An Interview with John

I met John in Portland, Oregon at the Northwest YouTube Gathering in 2009. He was 12 years old at the time, though it was immediately apparent that his brain operates at a level most people don’t achieve until after a few years of college. We had some stimulating conversation, and I left the gathering eager to see how he’d develop his passion for visual media in the coming years.

He later contacted me, wanting to conduct an interview with me for a school project. I thought that some of you may find the result to be a semi-interesting read, so I’m posting it here in its entirety:

JOHN: You have a wide variety of genres, from documentary to comedy, with over a million uploaded views and 42,000 subscribers on YouTube! What got you interested in film, and would you be perceived more as director, producer, camera man, or a combination?

MICHAEL: There wasn’t something in my life that made me stop and think, “Oh! Film sounds interesting! I’ll do that!” Rather, toward the end of high school, when it came time to decide what to do with my life after graduation, I looked back and thought, “Oh. I guess I play with video cameras a lot. I suppose I’ll go to film school.” That decision is a pretty good example of how I’ve lived my life so far: I just sort of go with the flow. I don’t really worry too much about about what I’d like to be perceived as. I just do things that I find fun and interesting, and other people can label me and my work as they see fit.

JOHN: When we met in Portland, Oregon for a YouTube gathering, I noticed you had a colossal camera. What camera do you use, and by what criteria do you choose your equipment for various projects?

MICHAEL: I hope this doesn’t end up being too technical of an answer:

When I started posting videos on YouTube, I used a Panasonic AG-DVX100A. I had purchased it with student loan money for use both on school projects as well as extra-cirricular things, like wedding videos and personal documentaries. It was a standard-def NTSC camera, which served me very well for many years, but during the summer of 2009, I decided that I wanted to upgrade to a high-definition camera. After some research, I decided on the Panasonic AG-HPX170, which is sort of a big brother of the camera I had before, featuring a similar (though considerably larger) design, with a higher-resolution sensor, and a few extra bells and whistles. One of the things I was happiest about in purchasing the new camera was getting away from a tape-based workflow, and moving to a solid-state storage system, meaning that I didn’t have to worry about buying new tapes all the time and finding space to store the old ones. I just film stuff, then move the video files to my harddrive and I’m done.

When it comes to shopping for equipment in general, I like to spend a little extra to get something that’s on the high-end of middle-of-the-road, if that makes sense. I feel paying a little more for a higher-quality tool in the beginning will pay off in the end.

JOHN: Your work has a very unique “twang” to it—your “Arandavision”; it has a slap-stick humor side while maintaining a serious side. What influences your approach to each piece, and who are your film heroes and mentors?

MICHAEL: Ze Frank is widely regarded as the father of modern vlogging. When I initially decided to get serious about producing content for the web, I went back and watched all of Ze Frank’s “The Show with Ze Frank”. What I loved most was his ability to use humor to get people to understand (or at least become aware of) important aspects of life, and that’s something I’ve sought to put into my work as well.

Aside from that, my inspiration comes from a plethora of sources; every bit of text you read, every image you view, and every song you listen to can affect how you feel, and those feelings can be drawn on to create art in many different forms. If you want to create something that will affect the feelings of others, you have to seek out, or at least be receptive to, things that affect your own feelings. You don’t have to be all artsy-fartsy about it, but you have to consume art to create art.

JOHN: You once told me that you spent over $200,000 in film equipment while at your film school, The Brooks Institute. If you had known how expensive it would be ahead of time, would you still have pursued your interest in film study?

MICHAEL: That’s not exactly true; I did put myself in quite a bit of debt to attend The Brooks Institute, but the vast majority of that money went to tuition. The amount that I spent on my own equipment while in school was probably closer to about $5,000.

If I knew how much debt I’d be in after attending school, I probably wouldn’t have done it, instead opting to learn what I could from reading on the subject, getting entry-level film-industry jobs, and experimenting on my own.

JOHN: People in the arts have strong preferences for different computers for different outcomes. Which computer suits most of your work—Mac or PC?

MICHAEL: I grew up using them, so I’m extremely fluent in PC. I had always heard that Macs were “so much better” and “so easy to use” and “not capable of crashing”, so when I was forced to use them in college, I was expecting to be completely blown away by these god-like computers. As you might expect, I was instead blown away by how un-blown away I was.

I think the whole PC versus Mac argument is a little bit stupid; there is nothing that a PC can do that a Mac isn’t capable of, and vice versa. Each person is going to have their own preference, but trying to convert others to your side is a waste of everyone’s time.

JOHN: I love how your work has a lot of snazzy special effects. What software do you use for editing, and special effects and have you had to study music or percussion to bring it all together?

MICHAEL: I use nearly everything in the Adobe Creative Suite, especially Premeire Pro, After Effects, Photoshop, and Flash. For audio and music stuff, I use both Sonar and FL Studio.

My musical knowledge comes from being involved with my schools’ marching bands, jazz bands, and drumline through my teenage years. My mother was a musician, so growing up around her as she composed song after song probably helped lay the foundations for my musicianship later in life.

JOHN: About ten years ago you were my age. In your next ten years, what do you hope to accomplish, and what advice do you have for me for my next ten years wanting to go into film, too?

MICHAEL: I honestly don’t know for sure what I’d like to accomplish in the next decade. Being married with a couple kids sounds nice, but I really don’t have any solid goals. As I mentioned earlier, I just sort of do what makes me happy now. In ten years, I’ll know where that got me.

As far as advice goes, I’ll leave you with this: Despite its negative effects on my personal relationships, the ability to pick out flaws in everything has helped my creative work immensely. Try creating a mental “things that suck” list. When you watch a bad movie, watch a bad YouTube video, or listen to a bad song, try to work out what made it bad, and add it to your list. Then, when it comes to creating your own works of art, it’s a lot easier to figure out what to do when you know what not to do.

Just remember to keep your “things that suck” list about art. Girls don’t like it when you use the same tactics in relationships. Trust me.

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