Speaker 1: Pushkin. All right, y'all, So it's twenty twenty three and
Speaker 1: we should probably finally act like it is on this show. Obviously,
Speaker 1: one of the most ubiquitous ways to make it from
Speaker 1: the bottom these days is to become an influencer. Freddy Wong,
Speaker 1: my guest on today's show, is an early version of that.
Speaker 1: A YouTuber. He started his channel, Freddy w and six,
Speaker 1: back when YouTube was still a fledgling video sharing website.
Speaker 1: That YouTube channel eventually became a real production company, Rocket Jump. Today,
Speaker 1: rocket Jump has over one point six billion views on
Speaker 1: YouTube and nine million subscribers. His YouTube journey, sparked by
Speaker 1: an early love of film, led to a production deal
Speaker 1: with Lionsgate to create a Hulu show a handful of
Speaker 1: years ago. Since then, he stopped regularly uploading videos online,
Speaker 1: has dabbled in podcast, and is generally just plotting what
Speaker 1: his next move's gonna be. On today's episode, we check
Speaker 1: in with one of the original stars of YouTube and
Speaker 1: explore the ups and downs of internet fame and creation.
Speaker 1: This is started from the bottom, harder and success stories
Speaker 1: from people like us pretty long. Man, Thanks for doing this, appreciate.
Speaker 2: You, Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1: Man So I want to I want to get into
Speaker 1: all things YouTube and filmmaking. I want to talk filmmaking.
Speaker 1: But I'm just curious where there's not like a ton
Speaker 1: of info about your early life out and about in public.
Speaker 1: What where did your love of storytelling developed?
Speaker 3: Probably when I spent that stint in prison. No no, no, no,
Speaker 3: I honestly, you know what it was was growing up
Speaker 3: there were two Blockbuster videos that was like the close
Speaker 3: one and then the bigger, nicer one. My dad loves movies,
Speaker 3: loves American movies, and he would show us like just
Speaker 3: so much. So like pretty much every weekend we'd be
Speaker 3: at the Blockbuster just renting movies. So like Friday we'd
Speaker 3: see something, Saturday night, we see something Sunday afternoon. I
Speaker 3: would have, you know, a third movie sometimes, Like it
Speaker 3: was just a lot of time in video stores, honestly.
Speaker 3: And also my dad, who like just has such a
Speaker 3: like I remember, I remember when I was like I
Speaker 3: must have been like eleven or twelve. He was like, Yo,
Speaker 3: you have to see this guy, Dustin Hoffman. He's one
Speaker 3: of the greatest American actors. And so he rented the Graduate.
Speaker 3: I'm like, I kind of think I okay, I don't
Speaker 3: quite get what's going on with him in this, like mom,
Speaker 3: but like it seems kind of you know, definitely didn't
Speaker 3: quite get it. Like I still remember watching the ending
Speaker 3: and feeling a certain way be like what the interesting ending?
Speaker 3: And then like the next week he was like, you
Speaker 3: think that was crazy, here's his next movie? And then
Speaker 3: he rented Midnight Cowboy Wow, which like which is like
Speaker 3: you'd rather get very famous, like almost X ray, right,
Speaker 3: or I think at the time even extra I remember
Speaker 3: being like as a kid being like, I'm too young
Speaker 3: for this, but that was the that was the approach.
Speaker 1: So your dad was, would you say outside of movies?
Speaker 1: Your dad was conservative in his approach to raise.
Speaker 2: Both of my parents.
Speaker 3: Like, you know, I get this a lot because I
Speaker 3: think a lot of people have the shared experience in
Speaker 3: terms of the Asian American like typical Asian American experience. Right.
Speaker 3: The reason why there's a lot of similarity on it
Speaker 3: is because at least speaking to East Asian specifically Chinese
Speaker 3: immigrants China.
Speaker 2: So I'm full Chinese, so you kind.
Speaker 3: Of have to essentially historically you kind of have like
Speaker 3: these waves of immigration and migration, right, if you're in
Speaker 3: California and you're like Japanese or Chinese, Like there's a
Speaker 3: chance that your family goes.
Speaker 2: Back, like back to like railroad times, right.
Speaker 3: But the Pacific Northwest a lot of the Asian population
Speaker 3: there in my case, right escaping from the Cultural Revolution
Speaker 3: in China. You have a lot of Southeast Asians post
Speaker 3: Vietnam War, right, And so like there's a reason why
Speaker 3: when you think about like the typical East Asian experience,
Speaker 3: a lot of them, you know, like it's because it's
Speaker 3: like it's fresh immigrant families hitting this sort of specific generation.
Speaker 3: So there's a lot of commonality, is there, Like a
Speaker 3: lot the sort of touchstones were the same. Take school seriously, right, Like,
Speaker 3: But I think I do acknowledge that it was different
Speaker 3: for me because I think my parents just had a
Speaker 3: different approach to it. You know, at least for myself
Speaker 3: and my brother, we had a lot more freedom because
Speaker 3: you know, like sophomore year in high school, like I
Speaker 3: want to make a movie with a friend of mine,
Speaker 3: and they're like, as long as your grades are fine,
Speaker 3: do whatever you want, right, Like that was the sort
Speaker 3: of feeling on that. I think part of it also
Speaker 3: is because my mom, she was a professional dancer in China,
Speaker 3: and so has this kind of artistic bend and has
Speaker 3: the sort of appreciation for the stuff that isn't going
Speaker 3: to make you six figures all the time, you know.
Speaker 3: Like so I think that like that combination kind of output,
Speaker 3: my brother.
