How Freddie Wong Went From Viral videos To tv shows

since 2010, Freddie Wong has brought video games to life on the net. When YouTube was once simply setting up its rep as the position to get humorous movies to ship to your friends, Freddie Wong and his chums took the unique effects knowhow they learned from movie school and dealing on direct-to-DVD motion pictures to create shorts that blended real lifestyles and video games. It wasn’t lengthy before his shorts (like “real life Mario Kart”) had been getting hundreds of thousands of views.

and that’s when Wong made up our minds to maneuver faraway from his “freddiew” YouTube channel and, with Desmond Dolly and Matt Arnold, create a manufacturing firm named RocketJump. Wong then grew the operation, raising $273k on Kickstarter for an internet sequence called online game highschool. Season two of the express raised $808K, then season three raised $898K. The episodes have averaged 5.three million views on YouTube. Now Wong and RocketJump are making a new show for Hulu to be able to debut in the final quarter of the year.

RocketJump: The convey will characteristic a brand new quick movie from RocketJump, but also a at the back of-the-scenes take a look at the corporate. “What does it mean to be a media firm this present day, when there is a lot logging on? And what does it mean to be a production firm when the traditional barriers to global distribution are not there anymore?” says Wong. “It’s a mixture of cool awesome shorts, that hopefully individuals find as exciting as we do, in addition to an in-depth have a look at what it takes to run a media firm nowadays.”

We sat down with Freddie Wong and talked about his profession, from shorts to VGHS to Hulu and distilled some of what he is discovered over time on his route from viral video maker to television producer.

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After attending movie school at university of Southern California school of Cinematic Arts, Wong labored on several low-finances films, which was a good ending school for his career transfer to making YouTube videos full time.

Wong says, “before 2010, my expertise was once in the world of direct-to-DVD, direct-to-television movies. Which is to say, films of questionable advantage and quality. I spent a few years doing that and that was a in point of fact wonderful means of learning in regards to the raw course of and what goes into the non-inventive facet, the producer side of filmmaking. It was a very treasured set of knowledge to get for the YouTube world.”

…And focal point On Making Stuff, no longer creating wealth

Wong and firm set out to create a house on YouTube to make their movies, conserving complete keep watch over and getting into no matter path their ingenious instincts dictated. they may write their very own ticket.

“From the start the concept wasn’t, ‘good day! this is going to get us boatloads of money!’ the thought was, ‘hello! here’s a space where we as administrators and inventive folks can do our factor with out caring concerning the various others concerns of filmmaking,'” says Wong. “The calculations were: we are going to be ready maintain ourselves, improve ourselves, and be capable of do this full time. That’s what was once most important, with the ability to decide to this full time, with no full working out what lies ahead, however with a knowledge that if you happen to build an audience, with the intention to be useful, no matter you do in the movie world.”

As Wong endured to free up videos in the course of the “freddiew” channel, he constructed an ordinary audience, sharing content material with friends and family (after which a larger circle of friends—the channel has greater than two dozen movies with over 10 million views).

“by means of 2012, we had a course of and a timeline of doing one video per week. I look at that as really just right follow,” says Wong. “to just have the ability to go week in and week out and be simply experimental with what we had been doing. It felt very good to have a 1-to-1 relationship with others, having a possibility to try something out and notice if it works, see if folks respond to it. We weren’t tied all the way down to the idea that we hoped to search out an audience. by using the top of 2011, we had an outstanding concept what folks were in search of, what individuals need to see.”

brand yourself

After making all of these fashionable movies and identifying to make one thing greater, it was once time to evolve into a proper manufacturing company that was once greater than Freddie Wong’s identify.

“That’s when the idea of an organization named RocketJump started to indicate up,” Wong says. “That was very a lot a choice so as to create an entity that isn’t tied 100% to me for my part and my name. The goal of the company was to do sequence like video game high school, however now not only one sequence a 12 months, but many. We had been going to need a vary of creators and a range of voices to drag off that kind of scale. i will’t imagine a director who does something and places it on a channel with my identify.”

As RocketJump, Wong and his collaborators had been poised to move beyond brief films to an extended-type sequence. The years of viral movies had ready them.

“We had learned what we wanted to understand in relation to manufacturing, what we may just accomplish at what budget levels, on the visual aspect and the practical manufacturing side. At that point in 2012 we began transitioning into making a sustainable firm,” says Wong. “I appear across the panorama of YouTube and the existing wisdom says that on-line videos are brief, little distractions. but at the similar time, you might have that contrasted with Netflix. i’ll take a seat down and watch house of cards all over. So those are two weirdly opposing views on how online video is consumed. What we found is that what we wish to do in my opinion as artists is get to the purpose the place we are speaking about longer kind, and talking about stories and characters.”

don’t forget the teachings Of Storytellers Who came sooner than

As Wong’s occupation was about growing the online express online game high school, that brought a whole new set of challenges, and more lessons.

