I've been going to the Just for Laughs Comedy Conference the past few days. I dropped in on an interesting little panel discussion called "Are YouTube Celebs The Future of Comedy?" They had EpicLLOYD of "Epic Rap Battles of History," which my stepson adores; Grace Helbig of Daily Grace; Shane Dawson, and the head of programming for YouTube, Ben Relles.
It immediately struck me how young some of these cats are. Shane Dawson is 24; he got picked up as a YouTube partner at 18. Grace Helbig is 27. If I wrote my notes down correctly, he had been making videos for a while before that. Wikipedia says "Dawson's career began when he and several friends would turn in videos instead of homework in high school. Dawson's first videos on YouTube were old assignments that he turned in during high school."
The point here is that there is a whole generation of kids coming up for whom video making is as natural as writing. Steven Spielberg made a lot of 8mm movies when he was a kid, but that was pretty rare. 8mm was a horrible pain in the ass to edit (the film is literally 8mm wide), and building a soundtrack is -- well, I don't even know how you would do that. These days everyone is making videos. My stepson had a couple of high school assignments where he was required to make a video. Because obviously everyone has a video camera and an editing program on their computer.
The old barriers to entry for video have dropped off the map. Anyone can shoot video on your phone, edit on your computer and throw it up on YouTube.
The new barrier to entry is just that YouTubers apparently upload as much content every 72 hours as has appeared on all the networks, ever. But it's hard to imagine a more merit-based world. Every video has a chance to go viral.
One takeaway I have is that if you are just starting out, you must get out there with your camera and shoot a bunch of videos. I think more and more, people are going to get hired based on what they shot rather than what they wrote. I am not a fan of the auteur theory. (I don't actually know any professional writers who are.) I think the collaboration between producer, director and writer can take a creation far beyond what any one of them could create. But this is what is happening now.
I was struck by a conversation I had last night with a sound designer friend of mine. We were talking about the Quebec student protests, and their failure to communicate what they want. There are a few videos of marches, and lots of videos of cops misbehaving. But where is the equivalent of the hilarious Culture in Peril spot from the last election. Where are the clever, viral spots that will convince people who don't already agree with them that education should be free?
I struggle a bit with this model. I'm used to a bigger production. We made my own viral teen vampire sex comedy, YOU ARE SO UNDEAD, with a $20,000 budget and a RED camera; my amazing producers at Cirrus, Anton Cozzolino and Melissa Pietracupa, probably brought in another $80,000 in favors. We had three days of color correct for the effect where Mary Margaret drains Jo of blood and she turns pale. I probably wouldn't consider shooting something without union actors unless I was drunk.
But that means I'm making one short a year, and fighting to put together a feature, and these guys are making one a week.
I don't know if YouTube celebs are the future of comedy. They are certainly a growing part of the present of comedy. They will tend to squeeze out some of the long-form higher-budget comedies, but probably only the really crappy ones. There will always, I think, be room for another BRIDESMAIDS. There are just too many stories that demand extras and things that go "boom."
But there's a lot of room for viral videos. Maybe some of them will be yours!
UPDATE: Incidentally, YouTube has a lot of information on how to make a good video.
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