Speaker 1: And so you dab puts you onto movie making or
Speaker 1: to your love of film. And then you are lucky
Speaker 1: enough to live near a Blockbuster.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's when I think about this, I think
Speaker 3: about luck a lot, and I think that there's a
Speaker 3: lot of things that fall in place here. Right, So
Speaker 3: consider that I'm lucky enough to have be alive in
Speaker 3: an era when you have Blockbuster Video, and you have
Speaker 3: video rental, and you have DVDs and VHS tapes, and
Speaker 3: you have the access to a library, right huge and
Speaker 3: especially in the pre broadband internet days, that's a big deal.
Speaker 3: Right On top of that, we have the iMac that
Speaker 3: came out the first real kind of accessible consumer computer
Speaker 3: that let you take high eight or digital eight or
Speaker 3: mini DV footage and like edit it. Because I remember
Speaker 3: like taking vacation videos and kind of messing with them,
Speaker 3: and like you know, on the computer at home, being
Speaker 3: able to do that already, like.
Speaker 1: That's like camera like Jamie yeah, like.
Speaker 3: Like yeah, oh yeah, yeah yeah, like a little sony
Speaker 3: thing got Like it was that era of camera where
Speaker 3: they were like, yo, we got night vision mode. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: you know night vision mode. Like they stop that. Yeah,
Speaker 3: Like no, but no cameras come with night vision. But
Speaker 3: that was a moment where it was like, Yo, this
Speaker 3: camera soons three, it was so cool and how does
Speaker 3: this work? Like I remember growing up and like doing
Speaker 3: like making a little spe effects videos with my brother,
Speaker 3: Like we would take these pool cues and like do
Speaker 3: those choreographed sword fights, and then I would go back
Speaker 3: into the computer and like put lightsaber effects on it.
Speaker 3: Because you know, that's the pinnacle of filmmaking at the time,
Speaker 3: was doing cool Star Wars lightsaber.
Speaker 1: So there's a certain amount of luck involved and we're
Speaker 1: doing what you do, and I mean you happened. You're
Speaker 1: growing up in the heyday of in a early nineties
Speaker 1: would be another high water mark for movie making, you know,
Speaker 1: and you're being able to rent movies and to fill
Speaker 1: to rent movies and also like again right, like you
Speaker 1: remember that that early nineties coincides with this indie movie revolution, right,
Speaker 1: You're talking about guys like Aronofsky coming out, you're talking
Speaker 1: about Quintartino, and then people being like, ooh, indie film,
Speaker 1: what's going on here? And on top of that, there
Speaker 1: was a demand for it because people were building so
Speaker 1: many screens. There are so many flights, they just need
Speaker 1: to fill fill them up with screens. So you had
Speaker 1: companies that were willing to take a shot on like
Speaker 1: the Sofia Coppolas of the world, or the people who
Speaker 1: were like, hey, they just had a Sun Dance film
Speaker 1: and that's it. The dominant mythology growing up for a
Speaker 1: filmmaker was like, oh, you got to make an indie
Speaker 1: and go to a festival and do all that stuff,
Speaker 1: which I think has you know, changed quite a bit
Speaker 1: in the year. So you've been growing up formative years
Speaker 1: being spent in that indie filmmaking boom loving cinema. Did
Speaker 1: that make you feel like you could be a filmmaker?
Speaker 2: One hundred percent yes, one hundred percent. Yes. It's like, oh,
Speaker 2: you can tell these stories and you can do it cheap.
Speaker 3: As long as you do it cheap, and you know,
Speaker 3: I mean like it was a total it's just a
Speaker 3: totally different context. So now so then that you know,
Speaker 3: in that hunt, in that search for trying to find
Speaker 3: ways to make movies anyway we could, we got onto online.
Speaker 3: Another four tu of this development, right, that you could
Speaker 3: put things online and people could see it and you
Speaker 3: could potentially generate an audience from it. That was just
Speaker 3: starting when I was in college. People were like, ooh.
Speaker 3: The idea of like a popular YouTuber meaning anything was
Speaker 3: completely foreign to everybody, even in film school.
Speaker 2: I remember after I graduated, I was.
Speaker 3: Like, oh, hey, I'm gonna do doing this YouTube challenge
Speaker 3: and think everyone's response for the film school. So I
Speaker 3: was always just like what why, Like what is what's
Speaker 3: the point? You know, like even that even just the
Speaker 3: idea of like making a video, putting it somewhere, getting
Speaker 3: someone to even find it. Yeah, sometimes you didn't want
Speaker 3: the video to go viral because you have to pay
Speaker 3: for it, because your bandwidth costs would spike up that
Speaker 3: week because all of a sudden people are sharing it
Speaker 3: on emails and now I gotta pay a thousand bucks
Speaker 3: at the end of the month because people were watching it.
Speaker 1: So you mentioned you went to film school. I mean
Speaker 1: you're born and raised in Seattle in Washington, Yes, correct, correct,
Speaker 1: come down to USC for film school. Yeah, you're twenty
Speaker 1: in two thousand and five, which I would say is
Speaker 1: probably the year that YouTube really plants itself in the
Speaker 1: mainstream consciousness. You know, yeah, but you have Hollywood dream
Speaker 1: I mean, you have dreams to break into Hollywood to
Speaker 1: some extent. You moved down. Now you're in film school
Speaker 1: at USC where George Lucas went, and you know, like
Speaker 1: everyone went right, and it's like you at some point
Speaker 1: decide to go to make stuff for YouTube rather than
Speaker 1: try to necessarily break into film the more traditional route.
Speaker 3: So for a little bit we were doing that. We
Speaker 3: were doing direct to DVD movies. I was working on
Speaker 3: direct to DVD movies, and like in film school, I
Speaker 3: met this guy named Brandon Loatch who was my partner
Speaker 3: for a base all the YouTube era, and we were
Speaker 3: watching YouTube and we were seeing these guys like build
Speaker 3: audiences and we had no idea what it really meant.
