[Music] welcome to ear biscuits I’m Rhett and I’m link joining us today at the round table of dim lighting is youtuber filmmaker and really good friend of ours Joe Penna aka mystery guitar man you know mystery guitar man we had the pleasure of and we would have the pleasure of knowing Joe for many yes we still know him we can laugh we’re still friends and you know great guy amazingly talented and it was cool to talk to him right so in just in case you don’t know about Joe he exploded on the internet with this popular stop-motion video back in 2009 guitar impossible guitar as people are like anywhere but this guitar like you say guitar guitar impossible and it’s got currently over 15 million views this kicked off a series of stop-motion videos where Joe would play an instrument almost anything at all really soda cans balloons kazoos and he would make a stop-motion music video out of it these videos are literally frame by frame one note at the time added together to create a song here’s a clip of him playing Mozart with root beer bottles via the magic of editing [Music] you really gotta watch the videos to fully appreciate them and then when you do watch them there’s a level of engagement that I it kind of comes in waves of that’s cool well he did this to make that and then there’s like layers of understanding that lead to layers of appreciation of all the stuff Joe does and one of the interesting thing we talked about is how that appreciation that really translated into millions and millions of views back in Ohio 9 2010 isn’t necessarily translating into millions and millions of views today and would get Joe’s perspective on that yeah it’s an interesting phenomenon I mean our appreciation of his work translated into us reaching out to him very early we talked about this collaborating on every t-shirt war video we’ve done what you’ve done – yes so all two of them so from the get-go he was instrumental in in in that video for us but today you get to hear and actually for the first time we got to hear Joe’s side of the story of collaborating you know I mean we had exchanged emails but we met to work on t-shirt war and there were a couple of facets to his experience that blew my mind yes specifically a near catastrophic story involving the footage that we never knew about this so he drops a bomb on us oh yes in this ear but it’s ok because this means many years later so we were able to survive it but he’s more than just a stop-motion madman his YouTube channel currently with 2.8 million subscribers also features much of short films that he’s directed if you consider short films to be 40 minutes long I guess technically they’re that still a short film but he’s doing that kind of thing making very cinematic short films on his YouTube channel so we talked to Joe about those films including where he’s going with all that what that is working towards and what he’s got in store in the future and of course we also talked about his backstory which was super fascinating including it’s the really interesting I’ll call it peculiar I just I’ll just call it that technique that he’d developed to adjust to life in the u.s. having moved as a kid from Brazil so like I said we really enjoyed reconnecting with Joe I know that you’re really gonna enjoy our conversation with him too but first we want to remind you that you can download our new album song biscuits Volume one one of X X fill in the blank I don’t know how many we’re gonna make where there’s one right now 15 songs you can get that on iTunes or Amazon remember these are the songs that we wrote in collaboration with other creators based on your suggestions through the Twitter’s and the Facebook sometimes here’s a clip from one of our favorite songs on this album the 10-second rule song featuring nice Peter [Music] literally on the trail 15 songs guys so head over to iTunes and download them thanks for supporting entertainment and for rating and leaving a review on iTunes also available on Amazon alright and now onto the biscuit first time I wrote in an electric car I’m trying to remember all the things because we go way back way back but the first time I wrote in like a 100% electric car was your car oh yeah the Tesla Roadster do you still have it I don’t I sold it we moved into we started renting a place because we were saving up to buy a house okay and we moved into this place where it was before the law required people to allow electric cars to be in the you know hookups basically so I couldn’t charge my car and there was ever like places to charge and it was the old Tesla so I couldn’t just charge it up in the public chargers either so it was taking me like two days to charge up my car just out of normal outlets you know so you had a revert yeah so I had to revert back to my IC II don’t turn a combustion engine you know well yeah it’s sad big isida yeah but now that you’ve got a place oh you’re gonna put a charging station and go back yeah because I have solar panels in my roof and I it would be super cheap for me to go back to electric so yeah I’m gonna wait until the next day you have you you have to have a special like converter in your garage to like properly charge one if you want to charge it up fast yeah otherwise it takes like 48 hours for you to charge oh really and that’s not worth it okay mm-hmm just out of you know normal outlets from the wall right it’s like charging up your the battery on your phone if you had a thousand phones in your car but but that you wrote in the car right after me right right that day not get the right I don’t know if I actually got this at the YouTube space I think I was just there when you when you started it up and that just meant getting into it and like pressing a button and there was no indication that the car was on and then you just backed up and I was like the future is here I don’t hear anything you that’s right I actually didn’t ride in your car either it’s just my memory it was it was so impactful mm-hmm that I felt like I was right the first time you stood next to an electric car what we came the first time you rode into it yeah