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

42:14And I think a lot of people don't realize. It is very hard to sell chocolate, to sell candy, to sell products as good as they may be. But I think what you guys are doing is you're putting out media and then you're like, hey, you could hire us to make more of this. Because for this format, the We Surprise format, we're making the BTS in the trailer and basically just profiting from a brand deal on the BTS or the AdSense. Right. 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.

42:53Yeah. Once everyone saw Ryan's Joyride, then the opportunities just opened up. People were messaging us quite a bit. Wow. And Ryan's so smart for just innovating like that. Yeah. I love how he's thinking about always trying something new on the platform and 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 post a video, it'll lead to the next one. Yeah. So that's really cool. What were some of the DMs like people like came to you with after Ryan's Joyride commercial slash movie came out?

43:32It's like a bunch of YouTubers wanting like something similar for like products. It's like it's a great timing as well because so many YouTubers are launching products. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, oh, this is like the perfect storm. We just got the brunt of it of like, oh, we're doing something similar. Yeah. Yeah. And like, 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 didn't know how long it takes to make one. So we had to be very selective. And it reminds me of that quote, like, remember during the gold rush, it's like, who made the most money?

44:01It was not the people rushing to find the gold. It was the people selling the axes. Oh, yeah. I mean, you guys are selling the axes. 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. Who knows how many of them will be successful, but they all need commercials and promotion. Yeah, and it's a new way to get the audience's attention when launching a product. It's so cool to drop a really high-effort commercial. You see streamers doing it when they're announcing their subathons. Speed's America tour. That was such a cool video.

44:35Yeah, his trailer for that was very cinematic. or Kai with his Mafia-thons yeah so it's like a known thing that when you're launching something that you want the audience to really take seriously you should take it seriously you're allowed to put more high quality high production value it's good that there's 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 ad with Ryan or this is actually the second one because 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.

45:13And I just want you to talk about the opening scene because 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 like seeing your favorite youtuber in danger yeah and then like that's the perfect way to start a movie like oh my gosh like get him out i want him out i want like help you have an instant connection to this story like okay our favorite youtuber is in trouble immediate attention yeah yeah yeah and the previous one you did with ryan the first joyride commercial it started out as like a selfie video he's quitting he's quitting when when every youtuber was like retiring yeah exactly yeah it's perfect and a bunch of different youtubers yeah tom scott like it was a trend 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 i just thought that was a great way to turn the the you know So black bars come in.

46:31It would have been very jarring if we just started at cinematic. Yeah. And so even Ryan agreed, like, we need to make it feel like it's just another video. And then 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 trick the audience like that, sometimes it doesn't work when they don't like the result of 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.

47:03Like, oh, they tricked me. Like, I'm all in. If they are one 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 is about, which is, like, YouTube and movies. Yeah. And, like, that moment where we switch is, like, the funnest part for those videos. Because you can really have 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 and 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 highbrow yeah for what this platform is you know context defines content yeah and so many youtubers like maybe too many retention kinds it just feels too low like you You guys are in that sweet spot.

47:52How do you do that? 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 education channel. 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 geeking out on, like, cameras. But 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.

48:24So we knew we needed to like make a channel that entertains. Yep. So that people are more excited about seeing our actual work. So it was all about how do we get them excited to see our work? So then 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 yeah 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 hot there's tension because you don't yeah you know A lot of filmmakers might not like these kinds of thumbnails.

49:12Or even just the intros of the BTS. We're willing to play the game that YouTubers play, that YouTubers have perfected because we know it's going to lead people to watch our films. But we also don't find it as a compromise. We're trying to find the beauty in it and how can we actually entertain people and make a really interesting behind-the-scenes video that might not be like the perfect filmmaker-y way to do it, but really capture someone's attention. Because I think we try to balance that really well. Yeah, on the other side of that is like, I think if you compare our YouTube videos, our YouTube-style videos to other YouTubers, your BTS-style videos, our BTSs, you'll see like they are more reminiscent of movies and inspired by movies.

