A Golden Age for Content Creators
One point I make over and over again to my university students is this: There has never been a better time to be involved in creative activities. Indeed this may very well be a Golden Age for Content Creators.
Why? Here’s one big honking reason: In effect, the Internet is a worldwide distribution network. It literally reaches billions of potential viewers. And oh yeah, it’s free.
In the ‘old days’, distribution of content was pretty much a closed loop system. Make a movie? You needed a studio or indie distributor to transport your film to movie theaters so people could see it. TV show? Without a broadcast or cable network to pick up and produce your series, you were out of luck. Record album? Artists were at the mercy of record labels.
Nowadays that’s all changed. You can quite literally record yourself on your computer, upload the video to YouTube, and — in theory at least — that content can find its way into the homes of people in all continents.
Of course, you have to have talent and if you do comedy, an angle, a hook, some kind of schtick.
Take the case of Miranda Sings featured in a recent Variety article:
Colleen Ballinger didn’t expect her talentless, narcissistic weirdo creation to be anything more than a short-lived joke for her theater friends.
Seven years ago, the classically trained vocalist and actress was performing at Disneyland (in “High School Musical” and “Playhouse Disney”), playing a princess at kids’ birthday parties, and waitressing. She was also posting videos on YouTube in the guise of someone called Miranda Sings — a homeschooled teen from Tacoma, Wash., with ridiculously misapplied lipstick and verbal tics, who couldn’t carry a tune but considered herself a world-class singer.
Since her video “Free Voice Lesson” went viral in 2009, Miranda Sings has rocketed into the top echelon of social stars. She has attracted legions of fans for both her online output and her in-person live tours; these “Mirfandas” follow her across YouTube (6.5 million subscribers), Instagram (4.4 million), Twitter (2.3 million), and other platforms.
If you’re not familiar with Miranda, here is her send-up of the Taylor Swift hit single “Shake It Off”:
That video has accumulated nearly 50 million views. I first saw Miranda with Jerry Seinfeld on his Internet series “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee”. Ballinger as Miranda is funny. And Seinfeld is a fan. Check out these videos she did with him:
More from Variety:
Now Ballinger, who married YouTube personality and entertainer Joshua David Evans last year but uses her maiden name professionally, is ready to take her career to the next level. She has just completed shooting Netflix’s “Haters Back Off,” an eight-episode comedy set to premiere worldwide this fall. The show, which Ballinger conceived several years ago with her brother, Christopher Ballinger, tells the story of Miranda’s upbringing and how she came to become a YouTube star.
Ballinger, 29, is just one of a growing number of digital-native creators who are looking to stretch beyond the raw DIY world of vlogging to the very different universe of full-fledged scripted episodic TV.
This type of career trajectory was virtually unheard of just a few decades ago. For comedians, you had to toil in the club circuit and hope that some talent spotter caught your act, thought you were funny, and gave you a shot on TV like “The Tonight Show”. Now due to the international distribution network known as the Internet — did I mention it’s free?! — creatives like Ballinger can go from their living room to their own Netflix series.
Takeaway: Make stuff. Refine your voice. Find an angle. Nail down your hook. Write stories. Produce movies. Create content. Put it out there. See what happens.
For the Miranda Sings YouTube channel, go here.
For more of Variety’s digital star ‘famechangers,’ go here.