didn't mean to say like that, but. - Yeah, yeah. What do you guys are learning so far? - I can't wait to hear more about the genre. I know we're still in the first inning of it, but making a movie, there's so many legacy things that go into it, like, the way you hire, the way you, are there anything else that you're learning right now as you're trying to put this movie together? Wait, is it happening? Like, is it in pre-production right now? - We've been working on the script. - Okay, so you guys are working on the script. - In the early stages, but we had a ride as a treat, where we like hired like an Airbnb for a week and just, like, locked in on the script. - And we just got so excited with like, what, we've got had a really productive week. - Like, that's our favorite part. Like, the story is just what we obsess over. - Yeah, so now that like, we're so excited about the story. Like, it's more clear to us. - Yeah. - It's about to get really fast, like the, we're gonna roll into like, figuring out how we wanna do it, how we wanna fund it, and when we wanna shoot it, stuff like that. - I'm so excited for you guys, 'cause I feel like you're putting YouTubers on your back and just, you know, showing where this could go. - Yeah. - And the hard part is like having a channel at the same time. Like, we don't wanna forsake the channel. - Yeah, well, audience that we've built, so it's like, that's the thing that we're learning is like, how do we tackle such a big project while maintaining the consistency? - Take me through that, 'cause I think there's a lot of things about Hollywood that you apply to YouTube videos that I think you're almost making this new blueprint. Like, you guys have reinvented like, how to succeed on YouTube and how to improve your retention. - What are some of those principles that you guys use in your videos that you think any YouTuber watching starting out can learn from to improve their craft? - Yeah, for sure. - One really cool thing that we've taken from movies is the idea of cause and effect, which means nothing happens in your video unless it's been caused by something else. And that's just like the story structure of a script. So the first thing you start with a movie is a character with a goal and a conflict. And then their first act is met with conflict and then they have to figure out a way around that conflict. So that creates this thing called cause and effect, which is instead of just a list of things that this character did that could be rearranged in any order. It creates this chain of events that can't happen in any other order. - Maybe break down the Ryan Trayhan, like you surprised him with a movie video. Like how does that kind of take some of these principles from Hollywood, but make it, you know, YouTubey? - Yeah, so we like to use this little tool of the wording button therefore within your story, adding those words in as you tell your story helps you create that cause and effect. - Yeah, but like being like, okay, there's a tension point, like an obstacle. - Therefore is how you overcome that obstacle? - Or cause and effect. - Yeah, like you guys have talked about. - So we could tell you some of these story beats and how button therefore. - Yeah, I'm curious, take me through those and I'm also curious like after that, like are there stuff you cut out because it was like an and then or something? Like it wasn't, it didn't fit with that. - Yeah, great question. - So take me through the butt there for the start of the Ryan Trayhan video. So we wanted to surprise Ryan with a movie, so we flew to America. - That was our goal. - That was our goal. - Yep. - But when we arrived, we didn't have any connections. - Yeah, therefore we went to create a now to see if we can make a connection. - But no one there could help us. Therefore we stayed as long as we could to make sure we could find someone and then Zach showed up. - But he said you have to make a video if you want me to get, if you want me to connect you with Ryan. - Therefore next scene, we're making a video to get connected. - And then it just continues like this. - Yeah, it's like and then you're keeping our attention. - The idea is this could be the best retention technique without feeling like, without feeling like one. And it feels more like a movie. - Yeah. - Because that's what movies focus on. They focus on the moment the scene you're in right now. - Yeah. - If the tension is real and the conflict is like real enough, you don't want to click off. Like you're in the moment in the movie. - So what are those things that you cut? Like because you know, editing and BTS, like it's always a trend down version of reality to keep people's attention. What did you guys cut? Because it didn't feel like a fit in that, but slash therefore framework. The whole BTS shoot got cut down into a certain way. So when we start shooting, there's so many things going on. There's little obstacles and there's little wins. But we