50:02like the first act is usually like some sort of heist 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 yes and then the coolest youtube videos are when they're inspired by a movie or a book yeah or like a comic book or something like that and yeah i think there's like that's what we try to do with our videos is like be inspired by movies i couldn't agree i always like to think that um 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 or instagram 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 yeah um so i think you guys are it's interesting that you guys are finding inspiration in uncommon places.

51:26I 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. That's so 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 would always... 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 Grober 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 yeah how did he turn something I know and love into something way cooler.

52:18It instantly went from relatable to completely unrelatable in like two seconds. Yeah, and this wasn't the first time we did it. We tried this on the Jell-O short. It was like, this is a pound of Jell-O and this is 10 ,000 pounds of Jell-O or something like that. Oh, the egg one? I was like, this is an egg. But this is an egg that was soaked in vinegar. American accents are coming through. 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're trying to like overcome the obstacles to create that thing so really the the meat of these mark rober videos is mark trying to overcome obstacles to create this magical amazing um invention yeah and so 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 a 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 build so and if you can make it as relatable as possible where like it's a childhood memory that he's trying to like um you know create like a full circle moment with or he's like trying to yeah so for example for this yeah he's saying let's Let's just keep watching it.

53:41And I made it because as a kid, I would always try and see how many stairs I could get my Slinky to climb down. With my record, sadly. So his goal is to see how many stairs his Slinky can climb down. And 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 about Mickey Mouse. Now it's in a short, but about Mark. I mean, if you can make it as meaningful as possible, people relate way more yeah i think like we on youtube sometimes think oh 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 artists or like filmmakers they'll find a universal connection first and then get into the story yeah 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 yeah Why?

54:40Climb 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. I love the revenge story. The first thought I had was using a treadmill tilted at just the right angle. The problem with that is there was very little repeatability because the landing surfaces were inclined, unlike actual stairs. So to solve that issue, I tried an actual escalator. And although that worked... So basically the rest of this short is him trialing different methods until he gets it right. And he gets one step closer each time.

55:06and 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 yeah um like what what is that process to get there um and produce like one of these two of these every week like yeah yeah at 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 he'd give us notes or tell us what he thought and then as we when we moved to america it became a lot easier we were shooting with him and so we would kind of have a ideation meeting together and he would kind of say i'd love to do a short about this or i'd love to do a short about this can you go write that yeah so we would come up with the ideas together yeah 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 quick like what like 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 like 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 yeah 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 or sometimes nailing it and he'd be super impressed after a little bit he would he was like really like happy with how we captured his voice and 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 at work like was there anything that you learned from mark when making this like very 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 as an audition as like our um as an application and it's like one of his best performing shorts today and and that was like a real moment for mark to be like whoa these guys like nailed it first try and we were shocked too like how did that how did that happen but yeah like he would give really good notes trying to think of some um in general it was like little little things about how he would say something yeah 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 ask because i think there's more up and coming creators that are going to be in your positions working for the bigger guys before you know they they grow themselves and i and i think one of the hardest things and like 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 are the other things that are 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 rober short not being mark rober 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 a bigger creator, someone who genuinely knows how they talk.

59:11Like his vocabulary, how he likes to banter. Even the inflections in how he says a line. We would write things and highlight in bold how he would emphasize a word. Like what? What's this one? Pull up a, yeah, maybe in the Slinky one we'll find a moment. It's like in every video there's like a funny inflection. I made it because as a kid, I would always try and see how many stairs I could get my Slinky to 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. It was time to avenge this childhood frustration to set an unbeatable world record.

59:54And it's like, sometimes when we're writing it out, we have to say it in like a Mark Rib accent. Yeah, your accent changed there. yeah yeah but like it helps us like pitch it to mark on how it should be sounding like um 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 his earlier videos he'll be like quite monotone and and it's very similar all throughout but now he like peaks his like yeah like this is a simple that's one example yeah like saying this is but then sometimes like and then i went to the

1:00:33sound crazy no it actually i think i think maybe uh 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 there 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 uh shorts when it's us doing it. Oh my God. This is a floating hot dog and I have nine more items that I'll send it to you. Instead of a hot dog, we were 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.

