Written by Teamsupertarmp's very own Zane O'Gwin -
This
video was probably one of the funnest shoots that we have done as Team
Supertramp. We didn’t have any major problems to tackle. That being said
as with most shoots there still are little hang ups that we had to deal
with. More on that in a bit.
The
first thing that we do as a team is we start brainstorming ideas. We
came up with several but we wanted an amazing stunt that not a lot of
people have actually seen. Especially not the way that we would film it.
We pitched this idea along with several others and two of them were
chosen by Subaru. We were all very excited.
Now
that we had the idea and concept solidified we needed to find the right
people to execute the stunt. One name came to everyone’s mind and that
was Marshall Miller.
If
you ask anyone on the team about Marshall you will immediately get a
smile and a comment along the lines of “Marshall’s the man!”
Not
only does he personify positivity and optimism he is very good at what
he does. He understands the importance of safety and will quickly figure
out all of the details and skills that it will take to execute the
stunt at hand. We have used Marshall in 5 other videos. Although
Marshall is an extreme athlete, he had never done wing walking before.
So when we first got to California, Marshall sat down with our pilot
Michael Mason of Mason Wing Walking. He provided and owned the Stearman
Aircraft you see in the video. and went over all the details and tried
it out.
Everything
was set in place and we started shooting early that next morning just
as the sun was rising. We had some ice on the wing still and had to wait
for the sun rays to melt it off. Then we realized it was only in the
high 50 ° F and a lot colder up in the air. Marshall didn’t complain
once. We were able to get a coat underneath his shirt that helped him
out a bit.
The
first day was sunny skies and had zero problems with all our locations.
We had just finished at the first location, which was the airport Sants
Paula.
We
just arrived at our next location when we receive a phone call from
Marshall that he had just met Harrison Ford. We thought he was kidding.
Apparently Mr. Ford was having a plane built at that small airport and
was coming to check on it. The funny thing is when he first arrived he
went straight to the airplane that we were using because he loved the
model and the way it looked. The rest of the team was pretty sad that
they had missed Indiana Jones himself!
The
next day of filming was all about the Shotover. The Shotover is a
gimbal that is attached to the bottom of a helicopter that stabilizes a
camera. This was provided by Tempt Media and Eric was our camera
operator. Some of the coolest people to work with and our Helicopter was
piloted by Kevin Larosa. A fun fact we learned about Kevin was that he
has piloted a helicopter on some of HollyWoods biggest blockbusters such
as the Marvel films and Transformers. Between Kevin and Eric we knew we
were in good hands once we first got up in the air. They just asked
Devin what he was looking for and they made it happen.
The
end of the day we were hoping for an amazing sunset shot like we had
the day before but Mother Nature said otherwise and we had overcast all
evening. So we made do with what we had.
We
seriously had a blast making this video come to life. We put so much
passion and energy in everything we do and want to give people something
to smile about. We hope you can feel our love. As we always say, over
and out!
Lake Powell is a place where dreams come true and
bone-crushing body blows happen. The natural surroundings it provides should be
on anyone and everyone’s to go bucket list. When in Lake Powell there is a
never-ending possibility to what could be next. As seen in many of Devin
Supertramp’s videos.
Then the idea of King of the Hill with Zorb balls was
presented. Exciting, right? That’s what I thought when I willingly said I would
take part in this shoot.
There is one thing about Lake Powell that presents interesting
challenges. For this shoot we would need to find a good-sized island that would
provide easy accessibility and full 360 footage for the cameramen. This was a
challenge; every spot we would find was either to big, to hard to climb up to
or simply just not what we were looking for. Until, we found this gem of an
island on the last day of our weeklong escapade, a couple miles from camp.
The excited crew nominated a few lucky friends to begin the
king of the hill battle. As we got to the top with our zorb balls inflated an
equipped. We had no plan except it was a free for all and that we had to pummel
our friends into the watery depths below. The count down begins, three, two,
one! We all charge planting our feet into the rocky surface hoping our leverage
and force was better than our opponents. BOOM! Someone flies into the air and
knocks the person across onto the ground. People scatter brained franticly get
up trying to brace for another impact, but soon find they are to late and end
up in the water.