cut out so much of that if it doesn't serve the story. So there was this whole thing where we were trying to find a trumpet prop for the Ryan Trayhan movie. And we didn't have one. We were trying to look on Facebook marketplace and our friend had to drive all around Texas pretty much to find something. And we thought that was like pretty good tension. - Oh, I filmed some of it. - Important, you know, important prop for the movie. When we get into the edit, we realized that didn't clearly help move the story forward. So because the way we edit our montages is we decided to go based off the movies, the script and not our BTS day by day. Some moments are and then moments. And they don't clearly have a obstacle connected to the previous action that is worth connecting it to this chain of events. So there's oftentimes we're cutting out sections of like what we had for lunch that day. Or the plane was a little delayed and we got on it in the end. It's just like not worth adding to the story. If there are moments like we found while editing this, if there are moments that are just us having fun and we want to add it to like connect with the audience, we'll put it right after a butt and not after a therefore. Because when there's a butt, there's a question. It's like, how are they gonna overcome this obstacle? Now you have the curiosity leap of how are they gonna solve that? So that's a good time to like see us, you know, get Chick-fil-A or like, that's a good time to see us like shop around for some props and things like that. - But if we did it after a solution and then we went and wasted the audience time by showing us vlogging. - They click off. - You click off. - Oh, fascinating. 'Cause yeah, you rather do it after the butt where there's tension. - Yes. - And I've seen you guys do it, you like cut the music out. You know, you did like a bit of levity and then get back into it. - Yeah, that's right. - That's really like any other like things in your toolkit that you guys use to mix cinematic and YouTube. - Yeah, I mean, should I tell everyone's heard of that, but I think it can be like underrated still. Like I think the way we cut each scene, the goal for us is to make it feel like how it felt in real life for us. - Like when we're editing this video, for example, the Ryan Train one, we kind of put all the footage in the timeline and just whenever those are editing decisions or a music decision or a sound effect decision, it was always guided by how it felt in that moment to feel those feelings. - And we wanted to like go to a resort to VO last because it's like just telling you the emotion is the least, is the worst way to make you feel something. - Wait, say that again. - 'Cause a lot of YouTubers use voiceover. - So we try and consider voiceover as a last resort. - So we'll edit, we'll put all the footage in the timeline, put music in, edit sections, make them shorter. But before we add in a line about the context of what we're doing this part, we'll try and see if it's, it can be told through the editing, if it can be told through the music, if it can be told through the sound effects. And then at last resort, we'll add a line if we need to really explain what happened in that scene or a way to like transition into the next scene. - Or how we're feeling. - Yeah, but sometimes a cut can do that. - We were so excited after getting a text message from Ryan that we were like on cloud nine, ready to shoot this thing, nothing could get us down. - And the next morning out, one of our key actors pulled out 'cause he was sick. - On the day of the shoot. - And instead of us like riding a VO line to like make you feel that, the cut makes you feel like. - Now we just have to make the best thing trailer that we've made in our lives. (upbeat music) - The college stuff actor just pulled out. He said I tested positive for COVID this morning not feeling well. I was like the maturity of the shoot today. - You see us like really excited and then cut all of a sudden? - Our faces are so depressed and I deliver a line on camera saying, how many acts it just pulled out. Like that is way better than saying. - But you wouldn't believe what happened the next day. - Like that's just more efficient just to make you feel the emotions rather than having to tell you the emotions. - What other examples are things you guys do? 