- Hello, I'm Patrick Willems. I got an email from Ars Technica, about a video. [soft upbeat music] There's a computer. Okay, that's not creepy at all. [soft upbeat music] Hi, I'm Patrick Willems and this is my personal history. [soft upbeat music] I'm just, I'm scared to look at what this is gonna be. The YouTube comment section is the place where I would wanna go, if I wanted to like, feel bad about some other aspect of myself that I didn't already. It is not a place for support or encouragement. Obviously, as we've seen here, there are perfectly lovely comments there, but they're surrounded by just like rancid [beep]. So, all right, what do we have here? "The following comments came from the most popular video on your YouTube channel. What video is it?" That is obviously the video, "What if Wes Anderson Directed X-Men," which I guess explains this whole West Anderson stylists that we've got going on. Yes, that's it. The most popular video is, "What if Wes Anderson Directed X-Men?" Published March 3rd, 2015, currently has 3,700,000 views. Wow, not bad. "What do you remember about making this video?" I mean, look, this is still the most successful thing I've ever made, maybe than I ever will make. Way back in 2014, the channel had like maybe 10,000 subscribers. It was not only not making money, I was losing money on it. Like I would spend money to make the videos and would generate no profit at all. So at this time, the most successful video that I'd ever made was the one that re-imagined the movie Point Break as if it were made by different filmmakers.

- Oh, hey Johnny.

- Oh, hi Bodhi, who are those guys?

- Studying these filmmakers, figuring out how to imitate their styles and like how they might approach this material. And so I decided to do this series that took theoretical comic book movies, but then imagine what they would look like if made by filmmakers, who would never normally make that kind of movie. And, right away when I was generating ideas for this, the one that jumped out to me, that made the most sense was Wes Anderson making X-Men, because if you break down like The Royal Tenenbaums, it's about a bunch of brilliant young people living in an elaborately decorated mansion with a controlling father figure. And that's just the, X-Men. The thing about this one was that I felt like we needed to put a little bit more time and effort and money into it than we would a regular video, because I've always been very bad at predicting how videos will perform. I think videos that will be flops end up being hits, I think videos that will be hits end up flopping. This was the only time I've ever really gotten it right. One reason I was really confident that this video would work is that at the time my apartment was a 10 minute walk from The Royal Tenenbaums' house in Harlem. So we were like, "wait, let's just go shoot at the actual house." Like there are other Wes Anderson parodies on the internet, but no one has used the actual house. So, we had that going for us. And so we spent a long time, like I pulled in a lot of friends to help make the costumes, to help build like miniature sets and put in all this effort. And it was the rare time that I was right. The video did really well. I don't know if it's the hardest part, but it's the part that I put the most effort into, was just really trying to study Wes Anderson and really figure out how he might interpret like all the core elements of X-Men. Wes Anderson is one of those filmmakers where everyone can list like the standard things that you expect from all his movies, like, "Oh, symmetry, wide shots, these certain colors." But this may have been Overkill, but I went through all of his movies and studied them and tried to figure out like, how would he handle these characters? And it was just like, it was like months of studying this stuff and research, trying to figure out like what focal lengths for lenses did he use? Like all of these little things to try to make it as accurate as possible. "Here is the most liked comment on that video." "Needs more symmetry." Then in all caps, "MORE SYMMETRY, DAMN IT." . I think this is kind of a reductive take, that if you just like watch any Wes Anderson movie, you'll see not every single shot is symmetrical. I think I was pretty careful about which shots I framed symmetrically and which I didn't. So yeah, it's annoying that that is the most liked comment, people do better. Okay, another comment, "the clause in this video look better than the ones in X-Men origins." So the clause that we used for Wolverine are actually right here, they are just straight up metal knives, that you could really hurt a person with. I did not expect them to be that sharp when I ordered them online, and X-Men Origins: Wolverine, a famously bad movie uses a lot of CGI claws on Wolverine that often don't look very good. Look, these things have their problems, they're just like kind of awkward to hold, but look, actual metal claws are gonna look better than, kind of rushed, rubbery looking CGI ones. That's like the one part that we actually like had higher production values and like better effects than the real movie we were, imagine. "The following comments came from the second most popular video on your YouTube channel, what video is it?" That would be the first video essay I ever made called, "Why Do Marvel's Movies Look kind of Ugly?" Yes, confirmed. From November 16th, 2016, came out week after the 2016 election. And, "ooh, it's closing on 3 million views." Nice, as much as the Wes Anderson's X-Men is the most viewed video on the channel, this one is what actually made the channel a success. So to make a long story short, the Wes Anderson's X-Men video came out and suddenly led to a lot of like new