Speaker 3: But I do very distinctly remember being like, you know,
Speaker 3: like Kevin Smith can make movies whatever, he can kind
Speaker 3: of do whatever he wants because he's got this group
Speaker 3: of audience who likes his movies and they like him
Speaker 3: as a person who makes movies. So he kind of
Speaker 3: has this weird built in audience, and like I remember
Speaker 3: at the time being I feel like if you could
Speaker 3: build up an audience first, maybe you get more freedom later.
Speaker 3: And that was like literally the depth of the thinking.
Speaker 3: So Brandon and I were like, well, let's do a
Speaker 3: YouTube channel, let's try stuff, let's try making stuff. In college,
Speaker 3: we were making like little videos, and we were seeing
Speaker 3: some of them pop off. Like one of my early
Speaker 3: videos was this guitar Hero video or it's just me
Speaker 3: playing Guitar Hero or a very ridiculous way, but like
Speaker 3: that popped off and it was one of those weird
Speaker 3: formative moments where we were watching it and we're like, yo,
Speaker 3: it's gonna get a million views, and they're like, wow,
Speaker 3: that's crazy. And then it hit a million views and
Speaker 3: kept going. We're like, oh, it doesn't just stop. It
Speaker 3: just keeps going like this isn't like it hits a
Speaker 3: million and then no one ever sees again, Like these
Speaker 3: keep going for a while. So like we got into
Speaker 3: this feeling of like, oh, it's so cool to try
Speaker 3: and like make something and try and have it be
Speaker 3: something that people react to and respond to emotionally, and
Speaker 3: maybe they want to share it, try to just pump
Speaker 3: those numbers as opposed to I think a lot of
Speaker 3: times a way think about artists like they they close
Speaker 3: themselves off and they do their great works and then
Speaker 3: they present it to the adoring public, where whereas in
Speaker 3: this case it was more about for us like Trama's
Speaker 3: populous approach of like, well, let's see what whether people
Speaker 3: want to see.
Speaker 1: It change your aim. It kind of did change your
Speaker 1: dream in a sense.
Speaker 3: To an extent, because I think fundamentally anybody who gets
Speaker 3: into film, especially coming at it from like a popular
Speaker 3: film standpoint, Ie, you didn't grow up watching like the
Speaker 3: experimental films of like a guy like Stan Bracket or something,
Speaker 3: and you got into movies because you saw Jurassic Park
Speaker 3: and you want to like, there is a certain and
Speaker 3: that's why to me, film is such a fascinating artistic medium.
Speaker 3: There's a certain acknowledgment of commerciality with film. There's a
Speaker 3: certain acknowledgement that this stuff costs money to make and
Speaker 3: that people need to pay money to see it in
Speaker 3: order to justify the cost. And how do you get
Speaker 3: people to see it? You need to be populist to
Speaker 3: some extent, right, And it's really interesting because that's like
Speaker 3: this inconsistency at the core of this art form because
Speaker 3: it's not pure art, but it's also not pure populist
Speaker 3: mass drivel either. It finds this balance in between, and
Speaker 3: film I think has always had that tension inside of it.
Speaker 1: So when you go back to twenty year old you,
Speaker 1: who's starting to upload stuff to YouTube, Yeah, what at
Speaker 1: that point, like if you could have been like in
Speaker 1: twenty years my dream film is to make X, Like
Speaker 1: what would you have compared it to? Would it have
Speaker 1: been in Dressing Park?
Speaker 3: I mean, like for me, it was the two things
Speaker 3: that it was the two things that I loved growing up,
Speaker 3: which was I love comedy, I love action, and to me,
Speaker 3: action comedy is one of the hardest genres that to
Speaker 3: do well because I also I grew up with like
Speaker 3: actually movies like The Matrix, And I remember a formative
Speaker 3: experience watching The Matrix in theaters was like when Neo
Speaker 3: starts blocking Agent Smith at the end with one hand,
Speaker 3: he turns into it as one hand. I remember standing
Speaker 3: up in the theater do it up, and my parents like,
Speaker 3: what are you doing?
Speaker 2: Like sit down?
Speaker 3: Like no, Like what I'm seeing here is so big
Speaker 3: and so important to me that like I can't remain
Speaker 3: seated anymore. I have to like and like I remember
Speaker 3: me like what I can't that what I didn't know
Speaker 3: what to do with myself for that, So like stuff
Speaker 3: like The Matrix was high up there, like you know,
Speaker 3: I think everybody after they saw that movie, especially of
Speaker 3: our generation of filmmakers, was like yo, slow mo diving
Speaker 3: you know, which then you know, took me down the
Speaker 3: path of you know, of course the Hong Kong Blood
Speaker 3: operas and all that, and being familiar with you know,
Speaker 3: John woodswork before The Matrix to be like, wow, finally
Speaker 3: there's like an American movie that's doing this stuff that
Speaker 3: I love in these Hong Kong movies, so like just
Speaker 3: big action movies and just like the fun of it right,
Speaker 3: Like to me, humor is like such a I loved
Speaker 3: like the melt Brooks and the Naked Gun movies and
Speaker 3: like all those the Socker Brothers movies.
Speaker 2: Like I thought that maybe like a.
Speaker 1: Dio die Hard would have been like a dream movie
Speaker 1: doing something like that.
Speaker 3: A funnier though, like it's not even funnier than that,
Speaker 3: like okay, okay, like definitely funnier because I even goofy
Speaker 3: and at the end of the day, I just I
Speaker 3: love I love film comedy too.
Speaker 2: So it's like if you could blend like Hong Kong
Speaker 2: action movies.
Speaker 3: And humor and also as a visualfects nerd, right like
Speaker 3: I love doing like the Star Wars lightsabers and doing
Speaker 3: all the cool stuff that you can do with.
