It's rare to find a corporate partner who encourages true creativity, but our meetings with Lionsgate's creative team convinced us that this is the right move for RocketJump and our millions of fans.
— Freddie Wong
Kickstarter has shifted from funding creative projects to funding products and videogames; the biggest funded are consumer electronics and video game projects.
It's hard to sell merchandise off YouTube.
We have full creative control, we have a giant audience that loves what we do, and we can make whatever we want.
You have to figure out some way of making money without relying on video ads or people paying to download.
YouTube is the place where people go to consume advertisements willingly. It's some capitalist dystopian nightmare.
In general, a lot of content creators find that their success is unable to support any sort of organization of scale. It's pretty difficult to support even three or four employees.
We've always wanted to control the video player for our videos. We really want to evolve how comments on videos work.
We have an audience, the ability to fund our own projects, own our own projects, the ability to display our projects unencumbered by any middlemen. That's the perfect scenario.
Great visual effects serve story and character and in doing so, are, by their very definition, invisible.
Everyone talks about, 'Get your foot in the door,' but I never understood that mentality. Why would I want to go in that house? Why not build my own house? Why not take a chair and smash a window?
On the advertising side, view count is not the most important thing. It's engagement.
A user who essentially costs YouTube money has very little say. The way to have a say is to concretely support the creators and channels you watch directly by giving them money.
The consumer is the absolute king in everything you do.
We take a lot of pictures with fans, and when they walk away, their parents say, 'Who was that?'
I think some people have a vague idea, but the general public has no clue what the actual behind-the-scenes of filmmaking is and what this profession is.
A better quality of video is better for everyone.
Youku Tudou gives us the reach into China that we've been looking for, and we look forward to sharing even more content with international audiences in the near future.
We were looking for representation that was creatively and commercially in synch with our core DNA. The team at WME understands where we're going, and we're looking forward to taking our company to the next level with them by our side.
We are video consumers first and foremost, and we hate anything appearing in the videos that isn't organic.
People always ask us, 'When are you guys gonna do a movie? When are you gonna do a TV show?' And to me, that feels like such a step backwards from where are.
Video content yearns to be free.
Hulu understood how much content costs. By remaining defensive, YouTube is losing various aspects of video - long-form, for example - to other companies.
Drift racing is expensive.
We believe that the future for content-creators such as ourselves lies in being able to source project money from an audience and deliver on those projects in a timely and cost-effective manner.
When we started doing YouTube, the goal was, hey, let's make stuff that we want to see, that entertains us.
While it's easy to sit back and cherry pick bad visual effects and blame the industry for making movies the way they are, you're really not seeing the whole picture.
The moment you've brought a toothbrush to work, then you're getting into crunch time.
Deep engagement is much more powerful and valuable than fleeting mass market engagement.
I don't think any reasonable person would object to you, as the advertiser, having say in who and what you want to pair your ad with.
Views online is a real weird and sticky subject. One view on a 30-second piece of content is not equivalent to one view on a 30 minute video. In my mind it's not quite the same thing.
We're able to push the envelope with what we're doing, both on a technical and artistic level, which is the most that any filmmaker can ask for.
I don't think a lot of people really know what goes into something that they see.
If it doesn't feel organic to the audience, you gotta trust your gut.
We founded RocketJump for two reasons: to provide quality entertainment and to reach as many different audiences as possible.
When you have a home and create a brand people believe in and want to support, it makes it easier for you to control merchandise and sell it.
We are not frou-frou creative types. We have done both sides of the business and are constantly asking ourselves, 'How are we going to pay for this?' But the criteria is that it must fit with our world.
Visual effects have always been a part of this art form. And CG is simply a tool on the filmmaker's tool belt to tell a story, but when the end result is bad - maybe it's not the tool's fault.
I feel like we cheated... because you read about these other directors, just like, 'Damn! They paid dues for 10 years before they got to get behind the camera.' We cheated because technology was in the right place at the right time, and we were alive at the right age at the right time for us to take advantage of that.
The Lionsgate deal came at an opportune time. It allows us to get our projects financed and create long-form content without needing to be reliant on brand deals or crowdsourcing for external financing.
We always said that directors work their whole lives to get final cut on a movie. We have that. So why would you want to run away from what every other director is sprinting toward their entire careers?
We firmly believe the future of television is online, and Hulu has recognized the value of quality long-form series.
I have to credit high school for allowing us to mess around with movie stuff at a time when it was a novelty. Experimenting with that and having a very good group of friends to work with made it a very easy decision that this seemed like something I wanted to do with the rest of my life.
When we think about a great movie, I mean, what do we think about? We think about story, we think about character. And when the visual effects aren't perfect, we forgive it.
Straight-up digital delivery will be the way the future works.
I want to see more people push what it means to be a web show... because it's very difficult to make a living making those types of shows.
Hollywood is just a bunch of middlemen, people trying to facilitate content transfer between creators and viewers.
I think if you make good, interesting content with compelling story lines and good characters, people will tune into the web for as long as you want them to.
A vlog look is a very specific look, and it's basically a phone look.
We don't believe in competition.