I was apart of the Zorb Soccer video a couple years ago, and
I quickly learned how much more forgiving grass is than sandstone. Zorb balls
aren’t as protective when it came one on one with sandstone and all of it’s
sediments breaking and cutting almost all of us that came in contact with it.
Punctured zorbs, cut up feet and knees where the result of playing games here,
but this was a battle that just seemed not to end. There was no end because we
were all too competitive to even consider this a game. It was a full on
exhausting battle against people I consider friends.
After each round more injuries would surface, heavy
breathing accompanied everyone as we struggled out of the water. Slipping on
wet rock and falling back into the water was common. But as friends do we would
help each other out with hopes of putting them back to where they belong, in
the water!
Despite the injuries, this was a fun video! Being able to go
back to playground with my friends is something I missed from childhood. But
this provided a little reminiscent reminder that it’s never too late to be a
kid. So get outside play games and maybe
hurt your friends in the name of childhood fun.
When we first showed
up to film this JetPack we had no idea what we were in for. We heard
about it and watched a few YouTube clips about it but seeing it in
person is a whole other experience. It is as loud as a jet airplane and
super fast. We knew this was going to be huge because it's something
that has never been done before. As far as filming a JetPack
professionally. There are phone video's but this is the first
professionally produced video of a JetPack and we are super proud of
it.
Our
biggest dilemma was how do we shoot this and make it look cool because
he was literally flying back and forth over the same lake over and over.
So we knew we needed to bring out all the cameras to add as many
different angles to the JetPack as possible. We brought the RED Weapon,
the Phantom Miro, the DJI Phantom 4, the Inspire 1, Canon 5D Mark 4, and
GoPro Hero 4's. We had two days to shoot this so we decided to make the
first day our trial and error day (which is how we typically approach
this kind of video) and use every camera then at the end of the day we
would review our footage and decide we like best and do as much as that
as possible on the second day. We found that obviously getting as close
to David (the JetPack pilot) as possible while he's flying looked by far
the best, but we were basically dealing with a Jet, which can be
dangerous. So the best answer to that was using the drones. We would map
out a course for David to fly so there was no way of him getting
confused with us and crashing into the drone. We would then fly that
course and David would get as close as possible to us without hitting
the drone.
Another
dilemma we had to work around was the flight time and the amount of
flights the JetPack could do in those two days. The JetPack can only fly
about 4 minutes before it runs out of gas and then we had enough gas to
give us about 15 total flights (7 to 8 per day). So we had to know
exactly what shots we wanted for each flight so we could make the best
of them. How we did that is we would tell David what we were shooting
for each flight then we would tell him what we wanted him to do for that
flight.
For
Example: I would have the boat drop me off on one of the islands with
the RED and Glidecam then Carter would be on the Phantom. So I would
tell David I want you to fly to the island, fly around it twice then fly
to Carter and fly by him for his shot. We would then tell him to do
something different each time he passed whether that was fly high or fly
low, fly fast or fly slow. It was all mapped out before he went up so
there was no confusion while he was in air.
As
far as the Intro for the video goes it is just a little different then
most of our intros. Other than it was shot during golden hour. I didn't
want camera moves to distract from how amazing this JetPack is. So my
thought was I just want a static shot with the JetPack centered and then
it just takes off without any camera moves. I wanted the JetPack to be
everything it is visually and let that be the show. I think it turned
out really cool and everything I was imagining and then just to top that
shot off I added a subtle digital zoom as he is taking off. Which added
a cool feel without taking anything from the JetPack taking off.
Me
and Carter are super proud of this video because like I said at the
beginning we weren't sure how we were going to make this video cool when
all he is doing is flying back and forth over the same lake for two
days. Plus only having a total of 16 flights. We got every shot we
wanted and even more. It was so much fun also working with the JetPack
Aviation crew. They were so helpful and so willing to do whatever it
took to help us make the best video possible. Super excited to see what
the future holds for this thing as they make more and more advances.
