It seems that every day there’s a new star that emerges from the video-sharing website YouTube. Take Jenna Marble for example. Or take a second to look back on Rebecca Black’s fifteen minutes of fame (okay, now you’re free to erase that memory permanently). How many musicians get their big break from YouTube? Ahem, Justin Bieber, only one of the most influential pop sensations of all time. The advent of YouTube allowed for user-generated content to quickly circulate the web, making it easy for people to watch, upload, and share videos more efficiently. Partner a group of talented individuals with the YouTube revolution and you’ve got an instant hit. By making comedic videos, Katie, Jon, and Lucas were able to gain popularity in the midst of the YouTube frenzy and eventually build a prominent audience even before YouTube fame was commonplace. As a member of JKL Productions, Jon Smet reflects on the joys of doing something he loves- making videos- while reaching overnight success in the case of their video “Nobody’s Perfect”.
How would you describe JKL Productions?
JKL Productions (http://www.youtube.com/JKLProd…) was a comedy YouTube channel started by my cousin Lucas, my twin sister Katie, and me back in the summer of 2006. I’m trying to think of an organized way to describe it, but basically we just came up with random comedy video ideas back in middle school and high school, filmed them, and then posted them on YouTube for people to see. At the end of that first summer we had a total of 100 subscribers (which was actually a big deal back then!), and by the summer of 2009 we hit the 100,000 subscribers milestone and eventually peaked at 145,000 subscribers in 2010. We were also ranked as one of the top 20 most subscribed channels on the site, and the 3rd most subscribed comedians. Right now, our videos still get watched every day and we have about 80,000,000 video views totaled over our 7 years on the site. It was probably one of the coolest experiences I’ve ever had in my life because Lucas, Katie, and I are all very close, and our JKL videos were just products of us hanging out together, so seeing them get so much attention was super exciting.
When and how did JKL Productions start?
At the beginning of summer in 2006 (Katie and I had just finished 7th grade and Lucas had just finished 6th grade), Katie and I traveled down to Columbus, Nebraska, to stay with Lucas and his family for a month. Katie and I lived in Rochester, Minnesota, about an 8 hour drive from Columbus, and we usually only got to meet up for a couple weekends a year, so the fact that we got to spend a whole month together was huge! We were young, had a lot of energy, and had no plans for our month together so we decided to make a video on our the first day with Lucas’ new camera, and we had so much fun making that first video that we kept going, and ended up making around 20 videos in that first month alone. YouTube wasn’t even a year old back then, so the whole system was a totally new concept to us, and being able to watch our videos get viewed by random people around the world was a great thrill.
Are you still producing more videos? If not, what would you do if you had to make more videos?
Our most recent JKL video (Just Katie and me) was uploaded in August of 2009, and the most recent JKL video with all three of us in it was uploaded in October of 2007. In the spring of 2008 Lucas split off from the group to pursue a professional career in acting and comedy (And he’s been VERY successful! His character ‘Fred’ was, at one point, the most subscribed channel on YouTube and I know college students are reading this, but go checkout Lucas’ new show, Marvin Marvin, on Nickelodeon!) After Lucas left the group, Katie and I continued to make videos for about two years before eventually stopping. We’ve never officially ended JKL Productions though, so who knows? Maybe we’ll be back with more content some day! I’d definitely like to make more videos again sometime when I get more free time, and I think they’d be a lot like the type of videos we’ve already made. A lot of silliness, a lot of making a fool of myself, and hopefully Katie will join me with that haha.
What types of videos did JKL Productions create?
The videos we made are called sketch comedy videos, or ‘sketches.’ Sketches are just comedic short films that have a general plot. Though, I bet a lot of people would argue that a lot of our videos don’t even have a plot, and that’s totally true. But hey! That’s what happens when you give young people a camera, no script, and tell them to improvise. Most of our sketches were between 2.5 minutes and 5 minutes in length, and the different types included fake commercials, lip syncs, and even a real music video that we produced our own music for (with help from our friend Arsha). We also made dances to popular songs (most notably Hannah Montana’s legendary chart-topper, ‘Nobody’s Perfect’).
What’s your favorite video of yours?
Man, that’s a hard one! I had a ton of fun doing all the videos, so it’s hard to just pick one, so I’m going to cheat and pick a few. My favorites were The Nerds Strike Back, The Lost Sandwich, and The Sleep Over. Usually before we shooting a video we had a pretty basic understanding of how the video was going to turn out, but these three videos were just straight improv, and I loved that! For example, The Nerds Strike Back started off kind of like a ‘MTV’s True Life’ documentary on nerds, and then morphed into a video that followed the rivalry between the nerds and the jocks in a high school and how they held a dance off to see who would become the most popular. Somehow our videos almost always came together in the end, and I don’t know how that happened, but I’m happy it did.
Did you expect your version of “Nobody’s Perfect” to gain so much success?
No, it was crazy! We were already growing into one of the top channels on YouTube when we uploaded the video, so it wasn’t that big of a deal when it hit the first 100,000 views, but then the view count kept rising every day by around 50,000 views, and that was a huge surprise. The Hannah Montana craze back then was in its prime, and I think our video was one of the first 3 videos that popped up when someone searched ‘Hannah Montana’ in the YouTube search bar. Multiply that by the fact that the ‘Nobody’s Perfect’ song had just been released, and YouTube had just made headlines as the fastest growing website (and the only social media giant that made an actual threat to MySpace and Facebook), and we had a hit. It was awesome how the timing worked out, and we were really grateful for the exposure it gave us, and how it gave us an audience we may have never reached otherwise. A little known secret is that we made a similar dance music video for Panic At the Disco’s ‘I Write Sins, not Tragedies’ back in 2006 that reached 100,000 views in over two days. We took that video down though because Lucas and I were too embarrassed over the fact that we were wearing dance costumes made for 3rd grade girls haha. But who knows how the future would’ve changed if we had left that one up!
How did you come up with video ideas?
Our whole process was really informal, sometimes a video would just pop into our heads and we’d share it with each other, and then other times we’d take out our camera without a video idea in mind and just come up with something on the spot. Every once in awhile we’d get writer’s block and then our parents would give us ideas to think about, and that always helped us get our creativity flowing again.
Did each of you play a major role in JKL Productions? What was your specific role?
We always tried to allow each of us a chance to work each of the roles in the video process. One of the reasons JKL so fun was that all three of us enjoyed everything that went into producing the videos; we all loved coming up with the ideas, working the camera, acting, and editing. I’ll admit that sometimes I took control of the editing more than I should’ve when Katie and I made videos together, but I’ll formally apologize to her now – sorry Katie! But, with regards to splitting the work evenly between all of us, I think it worked out really well. We all learned a lot during our time together, and it allowed us all to have a solid understanding of each steps in video production. Our camera work gradually became more technical, we learned about how to setup lighting when shooting on a set, and we got to learn how to use a variety of different editing programs (mostly Sony Vegas and Adobe Premiere Pro).
Are you looking to do any acting or producing in the future?
I don’t have any plans right now but I’m always looking to get back into making videos! I miss the whole process that goes into making them, so I’m hoping that I can get back into it, or doing something with comedy, sometime in the future. Plus, my friends are always pushing me to make videos with them so I know I’ll at least be making stuff with them sometime soon!