career opportunities. I was suddenly having a lot of like meetings with producers and production companies about making other projects off of YouTube, and I really thought this was launching my career and it was all gonna happen. Anyway, by the end of 2015, all of those opportunities had fallen apart or dried up, and I was back at square one. In 2016, I took a couple of months off from making videos, decide to like reevaluate my approach to YouTube and give it one last shot, and if it didn't work, then I would, I don't know, try something else or get a real job. So I was like, "I'll try different types of videos." For years I'd been complaining to my friends about the color palette and color grading of Marvel Studios movies. So it was like, I've been ranting about this for years. And, but I was sure that this was a boring topic that would not get any views at all. And then, immediately the video got like a million views, the subscriber account for the channel that had taken me like five and a half years to build doubled in a week, and then it just went from there. And so really everything kind of comes back to this video. "Please reply to these comments from that video." "I feel like this color grading helps Marvel achieve a more realistic look to convey the thought that these heroes are living in our everyday lives." I got a lot of comments like this, always saying like these movies are ugly and gray and flat looking because it's realistic. I don't really think that's true. Throughout the history of cinema, movies are often pretty colorful, have like real texture and depth to the images, and it's not like people were complaining for 70 years about these unrealistic looking movies that they just couldn't emotionally connect to. Yeah, I fundamentally don't think that's true. I know that Marvel has laid their like, their reasons behind their visual choices, and a lot of this just comes down to trends and styles in cinema and the sort of like lifted blacks, very like low contrast digital look, has been just a big thing in cinema for the past 10 to 15 years. And a key thing to note here is that I'm not arguing for like extreme stylization and like surrealism. I'm just saying, maybe actually make a visual choices and have a color palette that's interesting to look at, that's all. "Guardians 1&2, Thor: Ragnarok, Black Panther, and now Infinity War all look colorful." This is a really complicated issue that I don't have all day to get into, but let me boil down what I think are the recurring issues with Marvel movies, color palettes. If scenes are set in interior locations or places with like extreme lighting choices, whether they're like space scenes in the Guardians movies, or like the sort of like astral plane in Black Panther or like some of the interiors in Thor: Ragnarok, they often look pretty good. They have good art direction, like colorful costumes and sets. Any exterior day scene just looks like muddy concrete. Look at any scene in Infinity War, look at any exterior scene in Thor: Ragnarok, it's just gray. They all look exactly the same. It is so boring and ugly and it will always drive me nuts. If anything, after this video came out, them getting criticized for this became a more common thing. So, maybe they're more aware of this criticism. I keep hoping they'll get better at it. So, we'll see. All right, that was fun, let's see what else we got. Okay, so right now I'm in the Patrick Explains series, a series that started in 2017 in which I visit my parents, drink a whole lot of whiskey, and explain to them why I think a movie or TV series is totally rad, is totally rad a thing that I've ever said before? Maybe, also in the series, I always wear sunglasses indoors to show that I'm a more deranged version of myself, but I'm just playing a character, anyway. All right, "this next video is your earliest video with over 100,000 views. Do what it is?" I'm gonna guess it's a video from 2011 called, can't believe I'm saying this, Brony Gang War. Oh my God, it is. Wow, that has 122,000 views, which was a really big deal for me in August, 2011. Wow, it's so weird to look back at this video, and remember when like a Bronies were a thing, like the male fans of My Little Pony and also this period when they were kind of like a funny thing before they became extremely weird and creepy. "Why do you think out of all your earlier videos, this one has so many views?" So, this was in the very early days of the channel, right? When I started thinking like, "hmm, maybe we should try to find things in pop culture that people are into that maybe we have opinions on or like a funny take on." Because if a video is connected to something with a built-in audience, maybe it'll get more views, which is the most obvious thing in the world and took me like three months to start to figure out, but that was like a really big audience. And so, we released that video and it seems to kinda catch on, "please reply to these comments from that video." Is gonna be so weird. "If sometimes will be a war, it will be between Bronies and haters, not between Bronies themselves, because we are connected with power of elements of harmony. So, this from the video is just a joke, it's not a possible scenario of Brony war." Comments like this are essentially, they sound like they're just dialogue from the video because they are people talking really, really passionately and taking very, very seriously something that is inherently, just incredibly silly. The next comment, "I would definitely love to see more videos like this. You should make some flashback videos about each gang, where they live, what they do, et cetera. Oh, and long-lived the Twilight Sparkle Gang." I mean, this is kind of representative of why that