'Cause I think too many YouTubers rely on voiceover. Like what other things have you guys done or examples like that? - I mean in the films, in the trailers, there's like a very good use of like shirt it tell. Especially in this Emma Chamberlain one, we tried to really lean into that in the second half, especially where I was just like, it was mainly just beautiful shots and it wasn't much dialogue. - And the aspect ratio, I remember from that, made me feel like, I think it was four by three, it made me feel like nostalgic. From memories I didn't even have. - Exactly, and I think like as filmmakers this, you're very aware of the filmmaking tools and techniques that you can use to make people feel something. And if you carry that into YouTube, I mean it's just like, it's just so OP. - It's underrated on YouTube. Like not many people are using filmmaking techniques. Like an aspect ratio, like the color grade, the sound effects, I think they're really key. Even just like composition. Like if you're framing your shots in a way that says something to avoid just telling the audience in voiceover, teach me something about that. - Okay, about framing, how does framing and emotion work together? - So like one framing thing that we do is we've hired out an entire cinema for one person and you could frame them like a close up 'cause they're the only thing in the frame, right? But we try and start each thing super wide to make you feel like this is very important. We did this whole thing for one person. - There should be a room full of people here, but we're doing this just for the one person. - Yeah, and you only get that when you see the wide shot. So little things like that. - It also hints at the scale of what we're trying to do. Like this is a big grand video rather than starting tight and not seeing the scale, you know? - What about music or sound design? I feel you guys are very deliberate about that too. - Yeah, I mean, at the end of most of our videos, we like to create like a little montage recap of all the feelings you felt in that video just before you get the climax answer of like the proposition, for example. - 'Cause it kind of brings the whole context of the journey squished into like a 30 second thing that you feel all again right before you get the final answer. - You close every loop. And I think the way to make it sonically, yes. - Yes, so we'll put your name in the credits of the Mr. Beast movie in return for something. - Would you be willing to get us a meeting with Mr. Beast? [MUSIC] I would be very genuine if you only believe in both. >> It's ending in three, two. >> We smashed it. >> Anyone? >> Good job. [MUSIC] >> I'm called in places that shouldn't be called. >> Okay, stop. >> All right, we did it. >> We did it. >> So there's two of us who will be able to shake our hands like this. [MUSIC] >> Okay, okay. >> [LAUGH] >> An idea we had was like, how do we make this event feel dreamy and nostalgic? And I can feel like the 30 minute video they watched was something that they- >> Blower that they just like relived. >> Yeah, so we thought adding music that kind of swells and builds up obviously. But then, and then some sound effects in like sound bites throughout the movie. But then the video, but then the secret source of those moments is like. Extending the audio clips further than the actual film clips and kind of meshing all the audio together. So when you're watching it, you're not really seeing like harsh cuts or harsh sound cuts. You're feeling like this weird memory feeling of like. >> Overlapping and you can't quite pick out what is being said, but you get the feeling. And it's, it's L cuts and J cuts. >> Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's just a bunch of really extended L cuts and J cuts. >> Yeah. >> With long fades and like, I mean, we position them so perfectly that you can still hear what's being said. But in a way that you can't really tell when a clip ends or starts. It all just feels like this blur, which is how we get that dreamy effect at the end of the video. >> It's magical, it's so cool. What else, like what other little tricks and tips do you guys use to make your videos as good as they are? >> Honestly, it's not about camera movement. So I think sometimes the culture on YouTube is like to film everything the same way. Like at least what I've seen. And I think we try to film things a little different when it comes to camera movement. So like one time on the Ryan Trayhand shoot, there was a shot we were trying to get with Ryan running track. And well, the double ganger. And we were shooting it in a way where the camera was still. So our BTS camera was still as well. And we were like small in the frame. And then it was like this very underwhelming shot of him walking past. And Kurt and I were like, this isn't working. And then we hard cut to like all of us in full sprint. The camera guy, the BTS camera and the actor. And this shaky camera just like made you feel like, well, they really made this shot way more epic. So that's just like context for us. But if you film things more to what they feel like in the moment. Sometimes you should put on a tripod. Sometimes you should go handheld. Sometimes you should try it like a push in. And there's more things you can do with camera movement to like say something in the edit. Yeah, give yourself more to play with. I think that's one. Yeah, or even challenging the more common way of filming something and doing it in a different way. Can also like give it some spice. Like what? I mean, like there's a shot in