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YouTube sensation MrBeast started a discussion earlier this week about applying his video-making skills to making animated movies or series. Having recently become the second creator to cross the 100 million subscriber mark, the wildly popular YouTuber's interest in making movies caught a lot of people's eyes.
Jimmy Donaldson has repeatedly proven himself to be the king of content. With too many viral videos to count, the creator has been honing his video-production skills since he was a teenager uploading Minecraft Let's Plays on YouTube back in 2012. Combined, his YouTube channels have since accrued over 25 billion views.
Naturally, his 15.1 million Twitter followers were quite interested in what Jimmy had to say about feature length movies or webseries in a way that combines his YouTube content with long-form visual art. MrBeast appeared to be gathering feedback from the community as he posed a question in the form of a statement, asking people what their thoughts on the subject were:
"I’m curious what would happen if I took everything we know about YouTube retention/story telling/virality and tried to apply it to an animated movie or series."
MrBeast debates the problem of "translating" his viral brand into feature length movie or series
Short-form videos have become a craze in the modern world of multimedia and entertainment. Since the days of Vine and the current TikTok revolution, content on the internet has become shorter. Now 10-20 second clips need to pack a lot of information and above all, be entertaining.
With Instagram reels and YouTube shorts coming into the fray, it is clear that there is a dramatic shift towards short-form content. Taking a step back, YouTube videos that are 10-20 minutes long are already shorter than the 30-60 minutes long weekly episodes for most major webseries. A 2018 study found that the average YouTube video length was 11.7 minutes.
Now it is known that YouTube's algorithm prefers videos longer than 10 minutes but dislikes longer videos. A cursory look at MrBeast's top 10 most popular videos corroborates this. The average length of the videos is 16.5 minutes and in total have raked in 1.8 billion views to the channel at the time of writing.
Keen observers will also note that numbers 2, 3 and 8 in the list are part of one series or the other, so it would not be incorrect to say that MrBeast has no experience in serialized content. Nonetheless, making an animated movie, TV, or webseries is quite different than making fast-paced viral YouTube videos which sell like hot cakes on his channel.
"Most movies feel dragged out and boring to me": Arguments for and against the debate
Many content creators, animators and people associated with filmmaking were able to voice their opinions under MrBeast's Twitter thread. A major objection raised by one such animator by the name of Jermaine was the question of translating MrBeast's jam-packed and highly hyped content into longer video forms.
In his opinion, the two different genres might be impossible to coalesce into. Because making longer films or episodes where too much is happening is quite a general flaw that critics love to point out. MrBeast, however, felt otherwise and called most movies "dragged out and boring."
Jermaine further elaborates on his point in later tweets in the thread where he notes the need to let introductory scenes have a slow start in order to bring the world alive and allow the audience to watch the onscreen characters grow and also to build suspense; all of which YouTube videos lack.
Many seemed to agree with him and expounded on the difference between YouTube videos and movies/series.
That said, a lot of fans were clearly interested in seeing what he could bring to the table:
Kevin Temmer even asked if he would let aspiring artists fed up of the entertainment industry pitch ideas.
MrBeast has become a well-established entertainment brand. Their network of editors and producers churn out content in various languages on different channels on YouTube, making them one of the biggest names on the platform right now. It would be interesting to see Jimmy try new things and expand his brand into newer markets.
