MY JOURNEY WITH ONLINE VIDEO
From YouTuber to Filmmaker... to TikToker?
From 2012 to 2017, I managed two YouTube channels (DyeYoung and Sholland) with over 55K combined subscribers. While a good chunk of those videos are deleted now (there's only so much cringey 2015 humor I can take), I grew as a filmmaker from producing comedy content on a weekly basis.
Fast forward to 2020. I'd shed my quirky YouTuber skin and reinvented myself as a "very serious" film director. Production had completely stalled on my debut feature film due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Unable to shoot as planned, I turned to TikTok to grow our audience.
My first TikTok video was a 1-minute elevator pitch for Egghead & Twinkie, and it went viral. I followed up the initial pitch with a series of TikTok videos promoting our Seed&Spark crowdfunding campaign for the film. Ultimately, we raised over $22,000 and grew the @eggheadtwinkiefilm TikTok account to over 250K followers.
Having made silly videos on the internet since I was fifteen, I have a longstanding appreciation for short-form online content and its power to move people.