the, one of our favorite shots in one of our trailers is in the Emma Chamberlain video where she's talking on the phone by the bathtub. And she's talking about how she, she hates that she's always filming herself. And it seems like this really beautiful intimate moment she's having with her dad until you pan the camera a bit and you see she's even filming this conversation. And like there's just different ways you can like get creative with the camera movement that reveals something or like paints the story in a completely different light. And I think that that is a great example of like when we've used camera movement really well. There's just such good practical tips. I think any YouTuber can learn from it's cool to see you guys break it down. Yeah, we're building a team and like learning from Mark about how he's building it. He built a team with his voice and that's what we're doing right now. Yeah. So that we can make a movie. Tell me more about how you guys building a sticks team. So how are you doing it? We are like growing our editing team is the first play because that takes us the most amount of time. If we have more editors that kind of hit our standard and get our vision and kind of capture our voice, then we can make more videos. Then the other part of that is writing the scripts and like training people to write similar to us like doing more of a writer's room so that saves us some time. So there's elements like that plus like getting more producing help so that people there's other people in our team deciding when to make the videos and getting them done on time. So that our head space is kind of like opened up to think about making a feature film. So that's really the key high as we're trying to make is like editors, writers and producers. How big of a team now? We have about one, two, like they're all contractors but around up to 10, nearly 10 people, just crazy. Yeah. I mean on a on a film set it'll be more than that. Of course. Yeah. We've found like some some really cool guys are continuing to work with and it's so cool and rewarding to like find that team and when it really clicks, it's so awesome. Yeah. And what's the business of sticks now because I mean you guys have this amazing, I hate the word flywheel because it's overused but you really do. It's like you make the trailer and you make the commercial like, you know, I'm about to co-found a company actually with Zach. Oh. We're starting a accounting company. It's called boring stuff. We handle all the boring stuff for creators, accounting, bookkeeping, if we were to go to you guys and try to hire sticks to make it commercial for us, like what's the range? I'm sure you have different pack of but what's the range like how much that cost right now? Should we say the range? Are we talking about, are we in six figures yet? Yeah. Six figures. Yeah. It's crazy. For a commercial. Yeah. And then you have like is your BTS a part of that because that's another decision? It can be. Yeah. So our brand deal was his course that we're promoting so it's like to advertising to a whole new audience. Yeah. They wanted that as an addition to like sponsor our BTS as well. That's amazing. Yeah. So you guys have the commercials that you're making for creators. You have the sponsored slots within the BTS, just like other YouTubers. Yeah. And that could be like the product that you're making a product for can double dip. Yeah. Yeah. You know, in a good way. Obviously you have the ad sense. Yeah. You have merch on sticks. Um, and, uh, is there anything else like that you guys are thinking about it to add to the business? Yeah. And I also know you guys are like, there's so many things in your world right now. You guys also just shot a festival's ad. Yeah. Like, how is that? I mean, that also has to be like high pressure because you're going out to shoot a festival's ad. I mean, tell me the story. But Jimmy is who you're casting. Yeah. That's right. And then it's like, it's, it's, it, did it feel like a tryout for the movie or like your relationship? They're like, like tell, tell me about that in a sense, like, I don't think Jimmy sees it like that. Yeah. But there's no way to get around it like making a movie for Jimmy at this stage before we want to make a feature film about Jimmy. Yeah. It's going to affect like what, like our dream. Yeah. Yeah. So like, and what do you think of you guys? You know, it's like building trust. It's building trust. Like, if, if it was a complete flop, like, no one would trust us to make the misdemeanor movie. Yeah. What, what did, um, Jimmy and the festival's team ask you to me, like, how did that come about? What are you guys there in Greenville talking about the movie? And they're like, by the way, you should make a ad for festivals, a commercial, like how do these two things coincide? We had that conversation, that meeting with Jimmy in person. Yeah. And then a couple months later, we posted our second joy ride