1:01:09This 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 um so you know you guys were part of a team that helped mark rober go from 25 to over 60 million subscribers pretty crazy i mean like there's a point every week he was just hitting a new 10 mil milestone and we're just like making these like 10 mil shorts and it was through the shorts like like obviously there was a team with us marks like um you know genius strategies and stuff but to see our shorts help the subscriber count go up so quickly was wild yeah yeah it's i I mean, yeah, shorts obviously drive a ton of subscribers.

1:01:52And the way you guys were doing some of 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 your story. What were you guys thinking at this moment where things are now flying high at the day job with Mark? And your YouTube channel is crushing. At this point, you've done a few commercials for creators, right? Like Joyride. unspeakable nick digivani like you guys have done a few commercials now that business model 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 tricky mark was super gracious the whole time even letting us like you know try tackle both and he is the biggest fan of our channel and like loved every time we posted and seeing our videos um yeah there came a point where we're 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 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 big dreams we want to make movies the hard part is mark is this guy who's worked for apple until he hit 10 million so it's like how do you tell the guy who's done that yeah like we want to stop at less than a million yeah so what were those conversations 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 he definitely 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 benefit and say like because we believe in Mark's channel so much and Crunch Labs, it's like skyrocketing.

1:04:27So 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 stuff cooking up. Because there's like a world where we said no to that job offer initially when we applied to it. The Mark's initial job, like to be the short setter. Yeah, and I think like it's so – You really have to swallow your pride to take a job for someone else when you really want to do your own thing. And I'm glad we did because there's definitely so many moments where we look back going, it was so worth it to work with him and the amount of stuff we learned.

1:05:02Yeah, it was a great start. But Mark Roberta, working for Mark Roberta is still a dream. So it was easy to swallow our pride. No, but I mean, 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 um and obviously like mark rober 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 and clearly you guys have done that yeah thank you thanks okay so you you left your full-time jobs uh with mark rober 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's the craziest chapter of like the stick 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 at now because in the past few days weeks like things have like moved so fast and i'm excited to be talking to you guys at this inflection point but yeah when did 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 dm 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 the other 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 probably want to like do our own channel but yeah it was december it was december 2024 jimmy dm'd 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 mark rober or something but we'd never spoken to him we'd never dm'd him we didn't have his but I had never met him.

1:07:08And he reached out to us and DMed all of our Instagrams. DMed us on Instagram. Just our 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. Like, I don't know. Like, yeah, like it's amazing how like high touch and like, you know, when he wants to get in touch with somebody, it happens. Obviously, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But where did it go from there? So we were actually on this shoot for this Nick the Giovanni project.

1:07:43Yeah. And it was the night we kind of got - Arrived in Boston. We got settled into our Airbnb. And then I checked my phone. I'm like, is that real? And I showed Lucas. And we started filming just in case it's real. And there was a message from Mr. Beast. And he just said, howdy. Classic. And we were like, what? Like everything we'd been trying to do, even before our YouTube channel, like has come to this. And not that a DM from him is everything, but it just showed that we were trying to like, we started out with this goal of like making a Mr. Beast movie. And look how close we are right now. Look how we've drummed up the attention of like the world's biggest YouTuber.

1:08:18So that one DM meant a lot to us. And just the fact that we never tried to DM him or like try and get through to his team because we wanted it to be like mutual that he wanted to talk to us. So we were always just like, you know, let it happen if it happens. which was just a big surprise, like getting that DM. Yeah. Yeah. And to put that in further context, the goal when you guys made that video with Mark Robreth and it was like, Mark said, I'll put you in touch with Jimmy when you hit 5 million subscribers. Yeah. Right? And here you guys are at one. I know. And he reached out. Yes. Exactly. Crazy.