Maybe one day we will all have our very own JetPack that we can strap on
and fly to work.
Mario Kart Love Song has been a passion project that Devin
had been wanting to do for years. Shoot I think he has been wanting to do this
video since before I even started working with him around 4 years ago. Mario
Kart in Real Life videos have always been a popular subject on YouTube ever
since Remi Gaillard did his over 8 years ago.
For us at DevinSuperTramp this project started around 2
years ago when we did a Go Kart project for the new Mad Max video game. Check
it out here:
We bought and built all the Go Karts for Mad Max. After the project was finished Devin decided
that instead of selling or scrapping the Go Karts, he wanted to hold onto them
and use them as his Mario Kart in Real Life Karts. Well about a year goes by and it’s finally time
to get the Karts out of storage (aka Devin’s backyard) and transform them from
dumpy looking Mad Max Karts to the cleaner looking Mario Karts.
Devin put me in charge of making the transformations since myself
and a good friend named Andy Sims had been the ones to make the Mad Max Karts
in the first place. After doing a little
research on some of the different Mario Kart designs, I decided which karts
would be the best ones to transform and then got to work. For the most part a
lot of the karts only required a few cosmetic changes to get them how we wanted
them to look but some of the other karts took a decent amount of time to build
out.
Check out our video on how the karts were made here:
A lot of the kart’s engines needed some work to be done and
so I took a few into a local small engine shop to get worked on. We ran into a
little snag as it was taking longer for the kart engines to be worked on than
we were hoping, so Devin and I asked for help on Facebook. That’s when we met
our new friend Levi. He responded to a post that Devin made and so I reached
out to him and we found out that he had done small engine work for several
years and had been involved with building props in the past as well. Levi ended
up being the perfect man for the job and even ended up playing the Donkey Kong
character for us as well.
The next thing that Devin really wanted for this project
were some real life turtle shells as Devin knew that would be something that
could set this Mario Kart in Real Life video apart from other ones that have
been made by other channels. One of Levi’s friends is a wiz with fiber glass
and so we contracted him out to make a few real life turtle shells that we
could put on top of Traxxis remote control cars.
Check out the video of how he made them here:
Next we needed to find a location to film and we reached out
to a local professional dirt bike racer named Bracken Hall to see if we could
film on the track that he uses to practice on for his races. Since these karts aren’t
quite powerful enough to go off his dirt bike jumps, Bracken decided it would
be best if he moved some dirt around and build us out a track to use for the Go
Karts. His father Sean owns the property and was generous enough to allow us to
stay in his guest house while we filmed on their track for a few days. The
Halls are some of the kindest and most generous people that we have come across
in all my time working with Devinsupertramp.
Devin and I decided that it would be best if we stuck with
most of the usual supertramp crew to do the stunt driving and acting for this
video and so we ended up casting Bubba Quintana as Mario, Chris Romrell as
Luigi, Christian Busath as Wario, Levi Ellis as Donkey Kong, Strat Streetman as
Bowser, Lee Liston as Toad, Bri Straus as Daisy and Rachel Jones (my little
sister) as Princess Peach and of course Creighton Baird as Waluigi.
When it came time to film, we were blessed with a few cold
mornings but nice days in late fall of 2016. Everyone came together and worked hard
to make this project happen; needless to say it was a total team effort! And
the rest is history. I hope every toad finds his princess and every princess
finds a loving toad! As Devin always says.. “Over and Out”
Written by TeamSuperTramp's Zane O'Gwin:
In Team SuperTramp whatever opportunities you want you get. Devin was awesome and let me completely be in charge of our latest 360 video “Murder Mansion”. To be honest it was a little difficult and I had kind of a bad taste with 360 videos. I thought they were clunky and not ever going to successfully be a tool in the narrative world. But I like a challenge and after this experience I learned that I was wrong and happy to be wrong too.