video did well. We did actually make a followup video a year later and it was called like Brony Gang War, one year later. [man shouting] [gun shots] Anyway, sorry, Bronies, that we didn't make more videos about you. Question, "do you still make videos in this style?" Obviously, I have not made any more videos about My Little Pony fandom. I do not intend to, it is not something that I have really thought about in years, but that style, fake news reports, that kind of thing. Yeah, I have used it since then. I probably will in the future. "The following comments came from your "Patrick Explains THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS, and Why it's Great" video. The first video in the Patrick Explains series. "I think you should do a series where you just explain movies/franchises in this fashion." Wow, this is hilarious to look at now like, almost four years later. Originally that video was not intended to be a series at all. This was when I was just starting to try out some video essays, some more commentary type analytical cinema studies videos. And I was trying to figure out ideas. And when I was, I mentioned this to my friend, Jake Torpey, who works on all the videos with me. Immediately he said, "oh, you should just make a video about your fast and furious rant." Referring to the fact that for years, as all my friends knew, anytime I was at a party, back when parties were things that existed that we could go to, pretty much every time I would hear someone in a room say, "yeah, I've never seen a Fast & Furious movie." I would leap across the room and launch into this rehearsed, memorized monologues, I gave it so many times. And I would give them this speech about why the Fast & Furious series is like arguably our best ongoing modern franchise and why everyone needs to watch it and about how, and the way it evolved in such a fascinating way, the way it has a non-linear timeline, all of these amazing things about it. And my original plan with that video was just to sit in front of like a white, seamless backdrop and deliver my speech to the camera. And then a day before that, I had this silly thought of, "what if I added this kind of like narrative framing element to it," where I'm visiting my parents, 'cause I was visiting my parents at the time. And I'm, I don't know, just being kind of crazy and like, drinking whiskey and wearing sunglasses indoors and giving this monologue to them. And then people liked the video, and I got comments like that. And, so Hey Peter Cummins who left that comment. I hope you're happy, there are now, like, I don't know, 10 or 11 videos in this series. "I actually really appreciate seeing someone explain the appeal of something that isn't considered 'artsy.' I think it's a real gap in our art appreciation culture." This has been honestly like so much of just the videos that I've made, especially in the realm of film YouTube. There are these certain films and just categories and topics that are covered over and over and over again. And in general, I try to avoid those, because they've just been covered to death. And, I usually don't think there's much new to say about them. And in college, there were a lot of very pretentious film students in my department who would roll their eyes at anything, populist, like if a movie made money, they'd be like, well, that's, just a piece of [beep] who, like that isn't worth taking seriously. And I kind of pushed against that 'cause I was like, "look, there are plenty of masterpieces that happen to be like, made for mainstream audience." Alfred Hitchcock made big mainstream movies that people liked a lot. And maybe I'm just like a contrarian who likes pushing against what popular opinions are. I don't really think I am, but I think there's something fun about defending something that is usually dismissed and considered like low-brow and not worth being taken seriously. Especially when I think it has artistic merit. I think the Fast & Furious movies have artistic merit. I think Michael Bay is an important filmmaker with a unique perspective on the world. And I enjoy the fact that not a lot of people, at least on like film YouTube are talking about these things. So, it's kind of this void for me to hop into and claim it all for myself because if no one else is gonna talk about it, then I will. "Tell us what you remember about making this video and the series of videos that followed it." So, as I already mentioned, this was not supposed to be a series, it was supposed to be a fun one-off video. I actually had to kind of coerce my parents into appearing in the video. My parents had like over the many years of me making movies and stuff like that, they had helped out and made little cameos and stuff like that, but they were not really excited to appear in this video, and then what happened was, my parents saw the comments. And like 50% of the comments were just about, "oh my God, your parents are the best, they're so funny, they're so adorable, I love them, put them in more videos." And as this went on, I realized like, "oh, this is a format that could be a fun ongoing series." My parents were suddenly really down for appearing in more of these. And as it went on, we started building this ongoing story through all of the videos. At this point in the series, I am in jail, because the IRS prosecuted me for a tax evasion. It makes sense if you watch it, I promise. But yeah, it's become this really enjoyable activity that my parents and I do together, where we'll make, usually make two or three a year and they've become like real collaborators. And the thing is, the audience loves my parents, they like my parents so much more than they like me. I think if the audience had their way, it would just