The Next Spielberg is a YouTuber

I’d like to start off with a personal story. I took my first film class in August of 2018. My new friends and I were only a week into university, and we were riding the freshman high. 

As 200 students filled the auditorium, you could feel the buzz of excitement in the air—people saving seats for their late friends, rows of students whispering rumors about the professor. In five minutes, our Hollywood dreams were about to begin and we couldn’t wait. 

But the ambition and excitement that overwhelmed the auditorium couldn't have been shot down quicker. One sentence into Professor Zimmerman’s introduction, she hit us with a bombshell: “Most of you have dreams of becoming Hollywood directors, Oscar-winning screenwriters, and producers, and I wanted to let you know that it’s not going to happen.” 

I remember scoffing at her declaration, convinced I’d beat the odds. How could she say that? She must be wrong, I thought. 

But four years later, I’m writing to you not as an acclaimed film director but as a YouTuber. I wonder if Professor Zimmerman was just offering us our first exposure to what we now recognize as reality?

Today, I’m not a celebrated Hollywood director, nor am I aiming to become one. But I’m still telling stories, producing high quality films, and reaching untapped communities with my videos. I’m just not following the traditional route to filmmaking superstardom. 

Hollywood’s elite maintain a tight grip on what stories do and don’t get made. These days, they’re more formulaic than ever, with studios producing mostly superhero movies and reboots that aim for profit over unique storytelling. 

In that power framework, though, the most personal, most diverse, and most interesting stories rarely make it past the back burner. So who’s going to break the mold to tell those stories? 

Creators on social platforms. In fact, YouTube is becoming just as credible a place for award-winning storytelling as Hollywood. 

For a long time, social platforms were considered spaces for amateur creators, simplistic content, self-promotion, and mindless scrolling. But we often forget that platforms like YouTube have birthed some of the strongest talent of our generation.

Consider Bo Burnham, director of the acclaimed movie Eighth Grade. He started writing songs in his bedroom and uploading his performances to YouTube at 15. 

At 29 and 30, he wrote, filmed, performed, and edited his Netflix special Inside, alone during the pandemic. He used simple production tools and a $3,000 Lumix camera to film the whole special. 

The production won three Emmy awards and the hearts of both critics and audiences. 

There’s also Hayden Hillier-Smith, editor for Logan Paul. He often analyzes his YouTube videos the way critics might a film. The latest video he edited, “I Bought The World’s Most Expensive Pokemon Card,” was inspired by renowned filmmaker Stanley Kubrick’s quick edits and close-up shots in A Clockwork Orange. 

Burnham and Hillier-Smith are experts at creating connections and owning distribution—a lot like what major film studios try to achieve with much bigger budgets. 

Today, anyone with an internet connection and a DSLR or smartphone can become a filmmaker—and they might even earn trust from an audience that finds grainy iPhone 8 footage deeply relatable. Budgets in the millions aren’t required to make awards-season-worthy content anymore. All you need is an idea.

This fresh approach to filmmaking challenges the traditional idea of what counts as “necessary” for a hit and what aligns with audience expectations.

Whether it’s uploading to YouTube instead of pitching to studios or using just your phone to tell a powerful story, social media allows anyone to build an audience outside the confines of a Hollywood PR strategy. 

That makes space for more nontraditional creators-turned-filmmakers to gain traction—and with this absence of gatekeepers and openness of opportunity, we not only get more stories, but we get more diverse stories.

Just look at these creators who are making it to the rooms where the decisions are being made on their own terms, with audiences they built and own because of social—creators like PonySmasher (David F. Sandberg), Issa Rae, Liza Koshy, and MysteryGuitarMan (Joe Penna). 

The rise of the creator industry is an opportunity to write a new chapter in film history, one in which the traditional idea of what makes a “good” film is pushed to new standards by a new generation—one that grew up online. They’re creating spectacular content with less money, fewer stodgy principles and structures, bigger built-in audiences, and lots more creativity.  

What if all you need is a phone to make an Academy Award-winning film? What if vlogging becomes a film genre like horror or melodrama? What if the next Spielberg is a YouTuber? 

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You've Come a Long Way

Watch your first YouTube upload. Read your first blog post. Find your first newsletter. Listen to your first podcast episode.

Now, compare that to your most recent work. The two are like night and day, right?

You might cringe a little at past you, but present you should be proud. Your content has evolved and grown—and you have too. But if you’re like most creators, your marketing platform is still saying “welcome to my pilot episode” when it should be saying “this ain’t my first rodeo.”

That marketing platform needs a fresh start. Get it with ConvertKit.

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