1:08:52Like 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 5 mil. And we got that meeting before we hit 1 mil. yeah so it's just crazy how 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 dm'd us and we basically pitched him the idea on the phone and we didn't know if he'd heard about it yet or what he thought but his reaction was just like like huge green flags yeah it's like that's so awesome like he's just like yelling into the phone and we were like oh this is actually like he sees this 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 it's a good idea then it is like yeah you know what i mean yeah um so then he invites us to um his studio in greenville yeah and so we we rock up and you see it in our video we're just like we're just here to hang out but we want to talk about the movie 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 his time we thought we'd have like 10 minutes with him and we'd be super grateful but we hung out the whole day that is the most amazing thing when Jimmy's excited about something he gives it space and time and I've experienced it's like it's amazing given how big he is yeah yeah it was crazy i mean we watched like he gave us a sneak peek of all the beast games episodes until like 3 a.m we're watching that of course yeah so that was fun yeah and how do you go into that like are you preparing with like um 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 to kind of move the conversation along.

1:10:54I mean, luckily, we've been thinking about it for the past 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 in the hotel the night before. I mean, we don't have to show him this pitch deck. Our channel is the pitch deck. Our goal, our drive, all the videos we've made is all he needs to know if we can do this or not. And there's also an element of, do we need to prove this to Jimmy or are we still going to do it without his yes? So that's always 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 want to make it with Jimmy.

1:11:38So there's an interesting element that's very real that we need to 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 with it, he's going to just let us run with it, 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 going to end up. But it's exciting either way. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of people who would hate for us to partner with him.

1:12:15there's a lot of people who would love for us to partner with him but it's that's all irrelevant it's more like we just want to tell the story we want to tell yeah and um whatever lets us get to that yeah is gonna be the avenue yeah how do you walk that line to make a movie about mr beast not for mr beast yeah where you guys are telling mr beast full story like the full truth like everything that's happened um like how do you go about doing that and and maintaining like the um yeah like all the stuff that like uh has happened yeah like the the way we're thinking about it as 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 uh like 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.

1:13:21We'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. Yeah. We, you know, we definitely see that as like something to value. And we also owe it to 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 yeah 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 um 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 like we don't want to feel like it's a beast production movie it's not yeah um but there are there are ways to work with jimmy and the team to make this the best story that we want to tell you know accuracy and um you know hearing parts of a story that aren't on the internet yeah going deeper there's incentive for everyone to work together on it i i mean i i feel that on a personal level because um anytime we do our behind the scenes shoots with Jimmy we tried 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 do this docuseries about his life and the making of Beast Games yeah and they led us everywhere wow wow you know and we had like you know six to seven like camera ops like on the ground like for the 45 days and just like capturing everything because like you know Jimmy and his team like really just wanted to share like how things like happen with the show and how things get done and and uh i'm just excited to see like what you guys find and what you focus on yeah and um and we've noticed that he's been very vulnerable yeah i can yeah like you can ask anything you can um you know just find out what you want to know about my story it hasn't been any like um barriers yeah so that's a good sign yeah yeah no it's a it's a beautiful thing and i just can't wait to see what you guys you know put out um is a movie gonna cost 20 million dollars i mean we put that in the title because it looked good yeah but yeah that's that's within the range of like what this could be we we need to like create a real like budget for it so we don't want to 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 um 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 going to smash yeah but it's only time will tell really i 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 um how are you funding it like trying to get that 20 million um are you trying to go down the studio route like are you trying to self-fund like crowd like crowdfund like what are you guys doing to make that movie happen is jimmy helping is that off limits like like take me 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 yeah like we've had studios reach out um and had good conversations already already wow like are we talking about the big studios yeah Yeah, like I would say them, but like some of the big studios that make the big movies that we all watch.