I watched dozens of 360 videos to see what works well and what does not. I found that some of the highest performing videos were immersive videos, the kind of videos where they just stick the camera in with a tiger or a family of gorillas. The other top performing 360 videos were all CGI, so they could move the camera wherever they wanted and stick the viewer into an amazing world.(I didn't have this option) But, what I didn't find a lot of was 360 narratives. Where there is an entire story with a beginning middle and end. So the challenge was real.
As I began to think of stories to tell that would allow the viewer to participate in the story and not just be a fly on the wall, I came up with a list of things I did and didn't want to happen:
I didn't want the camera to cut and change positions: Every video I saw this happen it felt a bit jarring as the viewer and took me out of the experience.
I didn't want my actors to have to memorize an entire 5 min video with lines and blocking
The reason is, if they did everything right until the very end where they mess up, we would have to start completely over, which would eat up a lot of space on the cameras and a lot of battery power. So, I needed something to happen in the story where it might appear that it is all continuous but would allow for the actors to only have to focus on one scene at a time. I was inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s film “Rope”.
He wanted the movie to feel like one continuous shot so he would move the camera into someones back to black out the camera and then pull out from the same actor. Many films have done similar things but the challenge I had is I have a 360 degree camera and I can't move the camera SO I thought of a lightning storm. I could over expose the shot for a moment and allow a cut. I honestly didn't know if it would work but I took a chance and I think it did and it turned out to be a lot of fun.
I knew I needed to cast an actor who was entertaining enough to carry the viewer through the whole story Christian Busath was a no brainer. He is an amazingly talented actor and is very charismatic. Once he was onboard I knew that I didn't have to worry.
I wanted the viewer to stay engaged the entire time
I didn't want the viewer to just be a fly on the wall. I wanted them to feel like they were participating. So I came up with the idea to make the camera a character. I knew that making the camera a woman that Christian’s character was in love with would add a fun element of humor to it as well. It also makes you feel nervous when you are left a lone in the room with the killer. It makes you feel vulnerable and threatened as opposed to just watching it happen to other people.
I felt like one arm was tied behind my back
I love film making. You can express emotion and feelings by camera movements and with no words. Its called Cinematic Story Telling. You can’t do that with 360. So I went back to my beginnings. I studied theater all through Jr. High and High School and beyond because I knew that I always wanted to be a director and I knew some of the best directors were ones that understand how actors think.
In theater you lose the element of the camera shots to help the viewer experience what you want them to. In film, as the director, its my job to also help guide the eye of the viewer to specific things I want them to look at. This is a big challenge with 360 video because the viewer is free to look around anywhere they want. So I played with blocking my action and characters much like a theatrical play. I had everyone use big movements and also bigger facial expressions so the viewer would know exactly what is going on and naturally be guided to look a certain direction according to what the actors are doing.
Lessons Learned
This project was a fun challenge and I think it turned out to be a lot of fun. At the end of the day I am always reminded of one of my favorite quotes from Steven Spielberg.
“When I was a kid, there was no collaboration; it's you with a camera bossing your friends around. But as an adult, filmmaking is all about appreciating the talents of the people you surround yourself with and knowing you could never have made any of these films by yourself.”
I hope its enjoyable and I’m excited to work on more 360 videos in the future!
Watch the behind the scenes here to see the production process of working with a 360 camera:
Our YouTube channel was created with the idea of showing the world things they've never seen before, in ways they have never seen it. It's what got our names out there, and that has always been a major focus of what we try and create. A couple weeks ago we got to work with someone who does exactly that, we got to work with Bryan Blaze, a fire breather.
With any project we take on, we try and take it to amazing locations, so figuring out a location that would show drastic contrast was actually fairly easy, the Ice Castles in Midway Utah we knew would be the perfect location for this. My uncles brother, Brent Christensen is actually the creator of them, and we've been filming at his ice castles for a very long time, since it's such an incredible location. The first video I shot there was actually a music video for Lindsey Stirling, the video currently at this time has 165 million views :) Here's the video:
This video was shot in early 2012, when no one had really been exposed to the ice castles, as far as a mass audience goes.