Speaker 2: Computers because I was a big nerd growing up too.
Speaker 2: Somewhere in there, somewhere in there, it.
Speaker 1: Was kind of the tree well, you know, and having
Speaker 1: painted that dream, that's not too far off from what
Speaker 1: you started uploading to YouTube and YouTube, I could see
Speaker 1: where you're thinking would be that would be a good
Speaker 1: platform for it. Because an action comedy film, of course
Speaker 1: needs some sort of exposition. You need a plot, you
Speaker 1: need narrative movement.
Speaker 2: But but it could be gags. It could be gased
Speaker 2: like you don't.
Speaker 1: Need to have like a you don't need to have
Speaker 1: like a a pulp fiction.
Speaker 2: Style humanity story.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it could just be like here's a cool I mean,
Speaker 3: like right, like here's it. And how many movies get
Speaker 3: summed up by like the best kung fu fights from
Speaker 3: this movie and people just sit there on YouTube and
Speaker 3: watch the fights only you know what I mean, Like,
Speaker 3: so action has that has that almost purity of like
Speaker 3: almost like dance, right, almost like choreography. Here's just the
Speaker 3: thing on its own, here's the self contained universe, here's
Speaker 3: gags within it. But yeah, that honestly, you know, YouTube
Speaker 3: gave us the freedom to do that, so we really,
Speaker 3: we really took it and felt like we took good
Speaker 3: advantage of that.
Speaker 1: We're going to take a quick break, but when we
Speaker 1: come back. Freddie tells me about his first taste of
Speaker 1: viral success. What was your first big kind of hit
Speaker 1: on YouTube?
Speaker 3: So in twenty ten is when we started, And at
Speaker 3: the end of twenty ten, we did this video called
Speaker 3: Future first person Shooter where we took a GoPro two
Speaker 3: at the time, taped it to the side of my
Speaker 3: head and did like this sort of riff which became
Speaker 3: this visual motif that shows up throughout our work at
Speaker 3: that time. But like it was a riff on like
Speaker 3: what first person shooters looked like the perspective of the
Speaker 3: video games. Yeah, but the novelty of it was I
Speaker 3: think it was that it was real, right, and I
Speaker 3: think that for people who were really into playing video
Speaker 3: games at that time, you're just like, oh, this is
Speaker 3: an interesting imagining of like what perhaps in the future
Speaker 3: when graphics are photo realistic, maybe this is what looks like.
Speaker 3: And we were taking little jokes from multiplayer games and
Speaker 3: stuff like Call of Duty and stuff like that, and
Speaker 3: we did a little pyrotechnics illegal pyrotechnics on it, and
Speaker 3: so it had like a visual pop to it, but
Speaker 3: also just kind of looked different and also, let's tell
Speaker 3: a little story, let's get some jokes, and then let's
Speaker 3: do some stuff that looks cool. And that was around
Speaker 3: Christmas of twenty ten, I believe, and I remember it
Speaker 3: went out and then like because there was just like
Speaker 3: no content around Christmas, all of these blogs just picked
Speaker 3: it up and we just saw like in the morning
Speaker 3: everyone opened their presence and then like everyone got bored
Speaker 3: by about like twelve o'clock and then like all these
Speaker 3: video game blogs were like check it out, like this
Speaker 3: is what it looks like in the future first and
Speaker 3: it just sort of went and it went in a
Speaker 3: way in a speed that we had never seen before,
Speaker 3: like whoa, everyone's covering this and that I remember really
Speaker 3: opening my eyes being like WHOA, how quickly stuff can
Speaker 3: go and how like quickly stuff can spread.
Speaker 1: That was like my first experience with it at this point.
Speaker 1: Do you view that as your career?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so, I mean, like career is such a weird
Speaker 3: one because I feel like I've spent my whole life
Speaker 3: just kind of like going from things that I think
Speaker 3: are interesting. And I've been fortunate in that the things
Speaker 3: I find interesting also have some overlap with my ability
Speaker 3: to sort of make some money from it and sustain
Speaker 3: myself in the other ways you need.
Speaker 2: To with life. Does that make me a little basic? Probably?
Speaker 3: Probably it does. You know, I'm not gonna that's fine,
Speaker 3: That's fine, you know. But so like at the time,
Speaker 3: I remember we were again, here's another fortunate thing. At
Speaker 3: that time, we myself, these guys Sam and Nico, like,
Speaker 3: we were all living in this loft in downtown Los
Speaker 3: Angeles and it was I think our rent. Each We
Speaker 3: paid two hundred bucks a month, like two hundred two
Speaker 3: and and fifty bucks a month, and we were all
Speaker 3: sharing this giant, crazy cool former paint factory space. There
Speaker 3: are no walls, so we all slept in like one
Speaker 3: room but just different corners of the same room.
Speaker 2: Was cold.
Speaker 3: We'd like turn on the oven and like heat our
Speaker 3: hands up by the oven. But we were able to
Speaker 3: pursue YouTube because it was like, Bro, you know, I
Speaker 3: just quit my job. I was working at twice century
Speaker 3: Fox doing video game stuff, and I was like I'm
Speaker 3: done with this, and I was, you know, talking to
Speaker 3: brand or like we could do this for a year
Speaker 3: and be fine, Like because our rent is so low,
Speaker 3: we can just take that risk, right, you know, Like
Speaker 3: it was good that stuff popped out very early for
Speaker 3: us comparatively, but like we were ready to just be like, yeah,
Speaker 3: let's just do this for a year.
Speaker 2: See what happens.
Speaker 1: You know, when when your stuff starts popping off in
Speaker 1: twenty ten, you're starting to get like, you know, get
Speaker 1: big numbers on videos, like we really starting to like
Speaker 1: make money like how to lead your circumstances.
Speaker 2: A little bit.