1:16:50Wow. Some of our favorite movies. Like one of them accidentally emailed like my childhood email. Like a massive movie studio sent an email to like my personal like email I created when I was like eight. If you didn't check it, we wouldn't have like had this meeting with them. I checked the spam folder and it was there for some reason. Like football fan, like 95. It's like my Hotmail. 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 because it's because to cross that um barrier into a studio exec's inbox or awareness takes another thing especially for youtuber like what was that email yeah it was some it was something about like we've seen your youtube channel and like we love what you're doing and um your youtube videos are crazy we love the idea of like this beast movie like let's let's talk about it and see how we can make it happen and um like that's crazy like what and so we're like 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 yeah because what we can say is like we want full creative control we want to make sure that we're distributing in the way we like and we also um yeah we also don't want to be too tied down because when you up the budgets there's strings attached yeah 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 we've made these trailers before and 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 yeah but yeah yeah um what do you guys are learning so far i i can't wait to like hear more about the dream i know we're still in the first inning of it but like making a movie, like there's so many like legacy things that go into it.

1:18:40Like, you know, the way you hire, the way you like, like, are there anything else that you're learning right now as you're like trying to put this movie together? Wait, is it happening? Like, is it in pre-production right now? we, we've been working on the script. The script. Okay. So you guys are working on the script. In the early stages. Wow. Yeah. But we had a writer's retreat where we like hired like an Airbnb for a week and just like locked in on the script. And we just got so excited. We'd like, well, we got, had a really productive week. That's our favorite part. The story is just what we obsess over.

1:19:08Wow. So now that we're so excited about the story, it's more clear to us. It's about to get really fast. We're going to roll into figuring out how we want to do it, how we want to fund it, and when we want to shoot it, stuff like that. I'm so excited for you guys because I feel like you're putting YouTubers on your back and just showing where this could go. Yeah. And the hard part is having a channel at the same time. We don't want to forsake the channel and our audience that we've built. So that's the thing that we're learning is how do we tackle such a big project while maintaining the consistency?

1:19:45Take me through that because 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. You guys have reinvented 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.

1:20:25So 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 Trahan, like you surprised him with a movie video. How does that kind of take some of these principles from Hollywood but make it, you know, YouTube-y. Yeah.

1:21:01So we like to use this little tool of the wording but and 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. An obstacle. An obstacle. Therefore is how you overcome that obstacle. Or cause and effect. Yeah. Yeah. Like you guys have talked about. Yeah. So we could tell you some of these story beats and how but and therefore. Yeah. I'm curious. Take me through those. And I'm also curious like after that, Are there stuff you cut out because it was like an and then or something?

1:21:32It didn't fit with that. So take me through the but and therefore. So the start of the Ryan Trahan 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. Therefore. Therefore, we went to CreatorNow 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 it just continues like this like and 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 don't you're in the moment in the movie so what are those things that you cut that like because you know editing and bts like it's always a trimmed down version of reality um to keep people's attention what did you guys cut um because it didn't feel like it fit in that but slash therefore framework the whole bts shoot got cut down into a certain way the like it so when we start shooting yeah there's so many things going on there's little like 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 trahan movie and we didn't have one we're trying to look on facebook marketplace and our friend had to drive all around texas pretty much to find something yeah and we thought that was like pretty good tension like oh film 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 movie 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 into this chain of events so there's often times we're cutting out sections of like you know what we had for lunch that day or um the plane was a little delayed and we we got on it in the end it's just like not worth adding to the story if there are moments like like we found while editing this if there are moments that we 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 but and not after a therefore because when there's a but there's a question it's like how are they going to overcome this obstacle now you have the curiosity loop of how are they going to solve that so now 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 But if we did it after a solution and then we went and wasted the audience time by showing us vlogging.

1:24:40They click off. You click off. Oh, fascinating. Because, yeah, you'd rather do it after the butt where there's tension. Yes. It's unresolved. Yeah. 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 you get back into it. Yeah. That's right. That's really good. Any other, like, things in your toolkit that you guys use to mix cinematic and YouTube? Yeah. I mean, show don't tell. Everyone's heard of that. but I think it can be underrated still. 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.

1:25:17When we're editing this video, for example, the Ryan Train one, we kind of put all the footage in the timeline and just whenever there was an editing decision 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 go to a resort to VO last because it's like just telling you the emotion is the worst way to make you feel something. Say that again because a lot of YouTubers use voiceover. So we try and consider voiceover as a last resort. So we'll put all the footage in the timeline, put music in, edit sections, make them shorter.