The Ice Castles have always drawn me back for multiple projects for the fact that they are such a unique location. Last year after the Ice Castles had closed down for the year, we did two other projects there. We didn't have to worry about destroying the ice castles since the season was already over with, it had been almost a month. Here is what we created last year with them:
Paintball Warfare 2.0
World's Best Slackliners
From my experience last year of filming the ice castles at night with fire, I fell in love with how the ice lit up from the fire, so we thought this location would be the perfect backdrop for a fire breathing video, and that's how it all came about.
Levi, a new recent friend (since the Mario Kart videos), had met Bryan Blaze, the fire breather the week prior, at the ice castles, and had got his phone number contact, and gave it to me, suggesting he would be the perfect talent to film at the Ice Castles. When I got his contact I was going to be moving soon to Hawaii, so we had to act fast, a few days from contacting Bryan, we had already shot the video at the Ice Castles.
We filmed it on the Red Weapon and the Phantom 4 Pro for a few aerial shots to break things up. We filmed after hours. We started filming the moment it was closed, all the way until 5AMish, when we got home. It was all done with all natural light, with the Ice Castle lighting as well, LED lights built into the Ice. We did have control to light the ice different colors because of the LED, but I wanted it to be a more realistic look, so we kept it white.
Filming fire at night is a nightmare, first off. Trying to figure out the right camera settings is a constant struggle because once the fire lights up things, it over exposes the background. Yet if you want the background exposed correctly, then you won't have the fire exposed correctly.
I focused on having the fire exposed correctly.
Since we filmed this on the Red Weapon, the video image was Raw so we had a lot more flexibility in post, where I could shoot it at an ISO of 800, and lower it to ISO 200 without loosing any quality, and that's exactly what I ended up doing.
I also realized when we started filming, that fire breathing actually happens super fast, within a second usually, so I decided to film it at super slow motion, to make sure we would have a video longer then a few seconds. Fire breathing does look amazing, but in order to make the most visually appealing video we would need to break things up. So we brainstormed things we could do in slow motion besides just breathing the fire out. So Bryan breathed fire on the ice, different structures, and my favorite shot actually ended up being one where Bryan slid down the slides blowing fire up towards the camera, often dousing me in the flame. It's all about the shot though, so we had to put the camera closer then it probably should have been.
Having the drone ended up being very useful, despite not using it for more then a few minutes, it made it so we could cut to it and break up the edit, show a new perspective, and keep the pace/story moving.
To film a video like this, it was just Bryan (the athlete) and I, with Brandon shooting behind the scenes. Kept things minimal since we didn't need a full team for something like this. And then Tyson on our team took the edit and made it to what it is now, which you can see below:
Oahu Hawaii is one of my favorite places on earth! I lived there for a year in 2010-2011 working on a documentary on an amazing surf photographer, Jon Mozo. While working on that project I had a lot of free time to do projects that seemed fun to me, and that's when I would film with all the local college kids, and some of our biggest videos, especially for that time happened then. Here's a few of them:
World's Largest Slip And Slide
Waimea Cliff Jump
Kauai - The Lost World
Those are a few examples of what I was shooting in 2010, with a Canon 5D Mark II, and my trusty glidecam. Hawaii became my favorite place to shoot, not for the obvious reasons of beautiful scenery, but because it was the place I discovered my own voice. How to become independent, confidence in myself, and how to lead others and make things happen. Before 2010/Hawaii days, I knew little about that, but I had yet to discover my voice until then.
Fast forward 7 years later, I just released another video I filmed in Hawaii. This one was another important one for me for the fact that I had come back to Hawaii to premiere the film I had spent 7 years working on (off and on). It had gotten accepted as one of the main films for the Hawaii International Film Festival.
While I was here for the film festival, I decided I would add some extra days to the trip, since it would be 5 days premiering the film, I would focus on filming Hawaii again, the place I had discovered my voice. This time was also different for the fact that I was now married, so I got to bring my wife on the trip as well. We were on the island for 8 days total, including traveling, so we didn't have a ton of time to show off an entire island. Megan and I went right to work, never missing a sunrise or sunset, no matter how late we worked the night before.