be my parents on screen, like 90% of the time. And then, I show up to, I don't know, like say a few words about the movie. "How did your approach to your channel, and the way you produced your videos change around this time?" Okay, I started making video essays in November, 2016. The format that I chose was kind of just the standard format popularized by like Every Frame a Painting and Nerdwriter and many other channels, you record a voiceover of the essay, and then you edit movie clips of what you're talking about over that. And when I made a video essay, I thought it was going to be like a one-off experiment. I was positive, no one would watch that first one that I made, and so I just used the format that most people used. And then when the video essays performed well, and I kept making more of them, I just kept using that format and found that I was really bored with it. As much as the ideas being discussed in the videos, like, came from my perspective and were things I cared about, the actual process and approach to making the video felt so impersonal. And, I realized I needed to change the way that I was making these videos, if I wanted to stay excited about it. And I realized that in all of 2017, the only videos that I really cared about were the Patrick Explains videos. I realized like, it's not just that I need to like use this series for every video, but I need to use that kind of philosophy and approach that I'm bringing to those and carry that into the rest of my videos. To treat them each like their own kind of filmmaking project and figure out the best most interesting way to tell the story of what each essay is going to be. All right, well, I think that wraps up this series. So, back to regular glasses, let's go. Okay, so we're now in The Quarantine Talk Show. This is what I pivoted the videos into last year when I unexpectedly got stuck at my parents' house for several months. Now this show I must note, had much better audio quality than some other internet talk shows started during this period, such as one,

- Good evening everybody

- hosted by John Krasinski.

- Very clearly. Well, who is on Ars Technica now Krasinski? Me, baby, me. "The following comments came from your first Quarantine Talk Show Video," this title is a mouthful. "Cats! Michael Bay! Music Biopics! The Big Follow-Up Video." This was a video that basically just followed up on several other videos I'd made over the past two years about like filmmakers or genres, anything that had a new installment or people had asked me like, "oh, what do you think of this?" I just covered it all in this one. "As a newly minted fan who spent a disproportionate amount of time, the last couple of weeks watching the last three years or so of vids you've made, putting out a follow-up on many vids that I've just watched, feels like fanservice made for me specifically. And I appreciate that." I'm always wondering if I'm actually getting new viewers, if like, I like what people are thinking when they're finding the videos, now that they've become so dense and full of just like strange esoteric stuff. And since I was starting this new format for the videos to kind of roll with what was happening, I felt like a good, relatively easy way to kick that off would be to just answer a lot of questions that people have been asking for the last couple of years, cover all of them in one video. And I guess if you're a recent viewer, I was kind of answering all those questions in one. Next up, "Tell us what you remember about making this video and the series of videos that followed it." Spring 2020 was a strange time to be doing anything. And look, I have a pretty easy job by most standards. I make videos on the internet where I talk about movies that I like. And last year, I actually started the year and I outlined my whole schedule of videos for the full year. I knew exactly what I was going to make. I had a really clear plan that I was excited about, and then in mid-March while visiting my parents to shoot one of the Patrick Explains videos. [beep] So I was like, "maybe I'll stay here until the end of the week." And then that became until the end of the month, and then it became, "I am here indefinitely." And suddenly all of these plans just got blown up, and I'm now stuck in a house in the woods with only my parents around and only the gear that I brought with me. So, suddenly I was in this situation where I had to figure out a new way to do what I'd been doing. And I decided the best way to do this, was to pivot completely, postpone all those videos that we had on the schedule, but also try to create some kind of format that I could do consistently because I was stuck in this house. And what I had noticed during this time was that late night talk show hosts were all having to stop going into their studios and do their shows remotely from home. I found this really interesting to watch, but also pardon me, was like, "hey, they're like encroaching on my territory." So what if I then tried to beat them at their own game and just did a late night talk show, but better than they're doing it right now? To be clear, this was mostly a joke. I was not really feeling competition from like Jimmy Fallon, but it felt like a good, at least a good premise for the videos, to be like, "huh, I'm gonna beat these talk show hosts at their own game and just do that, but from this empty room in my parents' house." Okay, next up, "the following comments came from the longest video on your YouTube channel. What video is it?" I believe it is on my most recent video, which is called, "A Complete Guide to Pop Music Needle Drops in Movies." Yes, that's it, the longest video is "A Complete Guide to Pop Music Needle Drops in Movies" published on