“What our time at VGHS did was kick us to any other level from a inventive, artistic standpoint, looking at a lot of the things that make long kind work over short form,” he says. “It’s one factor to assert how do you get any person’s eyeball right into a video that could be a brief, fun, two or three-minute long video. It’s another query fully to assert how do you maintain any person’s interest and keep them attentive and maintain them coming back over one thing that finally ends up being forty minutes per episode.”

As RocketJump made VGHS, Wong and co discovered themselves embracing increasingly of the traditions from Hollywood.

“a lot of people think that we are in this new world and distribution has modified, and everyone can choose up a digicam and make a film,” says Wong. “It’s very straightforward and tempting to overlook that this can be a process and the industry has had one hundred years of development in methods to do things that, for probably the most phase, have produced in reality just right films. it is in point of fact simple to, at the top of technological exuberance, to say that we don’t wish to fear in regards to the old means of doing things. The previous methods of doing issues have value as a result of they’ve been honed over the direction of many many years and lots of many businesses,” Wong says.

Wong factors to the standard size of tv shows, a vestige of a long time of tv, as one thing he embraced for VGHS: while season one had shorter episodes, seasons two and three had been the size of traditional television episodes.

“at the very starting we had been like, ‘we’re a web-based series. We shouldn’t be held down by way of the weird ideas of television: 22 minutes, or forty minutes for an hour of television. It seems so silly because they’re dictated by business breaks; we can also be any size we wish.’ What we found as we started hammering in the course of the writing course of is that 22 minutes is possibly the right length for this sort of story. And 40 minutes is the appropriate length for having a bunch of side plots and having them boost and complete. tv labored at those time constraints. maybe they don’t seem to be really constraints; possibly they’re how persons are used to seeing tales strengthen.”

gown For The Job you wish to have

As part of strategy of going from “freddiew” to RocketJump, the company had to embody a brand new self-image.

“a variety of instances popularity and that facet of issues, at least in the entertainment business, is what you’re making of it,” says Wong. “when you represent yourself a definite means, folks start to treat you a certain method. Hollywood is a kind of weird locations where no person trusts you to do one thing unless you’ve already done it. That was at all times a challenge of VGHS. the primary season, it was once exhausting to get traction as a result of everybody was like, ‘You’ve only achieved short issues before.’ So we did the first season of VGHS after which we went for a 2d season. ‘neatly, you guys did an internet collection; it’s now not actually a tv express.’ So second season was once more like a tv show. you’re constantly in a state of getting to show yourself, before individuals imagine you are able to do it,” says Wong.

the previous couple of Inches Are the whole thing

through the introduction of online game high school, Wong and RocketJump were striving to create something that had the production values of a Hollywood television express. so that they needed to go that extra mile in the creation of those episodes.

He says, “For VGHS, probably the most growing pains for us, is that it’s very straightforward to underestimate the quantity of effort it takes to take one thing from 98% to 100%. That last 2% takes an immense period of time and resources just to get that to a degree that you are satisfied with. We noticed it on VGHS for all three seasons. It’s very simple to have a look at that and say it’s now not price it, however after all, it’s absolutely value it. it’s a must to cling your self to a definite same old. you are not going to get it from anywhere else.”

grow talent As You grow Your Product

a part of rising RocketJump was to groom different creators besides Wong. this is additionally the case with the brand new Hulu exhibit.

“We began working at ability development,” he says. “for instance, the Hulu exhibit we’re going to have my good friend Ben Waller, who did the behind the scenes stuff at the YouTube channel back in 2010. Now we’re very concerned about growing him as someone who can run a larger scale exhibit,” says Wong. “We look at that as part of our stable of administrators, we have a look at that in relation to our writers, and every facet of ingenious leads. We look at Pixar as another company that has down neatly in terms of ability development, building out a roster of people who are creatively engaged, but also ready of their talents to take on and execute any selection of initiatives. That’s something that is essential to us.”

know What you don’t know

For Wong, what he has realized is ultimately about ensuring you keep learning.

Wong says, “the most important lessons we’ve learned is that we you need to be actually just right at figuring out what we don’t comprehend. That’s the most important blind spot in any group. You don’t recognize what you don’t know. We do our highest to repeatedly investigate that. It’s truly a technique of constantly difficult your assumptions and your institutional information. With the writing process, we repeatedly look at that: are we doing this right? How will we even be aware of what we are doing is efficacious? Are we reinventing the wheel here? We pulled a collaborator and buddy of ours, Mike Symonds, who was once working within the traditional world of story construction, to transform our head of inventive. That’s an example of us constantly difficult ourselves.”