As far as equipment goes, we were filming on the Red Weapon 6K camera and the Phantom 4. Right when we got there the Red camera was having issues and the camera couldn't hold a battery charge. So I had to focus on the Phantom 4 for most of our shots. I was forced to learn the drone/camera. Every night I would come back and watch YouTube videos on how to get the footage looking better, and learning how to fly it better. It was trial and error learning at it's best :) We met a lot of amazing people on the shoot, and I got to have my wife with me for the whole adventure, doesn't get better than that.
As I began editing the video, I wanted to explore something I had never done before, or at least not very many times, having a voice over/narration through the video. I love watching TED talks, so I thought it would be powerful to have an inspiring voice over while showing footage that would be inspiring as well, so that is where the voice over came from. We have a lot of people contacting us, saying we can use their music, and one of those people had sent us a library of motivational speeches, and that's what you will hear in the video. But the thought process behind it was to try something new outside our typical "nature" style videos, and see if it could bring in a new audience as well.
You can see below the video we created, with the behind the scenes right below that (and just for the record, there's 3 behind the scene videos:
Our videos always try and show the greatest moments in life. Taking on the world. Living your dreams and working hard to achieve them. With that being said, we very rarely talk about the opposite side of the spectrum. Showing and dealing with loss.I feel it's very important to talk about loss, because there must be opposition in all things. Going through adversity makes the triumphs and the little simple moments have so much more meaning.
This week two of our favorite people we've ever worked with passed away, both of them being totally unexpected. :(
Our video with Mandy:
We do extreme sport videos for a living, so it exposes us to a lot of these people who put their lives on the line. Because of that, we often hear about these deaths in the extreme sports world, and since it is such a tight knit community, there is often a chance it will be connected to us. Everyone of them hits hard, but especially this one since it was so close to home with people we have just filmed with.
Last month we did a video for Christmas time where we found someone in great need, we had our fans suggest someone, and they had suggested a woman we had never met, Mandy. We were able to play a small part in her life, and she had played a major part in our lives. She was a single mother fighting a battle against cancer, had two children, and she had a chance of coming out okay, however that sadly was not the part of God's plan for her. Mandy passed a way a few nights ago, and hearing the news broke our hearts because of the experiences we had and the love we have for her.
This morning when I woke up I had several emails from friends letting me know that one of my favorite people we had filmed with a year ago, Kelly McGarry had also passed away. He had collapsed while mountain biking in his home country of New Zealand. When we filmed with Kelly last year, he was one of the most talented, hard working and positive people I've ever worked with. We had only planned on filming one day with Kelly, but once we started working together we realized how well we worked together, so we ended up spending three days working together. He was all about doing whatever it took to get the right stunts/shots. Kelly hands down was one of the most genuine down to earth professional athletes I've ever worked with, and it makes me sick to my heart that he isn't with us any more, but despite the circumstance, I'm glad he was able to pass away doing what he loved.
Main Video with Kelly:
Behind The Scenes:
Life never goes as expected, we are often time thrown for loops and surprises. I'm super thankful for the time I had with both Mandy and Kelly, they have forever changed my life. Take advantage of every moment you have with family and friends. Life is precious, you never know when it will end, so take every moment to seize the day and make the most out of every moment you have. God has a plan for all of us and I am so grateful that His plans for Mandy and Kelly included me in them.
Ubisoft is hands down one of my favorite companies we have worked with. They get social media, they give us opprotunities we could never have without a brand backing it up and they trust us with our audience, which is key and doesn't happen with every brand we work with.
We have been working with Ubisoft for over 4 years now. In fact some of our most watched videos we have made with them. Here's a few:
Assassin's Creed Meets Parkour - 52 Million views and rising.