1:25:58but before we add in a line about the context of what we're doing in 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 one of our key actors pulled out because he was sick.

1:26:34On the day of the shoot. Instead of us writing a VO line to make you feel that, the cut makes you feel that. Now we just have to make the best dang trailer we've ever made in our lives. The college staff actor just pulled out instead i tested positive for covert this morning not feeling well that was like the majority of the shoot today you see us like really excited then cut all of a sudden our faces are so depressed and i deliver a line on camera saying our main actor just pulled out like that is way better than saying but you won'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 or things you guys do because i 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 like very good use of like show don't tell um especially in this emma chamberlain one we tried to really lean into that in the second half especially where just like it It was mainly just beautiful shots.

1:27:46And it wasn't much dialogue. And the aspect ratio, I remember from that, made me feel like, I think it was 4x3. It made me feel, like, nostalgic. From memories I didn't even have. Exactly. And I think, like, as filmmakers, you're very aware of, like, 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 are really key um 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 yeah 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 because they're the only thing in the frame.

1:28:49Right. 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. Wow. 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. This is a big, grand video rather than starting tight and not seeing the scale. 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 a little montage recap of all the feelings you felt in that video just before you get the climax answer of the proposition.

1:29:36for example because 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 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

1:30:07I would be very genuine with you. I really believe in both of you. Sending in three, two, we smashed it. Good job. Oh! Oh, no! I felt the balls. I'm calling places I shouldn't be calling. Okay, stop, stop. We did it. We did it. So there's two of us. He'll be able to shake our hands like this.

1:30:34Okay, okay! An idea we had was like, how do we make this moment feel dreamy and like nostalgic and make them feel like the 30-minute video they watched was like something that they... A blur that they just like relived. Yeah, so we thought adding music that kind of swells and builds up, obviously, but then some sound effects and like... Sound bites throughout the movie, throughout the video. But then the secret sauce 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.

1:31:13You'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 L cuts and J cuts. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's just a bunch of really extended L cuts and J cuts. Yeah. with long fades and like, I mean, we position them so like perfectly that like you can still hear what's being said, but like in a way that you can't really tell when a clip ends or starts, it all just feels like this blur. Yeah. Which is how we get like that dreamy effect at the end of the videos. Oh, 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?

1:31:54I want to say something 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 trahan shoot there was a shot we were trying to get with ryan running track and well the duffelganger 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 hmm 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 whoa 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 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 um i think that's one yeah or even challenging the more common way of filming something and doing it 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 hates that she's always filming herself.

1:33:27And it seems like this really beautiful, intimate moment that she's having with her dad until you pan the camera a bit and you see she's even filming this conversation. And there's just different ways you can get creative with the camera movement that reveals something or paints the story in a completely different light. And I think that is a great example of when we've used camera movement really well. Yeah. Those are 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 learning from Mark about how he built a team with his voice and that's what we're doing right now so that we can make a movie.

1:34:06Tell me more about how you guys are building the Styx team. So how are we doing it? We are growing our editing team is the first play because that takes us the most amount of time if we 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 and 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 headspace is kind of like opened up to think about making a feature film.

1:34:52So that's really the key hires we're trying to make is like editors, writers, and producers. How big is the team now? We have about one, two, like they're all contractors, but around up to 10, nearly 10 people, which is crazy. I mean, on a film set, it'll be more than that. Of course, yeah. but yeah we found like some some really cool guys who are continuing to work with and it's just it's so cool and rewarding to like find that team and when 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 you really do it's like you make the trailer and you make the commercial like um you know i'm about to co-found a company actually with zach um we're starting a cool um accounting company it's called boring stuff where 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 a commercial for us like what's the range i'm sure you have different packet but what's the range like how much that costs right now should we say a range are we talking about are we in six figures yet yeah we're in six figures yeah it's crazy for for a commercial yeah and is and then you have like is your bts a part of that because that's another distribution yeah like can be we for the unspeakable one for example our brand was um his course that we're promoting so it's like extra 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 um sponsored slots within the bts just like other youtubers yeah and that could be like the product that you're making a product for could double dip yeah you know in a good way um obviously you have the AdSense.