ad. Yeah. And then he saw that. And he DMed us straight away saying, I want one for festivals. Pretty please. You can show the DM on screen. Yeah. And then we were like, totally. That's crazy. Like, that's, I mean, it doesn't get much better than that in terms of like, you know, in terms of like, YouTube, like, YouTube and marketing. Yeah. If we're doing this from each of, like, YouTube or products, then festivals is one of the top. Yeah. And then it just took like a lot of, like, you know, chatting with the team and like, trying to, um, we pitched a story that we really, really liked. Yeah. Yeah. You guys show me the storyboards. Yeah. It looks amazing. Yeah. And they were awesome enough to, like, you know, trust us, like, create it. It's definitely like a, like, it can feel like a swing in the dock for a brand to, like, just, like, filmmakers with telling such a mysterious, grungy story. But like, the festivals ad is like exactly the kind of short films and movies that we'd love to make. It's just like, there's really, you know, mysterious, almost thriller vibes. Um, you talk about the content because this will come out after. Okay. Yeah. That's that work. It just tells about the concept of the festivals. Yeah. And what's the product? Is it? So the product, they told us that they were releasing a chocolate milk. Yeah. A brand new, like, festival's product is where the first to know about this. This is crazy. And so we started, like, ideating. We also knew that they have, like, this mission to end child labor and chocolate, which we really resonated with us. And we were kind of thinking of, like, how can we make this chocolate milk the hero of the story? And like, and we wanted to have a metaphor for what they're doing to end child labor within the story. And it's something we learned from, like, working with Ryan was like, it always works when the product is implemented into the plot of the movie and it kind of saves the day. And so we tried that again with, like, when we're coming up with this story and we kind of came up with, um, you know, Jimmy is in front of this $1 billion chocolate factory. He's been invited to be in a tour. He enters the factory and it's a scam. He gets trapped in there. He falls down a trap door and he realizes that this underground chocolate factory actually has like brainwashed their workers, taken away their childhood memories and he's. Got nowhere out and and the goal for him is to you know, free these workers and The way we kind of wrote into the story is that the chocolate milk Kind of is the thing that does it because the cool thing is like the feastables team was saying they loved the idea of chocolate milk being attached to the nostalgia Yeah, like yeah, as a kid. Everyone remembers like downing a chocolate milk And so we thought like if that moment of drinking the chocolate milk Kind of like brings back the nostalgia brings back the childhood memories Awakening like wakes you up from the sleep Then it becomes the hero of the movie and then you have this beautiful metaphor of like what Jimmy really wants to do in the real world Like you know freeing these children and giving them their memories back their childhood memories And it just by by paying the workers more so that the children don't have to work Mm-hmm. Yeah, and and that yeah, I mean that story just like yeah, we're super proud of how it turned out Yeah, I mean I can't wait to see that I can't believe how quickly you guys are turning around like how many days you chewed it We shot it over four days four days biggest production yet you guys have it felt like it was like a taste of like what a movie set Would feel like just the amount of moving parts and and builds that the beast That was and building props was crazy. Yeah, and then yeah, it was crazy Yeah, I'm excited. We're gonna do a breakdown of it and you know a day. I'm really excited about I think I'm gonna put a few predictions out there. I think you guys will be remembered as the Spielbergs of YouTube Oh, I really do I think you guys are the Spielbergs of YouTube. Wow. I think that you guys are gonna go on to do a ton of movies I think that not only creator brands are gonna come to you, but big legacy brands. I'm gonna come to you I think you guys are gonna have a lot of kids. I know I don't know how you're balancing of being a new dad Like I do that myself like and you guys like yeah, your family's must be so proud your wives are also the real Mbps I know I haven't talked about them enough, but yeah, you know, I know how important that support system is especially you guys you're traveling Yes early days from Australia to yeah, California. That is not easy and and I I'm just rooting for you guys so hard. Thank you so hard like I can't wait to see what you guys do and just Yeah, you guys just Chinese now I appreciate you guys taking the time and talking about this a lot of stuff for the first time We appreciate this is so fun. It's been so awesome.