Assassin's Creed Unity - 32 Million views and rising
Watch Dogs Parkour in Real Life - 8 Million
Far Cry 3 in Real Life
With that being said, we have an awesome relationship with Ubisoft. It has been a company I've always genuinely loved, even before I had the opportunity to work with them. This brings me to our most recent colab we did with Ubisoft. The preproduction for our latest colab started roughly 2 years ago. Two of my all time favorite YouTube channel's would be involved as well, Corridor Digital and Rocket Jump/FreddieW. Even when I first got involved with YouTube, it was these two channel's that got me loving the space. They were people I greatly looked up to. So I was stoked when I found out we would all be working together on this project.
Corridor Digital and Ubisoft came up with the idea that each of the three youtube channel's would show off a different agent from the videogame world of "The Division" and it would show how each agent was called to action. Then on Ubisoft's YouTube channel, there would be a 4th video that would show all three agents from each of our episodes coming together. This would make each video stand on it's own, yet it would also give you full reason to watch each episode, which in turn would not only promote each YouTube involved but give everyone a reason to go to Ubisoft's YouTube channel. It was a win win for everyone involved.
Sam and Niko at Corridor Digital were the ones that produced all 4 episodes. Adrian Picardi would direct the three episodes that would go on the other YouTube channel's, and I would direct the one that would go on our channel. By having Sam and Niko produce all 4 episodes it would ensure all 4 videos would stay consistent and flow smoothly. We would also film in the same city in Minesota as well, each episode back to back to make sure we could be cost effective. This whole process of the behind the scenes can be seen with this video that Sam and Niko created on the making of The Division series. Watch that below:
We filmed all these videos in February of 2015, over 11 months ago. The videos were going to come out sooner than a year later, but because the video game that our videos would be promoting got pushed back, our videos did as well.
The stories for all four videos were written by the Corridor Digital team, with the mindset of the channel they would be living on. Corridor Digital and I had gotten together before the writing process to discuss what would work for my channel. We try to stay away from too much violence, but we love action sports and we love showing the good in the world. So with that mind set, Corridor Digital took the world that The Division is set in, and wrote a story that would fit really well with our channel/audience. By staying true to who we are, everyone would win. The same was done for Rocket Jump, where their channel is based on the humor and their video set in the Division World has exactly that, more so then any other of the 4 episodes. Creating content that represents you, while working with a brand is crucial, and Ubisoft understands the value in that.
It really was an awesome experience working with so many YouTube powerhouses that I've looked up to for so long. I had worked with FreddieW before on a couple colab videos, but never with Corriodor Digital. It was great working/learning from all of them on a project we are all very proud of.
With that being said, here's all 4 episodes from this project, starting with my episode first.
Devinsupertramp Channel
Corridor Digital Channel
Rocket Jump Channel
Ubisoft Channel
Here's also the behind the scenes for the making of our video.
Last week our channel got attacked hard. It got attacked in a way we have never experienced and we had no way of defending ourselves.
Every year we release a video that represents our entire year of work. Filmed in half the countries of the world. More time, money and energy goes into this because it represents who we are and everything we have worked so hard for.
We use this video as our reel to get jobs for the rest of the year.
The first week of a videos release is always the most important and it determines the success of the videos life span.
When we released our best of video this year, we wanted to title it what we thought it represented, we titled it "People Are Awesome 2015 - ULTIMATE DevinSuperTramp Edition in 4K".
On the day of releasing our video it had become our most "liked" video in 24 hours of all time. It had gotten 28,000 likes and over 400,000 views in the first 36 hours.....
On the second day of waking up our video on our channel was gone. I had gotten several phone calls from companies we had sent the video out to saying "Where had the video gone?" We had no idea. When we looked at our videos that only our channel could see we saw this:
Usually on YouTube you have the option to edit a title or description. This was the first time in the 200 videos we have uploaded over the last 5 years that we had no option to edit it. It just said: "Video Removed: Trademark Issue". We had no idea why it had been removed. We owned 100 percent of the video content, we had release forms for the people in it and the locations. The music that we featured in it was by Boyce Avenue, who has an amazing YouTube Channel that we have always wanted to collaboration with, and they had given us full permission to use the song with the video on YouTube, with ads. Since we had full permission on every front, we had no idea where this was coming from.