1:36:34You have merch on Stix.Store. And is there anything else like that you guys are thinking about to add to the business? And I also know you guys are like, there's so many things in your world right now. You guys also just shot a Feastables ad. Like, how is that? I mean, that also has to be like high pressure because you're going out to shoot a Feastables ad. I mean, tell me the story, but Jimmy is who you're casting in that. Yeah, that's right. And then it's like, did it feel like a tryout for the movie? Or like your relationship together? Like, tell me about that. In a sense. Like, I don't think Jimmy sees it like that.

1:37:11Yeah. 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 he thinks of you guys. And what he thinks of us. It's like building trust. It's building trust. If it was a complete flop, no one would trust us to make the Mr. Beast movie. And to give more context, what did Jimmy and the Feastables team ask you to make? How did that come about? Were you guys there in Greenville talking about the movie? And they're like, by the way, you should make an ad for Feastables, a commercial.

1:37:42How do these two things coincide? We had that conversation, that meeting with Jimmy in person. And then a couple months later, we posted our second Joyride ad. And then he saw that and he DM'd us straight away saying, I want one for Feastables, pretty please. you can show the DM on screen 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 YouTube like YouTuber marketing yeah if we're doing this niche of like YouTuber products then Feastables is one of the top and then it just took like a lot of like you know chatting with the team and like trying to we pitched a story that we really really like yeah you guys show me the storyboards it looks amazing 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 dark for a brand to like trust like filmmakers with telling such a mysterious grungy story but like the feastables 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 can you talk about the concept because this will come out after that's that what just tell us about the concept of the feastables and what's the product is it so the product they told us that they were releasing a chocolate milk yeah so it's like oh cool a brand new like feastables products we're the first to know about this this is crazy and so we started like ideating we also knew that they have like this um mission to end child labor in chocolate which we really resonated with us and we were kind of thinking of like how we can how can we make this chocolate milk the hero of the story And we wanted to have a metaphor for what they're doing to end child labor within the story.

1:39:22And something we learned from working with Ryan was 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 when we were coming up with this story. And we kind of came up with 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 the goal for him is to, you know, free these workers.

1:40:05And the way we kind of wrote into the story is that the chocolate milk kind of saves the day. does it because the cool thing is like the feastables team was saying they love the idea of chocolate milk being attached to nostalgia yeah like yeah as a kid everyone remembers like downing a chocolate milk um 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 awake it like wakes you up from the sleep um 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 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 um i can't believe how quickly you guys are turning around like uh how many days did you shoot it we shot it over four days four days biggest production yet you guys it felt like it it was like a taste of like what a movie set would feel like just the amount of moving parts and builds that the Beast team helped out with.

1:41:11Yeah, building sets and building props was crazy. And then, yeah, it was crazy. Yeah, I'm excited. We're going to do a breakdown of it. And you know what day I'm really excited about? I think I'm going to put a few predictions out there. I think you guys will be remembered as the Spielbergs of YouTube. Oh, my gosh. I really do. I think you guys are the Spielbergs of YouTube. Wow. I think that you guys are going to go on to do a ton of movies. I think that not only creator brands are going to come to you, but big legacy brands are going to come to you. I think you guys are going to have a lot of kids.

1:41:44I don't know how you're balancing it being a new dad. I'm a new dad myself. Your families must be so proud. Your wives are also the real MVPs. I know we haven't talked about them enough, but knowing how important that support system is, especially because you're traveling early days from Australia to California. That is not easy. I'm just rooting for you guys so hard. Thank you so much. so hard like i can't wait to see what you guys do and just uh yeah you guys are just shining exam i appreciate you guys taking the time and talking about this a lot of stuff for the first time we appreciate it this is so fun it's been so awesome