Speaker 3: And when you when we talk about the eras of YouTube, right,
Speaker 3: that really started to take off in the second and
Speaker 3: third years of doing things, because at that point then
Speaker 3: you start to get like brand attention. There was like companies,
Speaker 3: video game companies, what have you that were starting to
Speaker 3: be like, oh, maybe we can use YouTube business alternative
Speaker 3: advertising platform, and they weren't paying as much as like
Speaker 3: TV commercials, even though anything that we did was getting
Speaker 3: more exposure for them than a teeny commercial Everwood. But
Speaker 3: but like again the context right, like nobody Madison Avenue
Speaker 3: didn't respect it in that way. So once things start
Speaker 3: to like really in terms of being like, oh this
Speaker 3: is like can be like a real like money maker
Speaker 3: for us was one you start to be like, oh,
Speaker 3: I guess we could do like a little video promoting
Speaker 3: a game. But there was that window about to your
Speaker 3: window where it was like you start to be like
Speaker 3: brand deals started to show up, and then people could
Speaker 3: start to like, oh, shoot, I can we can shoot
Speaker 3: this for this much and here's how much it's coming in,
Speaker 3: and we almost were like a little mini ad agency.
Speaker 3: It started to change things because you know, we're like, oh, okay,
Speaker 3: we can buy like a nice camera. Now, oh wait,
Speaker 3: hey we can maybe buy this light or like buy
Speaker 3: this green screen pop up thing, you know, and then
Speaker 3: they're not like crazy expensive stuff. But it started to
Speaker 3: be like, oh, this is allowing us to keep doing
Speaker 3: what we like doing. And also I think we very
Speaker 3: quickly realized that it was just great practice every week
Speaker 3: forcing yourself to make something, finish it, see it through
Speaker 3: put it up and then next week you're just doing
Speaker 3: something completely different. That process where you're forced to just
Speaker 3: take something to completion over and over and over again.
Speaker 3: I think it's a valuable craft, and I think that
Speaker 3: we realized very quickly. We're like, this is great because
Speaker 3: we get to practice visual effects, we get practice doing movies.
Speaker 3: We can make mistakes, but it's fine because next week
Speaker 3: we'll do.
Speaker 2: Another video, you know, and it doesn't matter.
Speaker 3: What was what set us apart at that time was
Speaker 3: that we really took it seriously. Like I think a
Speaker 3: lot of people, especially once money started rolling in, they're like,
Speaker 3: what's the minimum amount of work I can do to
Speaker 3: get a YouTube video up and get views. I don't
Speaker 3: think we ever had that mindset. It was always about
Speaker 3: trying to do it better and trying to improve our
Speaker 3: craft as filmmakers. We'd shoot it, we'd edit it, we'd
Speaker 3: send the edit to sound design, where I would do
Speaker 3: sound design. Brandon would then do additional vfxs. I would
Speaker 3: help out VFX. He would do the color of it.
Speaker 3: We'd do a color pass, we'd mix it in pro tools,
Speaker 3: do a fo like we were doing it like it
Speaker 3: was a full movie and we're doing one every week,
Speaker 3: So like I fucked my sleep up. But you know,
Speaker 3: like that was but that was the like the grind.
Speaker 1: No no, I.
Speaker 3: Mean like no, I mean honestly, at a certain point,
Speaker 3: like we were brand and I were doing like an
Speaker 3: all nighter every week for like two years, Like that
Speaker 3: was just the energy of the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, at this era when you are twenty five,
Speaker 1: you're pulling all nighters, you're making money on YouTube, you're
Speaker 1: in LA again, mid twenties, like having some level of success,
Speaker 1: How did you manage to keep focused, to have the
Speaker 1: drive to keep to pull on nighters once a week
Speaker 1: every night for two years rather than just go blow
Speaker 1: money like and you know.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think a big part of it was
Speaker 3: seeing numbers go up and being like, wow, more people
Speaker 3: are seeing this and we're reaching more people sort of
Speaker 3: on a week by week basis, which was really just
Speaker 3: exciting to just note that alone puts a lot of
Speaker 3: gas in the engine, so to speak, because it's just fun,
Speaker 3: right and at the end of the day, we got
Speaker 3: to do whatever we want to do every week, and
Speaker 3: there was a certain creative freedom to that challenge of
Speaker 3: being like, all right, well we're gonna do this week
Speaker 3: how we're gonna top ourselves. And it required a lot
Speaker 3: of energy, required a love of effort, required your full
Speaker 3: life dedication towards it. But I think the difference was
Speaker 3: the end goal was always I want to make things
Speaker 3: that people see. And how they do that. Is it
Speaker 3: in a dark theater that they pay fifteen bucks for
Speaker 3: or is it on their phone right before classes start
Speaker 3: in school.
Speaker 2: To me, that's immaterial.
Speaker 3: I don't care about that as much comparatively, right, Like,
Speaker 3: I know a lot of filmmakers in my generation talking
Speaker 3: about the cinematic experience and you got to see it
Speaker 3: on the big screen, And to me, I'm like, listen,
Speaker 3: if I get that luxury, great, But right now where
Speaker 3: I'm at, like, yo, if anybody just sees it, I'm happy,
Speaker 3: Like I don't care. If I'm not gonna put any
Speaker 3: restrictions on it. I'm already nobody's I'm already in nobody,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. Like, I can't afford to
Speaker 3: be like you can only see myself. I'm like, anywhere
Speaker 3: anyhow you can find that you can see it, Like,
Speaker 3: I'm happy. I don't care so to that to that extent.
Speaker 3: Right if you said, listen, I'm gonna give you a choice.
Speaker 3: Would you rather have a theatrical release that does okay?
Speaker 3: Or would you rather have like a home video iTunes
Speaker 3: only streaming only thing, but a lot of more.
