In Real Life: My Journey to a Pixelated World

  I signed up for a television production class that our school offered, and the quality of our videos got much better. It was the first time it dawned on me that I could make a living out of my love for videos and become an editor or director.

  By the end of the school year, we had posted twenty videos, and for our one-year anniversary, we celebrated by filming “Humanation 2,” a much more elaborate version of our first stop-motion video: we used our bodies as if they were cars zipping around the school and playground.

  Around this same time, YouTube announced the Partner Program. If you were accepted, you’d get an ad banner on your channel and share the profits based on the number of views and subscribers. We were having fun doing WSP as a hobby, but we worked hard at it, so the idea of making money off it seemed too good to be true. Our application was rejected: we didn’t have enough subscribers. But the people at YouTube were encouraging and told us we were getting close and that we should try reapplying in two months. So we spent the summer working our butts off, hustling for subscribers, and putting even more effort into our production values.

  YouTube was getting bigger and more popular, and we started to pay close attention to trends. We noticed that a lot of the videos that tended to go viral referenced pop culture in some way, so we started incorporating outside influences into our work, but with our own spin. For example, we took a clip of Lisa Nova, one of our favorite big-time YouTubers, and inserted her into a sketch about the Jonas Brothers going to public high school. I borrowed a bunch of life-size cardboard cut-outs of the band from Alison, who ended up becoming a huge fan of theirs after we went to the Veronicas’ concert, and animated Brittany’s and my lips into their mouths to make them speak. We also shot a fake trailer for Saw 6 (although we accidentally used the roman numeral for five in the title credit), where we were chained together in a basement and forced to play fill-in-the-letter word games. Another mistake from that one: we flashed cards throughout the clip that were full of spelling errors like, “Sacrafices Will Be Made” and “Unspeakable Torcher Will Occur!” (Thanks again, paint chips!)

  We racked up a lot more subscribers, and by the end of the summer; it paid off: YouTube informed us that we’d made partnership. We of course assumed we’d become millionaires immediately and were pretty bummed when our first check came in for one hundred dollars, which we split. Still, it was an incredible feeling to get paid to do what we loved.

  As our channel slowly grew larger, we started communicating with other YouTubers. One of the first was a hyperactive, temper-tantrum-prone kid named Fred Figglehorn, with an eerily high-pitched voice who was the alter ego of a guy named Lucas Cruikshank. He was extremely popular online, and Brittany and I watched his videos regularly. We managed to get his cell phone number through a friend of a friend and started prank-calling him. At first we’d just giggle nervously and hang up, but soon we started talking to him as if we were old friends.

  “Hey, man! How’s it going?”

  “Oh, good,” he’d stammer, sounding a little confused.

  “I’m so hungry. Are you? We should go grab something to eat.”

  “Wait, sorry, who is this?”

  I’d laugh. “Oh come on. You know who it is. So what do you think? Olive Garden, say, around eight o’clock?”

  “I’ve already got dinner plans,” he said as we tried not to crack up.

  “Oh, well, next time!”

  Brittany and I alternated doing a few different versions of that exchange for about a week. It was actually really sweet that he pretended as long as he did, not wanting to hurt the feelings of his “friends” by not recognizing their voices. He finally got fed up, though, and demanded to know who we were. Brittany was the one on the phone when he finally snapped, but he laughed when she told him it had been WinterSpringPro calling him the entire time. We couldn’t believe he actually knew who we were, and he was a really great sport about the whole thing. We’d just filmed a spoof of an appearance he’d done on Hannah Montana and asked if he’d be willing to tweet about it or mention it in one of his videos. But our version made fun of the show a little too much, and he didn’t think his manager would appreciate it. Still, now that he was talking to us, we were desperate to get him to mention our channel somehow since he had such a huge audience. We came up with an idea to contact as many other YouTubers as we could to do a little short film congratulating him on reaching 1 million subscribers—he had been one of the first YouTubers to do so.

  Sure, I’d tweet about that, he texted when we pitched the idea. That would be awesome!

  We reached out first to Shane Dawson, a YouTuber we both really loved, and he was immediately game to shoot something for us. Then we reached out to another favorite, iJustine, and as soon as we got her on board, the rest just fell into place. We e-mailed more of our favorite YouTubers, and they were all really into the idea. I’d like to say it was done purely in the spirit of supporting other talent, but although we all genuinely liked each other, there was an unspoken understanding that by collaborating, we’d be spreading our own brand across new platforms; we hoped everyone would gain more subscribers.

  The concept of the video was that as soon as Fred reached 1 million subscribers he had become an all-powerful, vengeful being who started killing off other YouTubers one by one by shooting death rays out of his disembodied head. Fred tweeted about it and the video blew up with over half a million views.

  During this whole time, even though we had a huge audience of our own, I had continued to audition for school plays with varying degrees of success. In tenth grade I managed to get into the chorus of the spring musical of Guys and Dolls. I played a drunk guy who stumbles onto stage and utters one line: “What vulgar jewelry!” It was awkward but better than nothing. My junior year, I got a role in a student-written play, “Teenage Dream.” It predated the Katy Perry song and was all about the nightmares of being a teenager. I played a little kid who, along with his brother, spends an evening terrorizing their babysitter (What is it with school plays about psycho little kids??). At that point I was deep into WinterSpringPro, so my confidence was way higher than it had ever been before—so much so that I convinced my “brother” to go off-script with me on opening night.