February 15th, 2021. Okay, "please reply to these comments from that video." Now, one thing that I should acknowledge is that in this video that we were talking about right now, I do say to the camera that I'm not going to read any of the comments. And so, congratulations, Ars Technica has made me a liar. "This goddamn coconut went from a weird gag, to an annoyance, to a year-spanning plot that I am invested in." Oh boy, how do I explain this? So the coconut, refers to this guy here. Okay so, at the beginning of 2020, I am thinking about, a new year of videos. I'm thinking what if we took the 2020 season and really did treat it as a season, where it was still about myself and my friends making these videos, but there was this ongoing story through it all. And then my friends and I were talking about like, what we might do for the first video. We were saying like, "oh, it should start with like Patrick coming back from vacation." And I think my friend Mike, threw out this silly idea like, "oh, you should bring back like a rock with googly eyes." It was a very silly idea. And then I started thinking more about it. So, I had this thought of like, "what if it was a coconut?" And by the way, the coconut's name is Charl. It's like Charles, but singular. And so we introduced Charl in the video, and then made him a recurring thing. And, I had no idea how the audience would react, but the audience really kind of embraced this bizarre new element we'd thrown in. And as time went on, people were making fan arts of Charl and we kind of like expanded the story as it kept going on. We found a way to give Charl a segment in the talk show, I am fully aware that some of the audience has been alienated by this bizarre new development, but also we have produced Charl merchandise that has sold exceptionally well. We produced Charl enamel pins that sold out in a day. A fairly sizable portion of the audience really enjoys this bizarre thing we've been doing. And so we've really kind of leaned into this and to be clear, this is not going to run forever, [Charl laughing] but every single day, I am so happy that we have actually gotten people invested in this bizarre story of a coconut with googly eyes. Next comment, "Patrick, I love how you always go so much harder than you have to. Your guys' production value is unmatched." This is sort of my general philosophy to the videos to just put in way more effort than is really necessary. We're kind of in like this dangerous spiral where, I keep wanting to top what we've already done. Like we've now introduced a full theme song with like a James Bond style title sequence. [soft music] ♪ It's Patrick Show ♪ [soft music] As the channel kept doing better, it's just given us the resources to go further with everything and do more, and it sounds silly to say, but I'm just trying to make the videos that I would wanna watch and the best videos that I can make. And so, that means just trying to go further with each successive video. Okay, "answer the following comments as quickly as possible because otherwise we'll be here all day," accurate. "You're right your, 'explains' videos are your best, they're awesome." Thank you, "your parents are cool." I agree. "Keep up the good work!" I will, next comment. "How about a challenge? Do Zack Snyder, I dare you." So, for many years, people have requested that I do a career overview video essay examining the work of Zack Snyder. The way I did for Michael Bay or Terrence Malick, or Francis Ford Coppola, and I always said, "no, I'm not going to do it." I was not interested in the idea. Also, as many people are aware, talking about Zack Snyder on the internet, is a great way to make your life worse. And then last summer, after they had confirmed that the Snyder Cut was actually going to be released, I thought of a way to do a Zack Snyder video that I would actually enjoy, but I also decided I would make it a Patreon goal. So, people had to like put their money where their mouth was if they wanted this to happen. And, we reached the Patreon goal very quickly. And so this spring, I am finally giving in to the cool complexities, 2018 comments and doing a Zack Snyder video. God have mercy on my soul. [soft music] Moving on. This is the best comment. "When Charl isn't onscreen, the other characters should be talking about Charl." Great comment, obviously a reference to the classic Simpsons episode, The Itchy and Scratchy and Poochie Show, when Homer pitches the idea that, whenever Poochie isn't on screen, all the other characters should be asking, "where's Poochie?" So look, you're praising Charl, you're quoting the Poochie episode, you're speaking my language. Final questions. "What are you excited about these days, and what's on the horizon?" I don't really have concrete plans for what's going to happen after the season ends. So I'm, well being as vague as possible, I'm kind of excited about everything coming up. "How does it feel looking back on your career, and do you have any final messages to your fans who have supported you?" I will admit, it feels incredibly strange to be sitting here, in a studio talking about my silly 10 year YouTube career, which didn't even become profitable until like three or four years ago, like I still haven't come to terms with the idea of having fans. That is still deeply weird to me. Every day, I'm incredibly grateful that either people watch them, and be that people have been so receptive to times that I have tried to move outside of like the traditional kind of video essays and the traditional topics that you see on film YouTube. It's wild that I get to do this for a living, that is not lost on me, and it constantly amazes me. It's been a pleasure, it's been an honor. Thank you. [soft music]