Speaker 2: People see it.
Speaker 3: At the end of the day, I think that I
Speaker 3: got into film because I like entertaining people and I
Speaker 3: like entertaining myself. Right, I think I find a lot
Speaker 3: of stuff we do very funny too, and I get
Speaker 3: a kick out of it. Right, So if that becomes
Speaker 3: sort of higher on your list of priorities than other
Speaker 3: totally valid artistic sensibilities, right then I think that sort
Speaker 3: of shapes your worldview a little bit.
Speaker 1: I think it might be interesting to answer those to
Speaker 1: tease those out a little bit more, Like, like, you
Speaker 1: picked the theatrical release, roup, what do you think then
Speaker 1: happens to your career theoretically?
Speaker 3: So I think that in I think that in Hollywood
Speaker 3: and this industry specifically, there's a halo effect of having
Speaker 3: done things right. Like, only if you've done something in
Speaker 3: the exact context they're looking at, do they think you
Speaker 3: can do that thing in that context? So your constant
Speaker 3: I've felt, at least in my experience, I've always felt
Speaker 3: like I'm constantly needing to prove myself and prove I
Speaker 3: can do something again and again and again. And what
Speaker 3: it does for your career if you get a film
Speaker 3: and it's you know, sort of the more atracial, theatical approach,
Speaker 3: and it allows you those opportunities that are more in
Speaker 3: that direction of things.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: And by the way, I will note that this is
Speaker 3: sort of it's where a very weird time period because
Speaker 3: stuff is shifting. But like I would say, let's say
Speaker 3: a few years ago, that's the kind of thing that
Speaker 3: would say like, okay, cool, maybe you could you might
Speaker 3: be opened up now to a commercial directing gig or
Speaker 3: like a television episode. Now you get a couple television
Speaker 3: direction credits, or it makes it easier for like, hey,
Speaker 3: I want to raise money in the traditional routes for
Speaker 3: another theatrical feature film.
Speaker 2: Oh, you've done it.
Speaker 3: Once already and you've hear some numbers for it. Okay,
Speaker 3: you're a more trustworthy ncity. You're more likely to get
Speaker 3: that compared to someone who's like, I've never directed a
Speaker 3: future film before and I want some money for that.
Speaker 3: So it opens up the doors in that direction of
Speaker 3: the industry, right, And I think what's interesting is that
Speaker 3: those are different doors. It's not there's not a lot overlap.
Speaker 3: Because then let's take the other direction. Let's take a okay, cool,
Speaker 3: you made a movie. It became huge on iTunes. Everyone
Speaker 3: downloaded on iTunes, incredible numbers on it did better than
Speaker 3: like commercial movies that week, like that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: A lot of people saw what that opens up potentially,
Speaker 3: like crowdfunding, for example, in that scenario becomes a little
Speaker 3: bit easier for you compared to like an indie movie
Speaker 3: that someone's done that nobody's necessarily seen. I think you're
Speaker 3: more likely to access the direct to audience thing, and
Speaker 3: I think it's a much more DIY route in that direction.
Speaker 3: Right when'm talking about crowdfunding, I'm talking about that sort
Speaker 3: of stuff. But again, different doors, different directions.
Speaker 1: So that really and that's really scenario released in iTunes.
Speaker 1: It's successful. It's taking you further away from the traditional route,
Speaker 1: opening you up though to an audience of people who
Speaker 1: might then you might be able to fund crowd source
Speaker 1: fund or maybe then do it the actual and then
Speaker 1: maybe created a.
Speaker 3: Film that you could release potentially right like or or
Speaker 3: the other direction where it's like, oh maybe we just
Speaker 3: keep doing stuff online only I know, you know, there's
Speaker 3: some some folks I know who are like, yeah, they
Speaker 3: don't care about theatrial release, but they they aim everything
Speaker 3: around the iTunes release and how they digitally sort of
Speaker 3: monetize it.
Speaker 2: Right, So like that's where we're at right now. We
Speaker 2: did this.
Speaker 3: We started a podcast, a Dungeons and Dragons podcast called
Speaker 3: Dungeons and Daddies, which is not a BDSM podcast. It's
Speaker 3: a Dungeons and Dragons podcast, and it's like it's it's
Speaker 3: a story where it's like an improv comedy thing. We
Speaker 3: like myself and four friends we play Dungeons and Dragons
Speaker 3: and we play four dads, like human dads from our
Speaker 3: world sent into a fantasy world to like rescue their kids,
Speaker 3: and it's like dad humor and all that stuff, you know.
Speaker 3: We started a Patreon for it. The podcast has been
Speaker 3: growing over the past couple of years. Matt and myself,
Speaker 3: my directing partner, we were like, all right, cool, this
Speaker 3: is our way of funding a movie. We're gonna use
Speaker 3: this and we fund the movie. So we shot the movie
Speaker 3: at the end of last year. We're in post production
Speaker 3: it now, and we're gonna go like the festival route
Speaker 3: for it, and like worst case scenario, we got good
Speaker 3: practice and we'll do another one. So you know, look,
Speaker 3: I think I think you can go in any direction
Speaker 3: and you can find your way to it. What matters
Speaker 3: is do you want that? Do you want to actually
Speaker 3: make movies? Because in the course of my career, I've
Speaker 3: found a lot of people, and I've met a lot
Speaker 3: of people who are doing things because it was getting views.
Speaker 3: They're doing things because it was making them money, and like,
Speaker 3: I don't know a single one of them who managed
Speaker 3: to keep it up. Like they all do it and
Speaker 3: they love it and they make up you know, some
Speaker 3: of them make boatloads of cash doing it, but then
Speaker 3: at certain point they're like, I gotta do something else.