  We added in a bunch of our own lines and improvised a physical fight. But the whole thing backfired, and instead of enhancing the show, it just caused us to lose our place once our new bits were over. I found myself standing on the stage in silence, sweating under the lights, desperately trying to remember what my real lines were while people out in the audience coughed nervously. Thank goodness the girl who played the babysitter managed to steer us back on track. The whole ridiculous episode made me appreciate how much control I had over acting in, directing, and editing my own videos on YouTube.

  Our First Fan Letter

  After we started getting some decent views, we opened a post office box for fan mail. We waited about a week, and then headed back to see what had come in. We thought it would be stuffed, but it was completely empty. We waited another week, and by that time there were a few letters. We freaked out and wrote handwritten letters back to everyone. We even included an autographed photo of us. Friendship bracelets were a pretty big thing at the time, and we got a ton sent to us. I still have them all!

  What Makes a Creative Partnership Work

  When you’re working with another person on a creative project, it’s important to make sure that you each have equal responsibilities, so neither of you feels that you are doing more work than the other. While brainstorming, clear your mind of everything else and bounce ideas off each other until something sparks. Build on each other’s ideas. And if your partner tosses out an idea that you don’t think works, make sure to say why you don’t think it works rather than just shooting it down. This will help get you both to develop a shared vision.

  How to Make a Viral Video

  There are no instructions. I’d be a billionaire if I knew how to do this because the elements that cause a video
to go viral are varied and random, though usually it has to do with an undercurrent of what’s happening culturally at large. You can basically chalk it up to posting the right video at the right time, and there’s nothing more painful than watching a branded video that you can tell was made in an obvious attempt to go viral. The cringe factor is equal to having your weird uncle show up at a school dance as a chaperone and start moonwalking. Now that is a video that would probably go viral.

  Five Things to Remember While Doing a School Play

  1. Never ad-lib.

  2. Don’t talk over other people’s lines.

  3. Always listen to your director.

  4. Make friends with the stage crew so they don’t mess with you.

  5. If you start to freak out on opening night, remember this: the lights are going to be so bright that you can barely see the audience anyway.

  My Favorite Musicals

  The Book of Mormon. There was a Mormon family in one of my neighborhoods growing up, and they always seemed mysterious to me. This play answered a lot of my questions about their religion, but even better, it made me laugh my ass off.

  Singing in the Rain. I saw a high school production of this a few towns over when I was young, and the songs have stuck with me. I also loved learning about the old Hollywood transition from silent film to talkies.

  Anything Goes. This was another high school production that I wasn’t cast in, and I will always consider it the one that got away. I’m still determined to sing “You’re the Top” in front of an audience someday.

  The Wizard of Oz. I watched this movie countless times when I was little, and I think it must have been the origin of my obsession with fantasy stories.

  The Lion King. The way the stage production transformed an animated movie into those awesome, huge puppets is pure magic. Hakuna matata, baby.

  Chapter 7

  Little Squish

  YouTube wasn’t the only bundle of joy that came into my life during high school. By the time I turned fifteen, my mother had sobered up and reunited with Bob. I’m not sure what the catalyst was, but I didn’t care. I was just happy to have her back, plus we moved into a nicer apartment. Our home life had finally smoothed out into a stable environment, and she and Bob began trying to have a child of their own again. They had been trying throughout their marriage, but my mom suffered a series of miscarriages. It was a heartbreaking period for all of us, but she never once slid back into drinking.

  She and Bob kept trying, and by the time she told me that she was pregnant again, I knew that her chances of carrying the baby through to term were good (by that point she had stopped telling people each time she got pregnant since the miscarriages were so frequent). But this time was different—she was really far along and the baby was looking healthy.

  It seemed crazy that at fifteen years old, I was going to have another sibling. I couldn’t wait to have someone to boss around the way Nicole had done to me, only I knew I would never take it as far as she did. I’d tease him for sure, but I also planned to be kind and gentle and act like a proper mentor from the get-go. I was ready. Mom being pregnant also meant that I didn’t have to worry about her starting to drink again. I knew she wouldn’t do anything to endanger the baby. It brought an even greater sense of peace into my life. My baby brother became a symbol of our happy new life on the horizon.

  Once Jett arrived, the whole family fell immediately in love with him. He was tiny and squishy and adorable, like a bald little alien wrapped in blankets. Everyone doted on him, but as we got closer to his first birthday, we began to notice that he wasn’t developing as fast as other kids his age in terms of his communication skills. Our apartment was on the second floor of a house, and the little girl who lived downstairs, who was a bit older than him, was already babbling away with our family whenever we’d pass her in the stairwell or see her in the yard, whereas Jett would just stare at us with his big blue eyes, looking lost whenever we talked to him.