We contacted YouTube and FullScreen, who is our MCN, aka Multi Channel Network (they represent YouTubers and help with a lot of things). We asked FullScreen to look into this problem for us, to see what had happened. They were shocked because they had never seen a video shut down like this without a single warning. They were able to find out the strike had been given to us by a company called Jukin. They had copyrighted/trademarked the phrase "People Are Awesome". Because of this, they have the power to shut down a video channel with what seems like a push of a button, without any warning. FullScreen was shocked that they had been so aggressive with instantly taking down our video. They had a good relationship with the company, so that's why this was such a surprise. When they reached out to Jukin, there was no comprise with the video, since we had titled it a phrase which they owned, which we had no idea. It was simple in the title, never appearing on screen in any way.
So where did this leave us? After spending the rest of the week to try and get an appeal, their legal team wouldn't give us any leeway. We asked if we could change the name to "People are amazing - Devinsupertramp edition", we then asked if we could keep the word awesome and change the word people, and even then they said it was too similar, so we couldn't do anything with the video. We couldn't even take it down to remove the copyright strike on our channel. After a full 7 days of going back and forth Jukin agreed to remove the copyright strike as long as we removed the video.... Even if we changed the name of the video completely, we still had to take down the video.... And at this point, truth of the matter is the video had gotten taken down right as it went out to all of our 3.8 million subscribers, and because it was blocked anyways, even if we were able to make it public we would already lose on all the momentum we had worked so hard with.
As we looked into this whole situation with the company that had shut down our video, Jukin, we found out that several other MCN's have had the same problem, Jukin coming at them and shutting down entire video's without warning as well, so this isn't just our problem with Jukin, it is across the board with other YouTuber's/MCN's as well.
We just now finally reuploaded the video, with a totally different phase, "My Life Sucks - Devinsupertramp Edition". We actually had to look into the phrase "My Life Sucks" to make sure no one had trademarked that phrase so this video didn't get taken down either.
The saddest thing about everything with this experience is Jukin/People Are Awesome have uploaded so many videos featuring our content on Youtube and other social media, where they never once asked for our permission and we never once had them take down the video... Yet they had no problem with taking down a video on our channel because of a title we had used.
This has been an awful experience and truthfully the worst experience I have had on the YouTube and as a content creator. In my opinion this is what needs to happen in the future.
- The creator must be warned and have a chance to fight back when someone else try's to take down their video. YouTube has this in place to an extent, but something like this we didn't have the chance to even voice an opinion.
- Phrases being trademarked is lame...ha. Not sure how you can trademark a phrase used so often by so many people. There needs to be a website that says every phrase that is trademarked, so we are not surprised later that you can't have something as a title. Sony last week tried to trademark the phrase "Let's Play" which would mean anyone who put a video with that as a title, they could take down and claim it as their own... Luckily they got turned down for that phrase, but word on the street is they just tried to appeal it.
- I understand YouTube has to stick with "what's legal" but I wish they had something to help defend their content creators that have invested their lives into the platform to help it grow. I did feel I got a little help from them, but I still felt abandoned and had no way of fighting back.
With everything said and done now, here is where we are headed. Our video is now re-upload (which is the same exact video we had to take down), it will never get the same exposure our first video did. The damage has already been done, which is sad when it was our most important video of the year. When people see a re-uploaded video very rarely to they click on it.
I hate confrontation more then anything, so writing this blog has not been easy for me in the slightest. I do feel it needed to be done though to let people know what truly happened and to warn others of the potential problems they will face. To give a voice to the voiceless or the people that have already been effected by this, but not had a voice to do so. The best is yet to come, Carpe Diem.
-Devin
For more info on what went down, here's a video/vlog that explains it in even more details:
Here's also the reuploaded video that went live again today after it was taken down because of it's title being trademarked without any warning.