Speaker 3: But like for me, I feel like very fortunate in
Speaker 3: that I've managed to find the thing I like to
Speaker 3: do early on. So this sort of exploring of like oh,
Speaker 3: let's get into like sort of longer form film. It
Speaker 3: was because you know, we were seeing YouTube change and
Speaker 3: we were like, yeah, I don't think we kind of
Speaker 3: like we don't work here as well anymore. We don't
Speaker 3: have the stamina to keep up that kind of schedule
Speaker 3: that we were doing anymore. And you know, we felt
Speaker 3: like we said a lot in the world world of
Speaker 3: short film, and I want to be like, what can
Speaker 3: I say now in longer form formats? And what are
Speaker 3: the kind of stories I can tell in longer forms?
Speaker 3: So that was from YouTube to like the web series,
Speaker 3: to Do is a couple of shows for Hulu and
Speaker 3: now doing trying to do a movie. It's it's all
Speaker 3: just sort of the same vein of artistic exploration. So
Speaker 3: it really just comes down to I think if you
Speaker 3: love filmmaking, you genuinely do love it, and you would
Speaker 3: do it no matter what. It doesn't matter if anyone's watching,
Speaker 3: it doesn't matter if you can make money off of it,
Speaker 3: you take a job and do it on the side.
Speaker 3: If that's how much you love it, that's I think
Speaker 3: what you need to be asking yourself because if it's
Speaker 3: not that fine, I think you have to find something
Speaker 3: that is that way for you.
Speaker 1: Hey, stick around, because after the break started from the bottom.
Speaker 1: Producer David Jah joins me on Mike as we ask
Speaker 1: Freddie about the obstacles he faced in Hollywood as an
Speaker 1: Asian creator. David, I know you're a fan of Freddie.
Speaker 1: Anything you want to.
Speaker 4: Ask, you know, Freddy, I will say, when I was
Speaker 4: grown up, YouTube did seem like a way for Asian
Speaker 4: filmmakers to sort of circumvent the institution of Hollywood. It was,
Speaker 4: and it was a breadth of fresh air to see
Speaker 4: a yellow face out there.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So I'm just wondering if you have any thoughts on
Speaker 4: being an Asian creator.
Speaker 3: So here's the way I feel about that, which is,
Speaker 3: when I think about myself as an American, I think
Speaker 3: myself as a human being, I don't ever want to
Speaker 3: feel like I'm constrained by anything. So for me, and
Speaker 3: there's Asian stories that I want to tell, but I
Speaker 3: feel like I don't want to be someone to be
Speaker 3: like and they only tell Asian stories, Right, I feel
Speaker 3: like that is in and of itself, its own cage
Speaker 3: that you get segmented into and can be discarded and ignored.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: I would much rather be someone to be like who
Speaker 3: has the freedom that is implicit to white filmmakers, which
Speaker 3: is you can make something and cover any subject. So
Speaker 3: in that sense, I think that when I look at,
Speaker 3: you know, sort of the generations to come, I think
Speaker 3: the message that I would want to send is like,
Speaker 3: not one of like stick to the world that you
Speaker 3: know and only say that it's like no, no, no. I
Speaker 3: think art is about exploring and empathizing with other viewpoints.
Speaker 3: And maybe I'll overreach, maybe I'll try and tell a
Speaker 3: story that I like, ooh, didn't get all the nuance
Speaker 3: on that.
Speaker 2: That's the risk of art.
Speaker 3: And I think that I just look around and I
Speaker 3: see so few, especially because you know there's a stereotype
Speaker 3: with with sort of Asian parenting and growing up. I
Speaker 3: see so few artistic Asian types. And then that bums
Speaker 3: me out because like it's devastating. It's devastating, it's a
Speaker 3: threat to us. So what do you make of this
Speaker 3: recent trend then, where Asian actors, Asian movie makers, Asian
Speaker 3: media is sort of being pushed towards this pigeonhole where
Speaker 3: we have to be Asian.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like that's our thing now, Like that's our genre.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 2: I was literally joking.
Speaker 3: I was literally joking the other day where I'm like,
Speaker 3: I can't wait until we get past this era of
Speaker 3: movies where our parents apologize to us as like the
Speaker 3: plot point, like the.
Speaker 4: Tropes, man, it's so bad, it's out of control. You know,
Speaker 4: a lot of Asian Americans don't like Asian American content.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so to me, at least, to me at least,
Speaker 3: what's interesting about it is like there's kind of two
Speaker 3: factors that play there, Right, There's there is a palatability
Speaker 3: towards a predominantly white dominated quote unquote mainstream culture.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: What YouTube and online has opened up is that there
Speaker 3: are niche cultures that are huge, right, Like K pop
Speaker 3: is exploded because of online video. Right, So the question
Speaker 3: of mainstream possibility, to me, the only answer to when
Speaker 3: someone tries to pigeonhole you.
Speaker 2: Is you must resist it as hard as you can.
Speaker 3: You must go as hard as you can in the
Speaker 3: opposite direction in order to not be pigeonholed. I think
Speaker 3: that the obligation is not to be like, what is
Speaker 3: the most commercially viable thing that I can fit in
Speaker 3: to the white media landscape that will get us the
Speaker 3: sort of athletes?
Speaker 1: Nah?
Speaker 3: Fuck that That's why, honestly, that's why I think about
Speaker 3: Better Luck Tomorrow so much. Justin Lynn's film that you
Speaker 3: know he started his career off with, which depicted these
Speaker 3: very studious.
Speaker 2: Group of Asians doing crimes.
Speaker 3: You know, the very famous example in the film History
Speaker 3: where he played that at a festival he was sun
Speaker 3: Dance and like a critic stood up and I was like,
Speaker 3: you're depicting Asians in this like negative light, Like how
Speaker 3: can you do this as an Asian filmmaker? And Roger
Speaker 3: Ebert stood up and I was like, no, man, he
Speaker 3: should be able to say that.