  My mom and Bob took him to see various doctors, all of whom said that he would grow out of it and talk when he was ready, but after another year of silence, it was apparent that there was definitely something wrong. We tried everything to get him to interact with us, but he was withdrawn and shy. He would mumble at us but wouldn’t form any actual words. Mom enrolled him in weekly classes with a specialist who tried to get him to open up, but nothing worked.

  He was finally diagnosed as autistic, which was sort of a relief because armed with that knowledge, we could at least start learning about ways to bring him more into our lives, and vice versa. But it also got me really worried. It was pretty clear that he was going to have to go to special education classes, and after what I had gone through, I didn’t want him to have to experience any of the same feelings of not belonging. Luckily, by the time he was old enough to go to school, my parents had found a place that wasn’t mixed in with the general population—an institution specifically for children with autism.

  Jett wants to respond to people, but he can’t. He can understand what we say to him, but is able to answer only with small grunts and pointing. We developed a sort of shorthand communication style, like if I was playing with him and stopped, he’d take my hand and guide it back to whatever we were playing with to tell me that he wanted to keep at it.

  My parents discovered a whole bunch of apps that were created specifically for kids with autism, so they bought Jett an iPad. It opened up a whole new world for all of us. He could point at pictures of things in order to tell us what he wanted. Now, if he is hungry for an apple, all he has to do is point at a picture of one. But there was one time when he stuck his iPad in the microwave and turned it on. (I didn’t know you couldn’t put metal in a microwave until I was sixteen.)

  I became Jett’s babysitter. He had such special needs that we didn’t trust many other people to watch him. It was a big responsibility, and it could get frustrating. I wanted to be a normal teenager and go out and have fun all the time, not have to watch him every day. But his cute little face made it all worth it, plus I secretly loved having an excuse to watch all the kids’ shows he did!

  All of my original wishes about having a little brother to tease went out the window. I only wanted to protect him. (Okay, I’d still tease him a little bit. He hated having his hair cut, so sometimes I’d chase him around the house making scissor motions with my fingers. But he always knew it was just a game.) He loved being tickled, and I made up nicknames for him like Jetty and Little Squish.

  It’s tough to know that I’ll never be able to have a real conversation with him. I want to be able to teach him things about life that I have learned and pass along all of my big brother wisdom. I can still do that to a degree, but his life is going to be very different from mine and Nicole’s, and the fact is that I know he will probably end up being the one to teach me lessons about getting past adversity. In fact, he already has. Every time I find myself getting shy around someone now, I force myself to get over it because I know I’m lucky enough to be able to actually say what’s on my mind. Having a little brother with autism has taught me much about patience, resilience, and unconditional love. And he is going to continue to teach me about communication for the rest of my life, since I know that we will constantly develop new ways to interact with each other as we both get older. I can’t wait to see the man he will grow up to be.

  What Is Autism?

  Autism is a general term to describe varying degrees of brain development disorders. They are usually characterized by difficulty in communicating, awkward social interactions, and repetitive behavior. One in sixty-eight American children fall somewhere on the autism spectrum—a number that’s increased greatly in the past forty years. You can learn much more about it at autismspeaks.org or autismsciencefoundation.org.

  A Couple of Great iPad Apps for Autistic Kids

  If you have a sibling with autism, Proloquo2go is an app with over 14,000 symbols that help autistic kids build language skills. It costs almost $200, which s
ounds crazy for an app, but you can’t really put a price on being able to effectively communicate with a family member. Another cool resource (and a free one) is Autism Apps. Download it to search over thirty learning categories and curate a bunch of apps that will be appropriate for the specific needs of your loved one.

  Chapter 8

  So Alone

  By the time my college application phase arrived, I knew that I wanted to go to film school, and I thought that all of my YouTube experience gave me a competitive edge. In the guidance counselor’s office one day, as I was flipping through brochures about the country’s top film programs, I discovered the school of my dreams, Emerson College. It’s in Boston so it was close to home, and the stats were incredible—many Emerson alumni have gone on to work on films like Watchmen and television shows like Friends and The Colbert Report. One grad had even won a Pulitzer. I scheduled a campus tour, and once I visited, I fell in love with it. The buildings were sleek and modern, and I could feel its creative energy in my bones. I knew that I had to get in, that it was the place that would allow me to follow my dreams. I genuinely believed that the only way I would succeed in life was if I got into this school.

  The problem was that Emerson is a hard school to get into, and although my grades were much better now that I was out of the IEP, I knew I needed something that would stand out on my application. The film department requires applicants to submit a video, so I decided to shoot a seriously kick-ass short horror film.

  I hated scary movies as a child, but I eventually grew to love them. People who are into this genre have all sorts of different reasons for liking it (gore hounds are the worst), but for me, I got into them because I was such a scaredy-cat on my own. I already saw dark and spooky things everywhere I looked, so I was hooked whenever a creepy movie came on TV. I devoured them, even when they gave me nightmares for weeks. As I got older, I began to appreciate that power. Anything that could leave such a lasting impression meant that it was striking some sort of primal nerve, and I wanted to be able to tap into that with my own work.