Freddie Wong Says Hollywood is ‘Out of Date’. Is Online World The New Frontier for Filmmakers?

Freddie Wong has over 3.5 million subscribers and half a billion video views (across two channels) on YouTube, making him one of the most respected and unique filmmakers on the video channel. Two, maybe three years ago, being a respected filmmaker on YouTube meant that you could figure out how to work a webcam, but today, Youtube has grown into a paradise for both young and experienced filmmakers to experiment, develop, and now PROFIT off their craft, with the added benefit of interacting with their fanbase like never before.

It’s the digial age where prostlethizers don’t hold movie tickets, they click mouses, and inevitably they’re the ones who dictate what becomes popular or not. Has Hollywood taking a backseat to YouTube? According to Wong’s conversation with Reuters:

“Making a feature film or making a TV show [as] a definition of success, that’s out of date…We’re looking at where online content is going, where technology is going — that’s an exciting new frontier. We have this chance to carve out what the online world and digital-distribution world could look like, and that’s infinitely more interesting.”

Wong recently collaborated with Corridor Digital on the television commercial for EA and Battlefield 3, something that Wong said was almsot entirely up to his team to create.

But the national commercial hasn’t distracted Wong or his film partner, Brandon Laatsch, from their goal of creating content for online audiences. His team is currently immersed in pre-production and a kick-starter campaign for his Video Game High School online series that he will create (and make over 9,000!) if he’s able to raise $190,000.

“They told me you can’t make short films for a living,” Wong said of his experience at film school at The University of Southern California, where he met Laatsch and officially began his YouTube career.

Has the idea of the Hollywood dream for the filmmaker — get an agent, find a producer who will forward you a couple mill to make a feature — gone by the wayside? Has the online success of so many fan films, and the lackluster prospects of so many “blockbusters,” fueled talented people like Wong to pass over Hollywood and go straight to people eagerly sifting the hyper-active channels of the interweb?

We really like being able to directly communicate with our audience…A lot of people look at online as their means to an end…For us, online is an end in and of itself.”

Will online signal an “end” for Hollywood or will the studios eventually adapt to the same mind-set that Freddie Wong holds? Will short films and online series have more value in the marketplace because they inevitably live and die based on how well received they are by fans perusing the online landscape? Or will marketing still win out in the end…no matter how dated it still seams?

We know where Freddie Wong stands, the next few years, perhaps much sooner, will dictate what the majority of fans believe.

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