Speaker 2: Why not?
Speaker 3: Hell yeah, we do crimes, do you know what I'm saying? Like,
Speaker 3: that's the kind of stuff where I want. I want
Speaker 3: to be like, listen, this stuff is out there. How
Speaker 3: we respond to it is within our control, you know.
Speaker 3: And I think that, like it's always going to be
Speaker 3: commercially viable to hw with white culture. There's gravity. The
Speaker 3: gravity is going to pull you towards what's the mainstream
Speaker 3: pop culture accessibility? Right it's and I think it's up
Speaker 3: to us, as if you're a true artist, it's up
Speaker 3: to you to like fire the boost of rockets, be
Speaker 3: like no, hell no, we're going over here.
Speaker 2: You know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Yo, Freddy over nine million subscribers, one point six billion views. Man,
Speaker 1: by any measure of success, like your successful filmilmmaker, Like,
Speaker 1: I feel like in another era there's a war where
Speaker 1: you should be Kevin Smith, Robert Rodriguez if you wanted
Speaker 1: to be right, Like, if you wanted to have that,
Speaker 1: you should be Quentin Tarantino if you wanted to have that.
Speaker 1: Right Maybe, I mean, look, I mean been given the
Speaker 1: same opportunities at least that these people were given. Right,
Speaker 1: But like it feels like the given the level of
Speaker 1: audience's been able to build the level of success you've
Speaker 1: been on the to have as a filmmaker, Like you
Speaker 1: should be given the opportunities that a lot of like
Speaker 1: indie filmmakers have been given over the years. Like is
Speaker 1: there do you feel like the predominant view of Asian
Speaker 1: involvement in cinema has been a factor in that?
Speaker 3: Or I mean, I think there's always things in life
Speaker 3: that are some parts are in your hands, some parts
Speaker 3: are out of your hands, right, Like there's certain things
Speaker 3: that's just like I can't control what the taste is
Speaker 3: and like, hey, you know what, here's the book that
Speaker 3: was the Asian book that got popular and then you know,
Speaker 3: right like that a lot of the stuff in life
Speaker 3: I think is out of your hands and then other
Speaker 3: stuff in my hands. I think I've always tried to
Speaker 3: stay as close to my sort of artistic principles, guiding
Speaker 3: principles as possible.
Speaker 2: Those are the choices that you make.
Speaker 3: And for me, I think that you know, there certainly
Speaker 3: must be some I think there's of course, externalizing factors
Speaker 3: that have influenced the path that I took.
Speaker 1: Kind of bullshit like Kevin Smith can make a career
Speaker 1: out of clerks, Like why can't see it?
Speaker 2: Might be like I'm happy though, I'll be able to.
Speaker 1: Make some sort of commercial career out of in film,
Speaker 1: out of Rocket Jump.
Speaker 4: Even you said earlier like you keep having to prove yourself,
Speaker 4: like like it's not good enough.
Speaker 2: See, I love that, but I love that you like that.
Speaker 3: I love being in a position where I feel like
Speaker 3: I have to prove myself.
Speaker 2: But that's the thing I love that.
Speaker 3: I don't know why I'm addicted to it because I
Speaker 3: think that, like I think that that place is where
Speaker 3: it's like, that's where it's all on the line, and
Speaker 3: to me, it's like it's your choice, right. You can
Speaker 3: either be like, dang, the system's unfair, or maybe this
Speaker 3: is an Asian thing. I grew up here the Ox.
Speaker 3: Everyone says Ye're the Ox. They just put their head
Speaker 3: down work. That's like that's how I feel. I just
Speaker 3: put my head down, like, all right, listen, the world
Speaker 3: is not rewarding me in the way or whatever.
Speaker 2: I don't care.
Speaker 3: I'm just gonna keep working on my stuff because I
Speaker 3: love doing this the way. I feel like as long
Speaker 3: as I can at least sustain my career, at least
Speaker 3: I can kind of like pay for my rent and like,
Speaker 3: you know, pay for my food. I'm gonna keep going
Speaker 3: kind of the direction, the direction that I go.
Speaker 1: You know, it's funny. I feel like that's I feel
Speaker 1: like that's the primary way people of color become successful
Speaker 1: is just learning to put your head down and work.
Speaker 1: Because when you lift your head up and you start
Speaker 1: to realize, yeah, this a little depressing.
Speaker 2: A little fit.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's so sad. We gotta just put our head
Speaker 5: down and ignore it. Shit, man, Freddie want thank you
Speaker 5: may Yeah, thank you so much. That was Freddy Wong,
Speaker 5: one of the og stars of YouTube and early influencers. Obviously,
Speaker 5: his career in media has taken some twists and turns,
Speaker 5: but it's incredible what.
Speaker 1: He's managed to accomplish. All from a YouTube channel that
Speaker 1: he started to as the six called Freddy w startup
Speaker 1: from the Bottom is produced by David Jaw, edited by
Speaker 1: Keishaw Williams, engineered by Bent Holliday, Booked by Laura Morgan
Speaker 1: with production help from Lea Rose. The show is executive
Speaker 1: produced by Jacob Goldstein, who's not all up in the
Speaker 1: videos for Pushkin Industries. Our theme music's by Bent Holliday
Speaker 1: and David Jaw featuring Anthony Yaggs and Savanna Joe Lack.
Speaker 1: Listen to Start Up from the Bottom. Wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts and if you want ad free episodes available
Speaker 1: one week early sign up for Pushkin Plus. Check out
Speaker 1: Pushkin dot Fm or the Apple Show page for more information.
Speaker 1: If you like her show, please remember to share, rate,
Speaker 1: and review us on your podcast app. I'm justin Richmond.