yeah I just remember being struck with the same thing well I dream Connor it’s all in your memory it’s uh yeah yeah you fabric you fabricated all of this so you also never had a pilot license because I remember that too no I was starting to get my pilot license you bailed on that too I know I just don’t blame everything on the baby no one at the pilot license place recognized me so right started becoming very mystery what it was aside $15,000 to get a pilot license here but you’ve built up some credits that you can then go back yeah yeah and I did a lot of similarity stuff which counts towards your hours but then once the baby came around my wife was like no you’re not allowed to ride a motorcycle or or plane oh yeah I used to have a dream of you can’t ride in a plane anymore little planes little planes right I had a dream of going up in a ultralight trike and then you know my wife gave me the you have children you have to learn what would happen yeah in my life I’m like you can take care of them you’re fine I’ve seen you yeah so Jonah how old is he no he’s nine months nine months so nine months into fatherhood you shouldn’t know what it feels like by now I don’t sleep anymore but I wasn’t sleeping before and so but you’ve already harnessed the power of exploiting him for the four YouTube video cute baby up there at the end blog now it’s not I don’t I just don’t have to wait around for Joe to start talking about subscribing now I got I got I got a good reason you got a reason yes hang her out right it would be better video donor I dressed up in a black morph suit and got like little tiny instruments so basically found the smallest cello that there was it was about the same size as an upright bass for him you know and found all these tiny little instruments and then did a video where I’m helping him play along and it was bad yeah and his uh that we were talking about that hit the look on his face is that having a great time and then I was like this had to happen over the course of a few days unless you just have a baby that has an incredible personality attitude howdy – we got very she’s got a great personality too but attitude there people have tried that video with baby link it would have never happened it would’ve been a do it been different for it’s been running for a difference yeah every like picture of me as like a kid once I was aware of pictures of me were being taken like against that like Kmart backdrop every single one for like other backgrounds was oh yeah I was like red-faced in tears like I hate it unless we’re Lando gets Lando refuses to have his picture taken I know he’d not take part in any sort of you’d think I was the paparazzi and he was like John Travolta no yeah you couldn’t do that video with Lando now but it would be a great video if you did it but it would be like people would think it was abuse yeah just a baby crying so I’m eating there Jonah that was all like in one shoot sighs OH three horses yeah he was there for three hours he hates getting his clothes changed so that was annoying about him so by the end of it he was like I don’t do this anymore but was Sarah like behind the camera my ass she was rated camera yeah all the like for a long time we still have the audio from the camera it was just Sarah like a reverse on her this is what it that’s a great behind this I was really scared you know cuz I’m wearing a black morphsuit but he was just like laughing at me and half the time he’s just like looking up at me be like what is going on behind me like would your face covered – yeah you know what that would affect me even a normal child would have been freaked out so you’ve got something special on your hands do you have an extraordinary boy and of course you name – Jonah so that you could then gift the channel to your JP channel that’s the only reason yes Alyssa that again oh yeah it was we didn’t realize this until later but it was it’s half my name half her name we Brangelina our kid oh you know what and you didn’t even know it we didn’t even know it cuz my name is Jonas uh-huh and her name is Sarah so join us Sarah Joan Jonah yeah yeah you put on it that’s a great realization and now on you should just say that was intentional oh yeah I was totally in will you know of course it’ll be on this podcast we’re gonna name a Brin Jelena but my wife a little weird so you’re gifting the channel yeah now so now YouTube comments last JP is no longer your second Channel right it’s it’s his channel and mom’s channel is that really how it’s gonna work really hit moms you know me but you’re basically like putting him to work I mean like officially I mean we’ve he’s got a he’s got to get to it right yeah yeah it’s expensive having a baby it’s got my cribs he’s got to pay for himself it’s for you well let with all this baby talk let’s go back to you let’s do it as a baby me as a baby you as a baby we’re what you were born born in Brazil more specific in some Paulo in Brazil big city and then we moved out to the suburbs of some pilot a little tiny city that I recently went back to visit and you’ve got siblings I think we met your sister assist yeah yeah but she’s younger so you were like the first kid of the first kid of three and the my little brother is in high school now okay and that’s it that’s the third three you guys uh-huh yeah that’s the three of us so you’re in Brazil yeah and what was your dad doing at the time my dad was an engineer he he was an engineer my mom was a schoolteacher and you know he wanted us to to have a an education here an American education to learn English you know he was seeing that English was an important thing he spoke enough to get around you know he’s like if if they have an American college degree they can come back to Brazil and make like five times as much money and you know if they speak English that’d be good for them so we moved here first to Massachusetts and you were how old I was 11 turning into 12 mm-hm so yeah very great time to move so what do you remember about the move what was your mindset it’s cooled it I mean that a big part of the motive was for you and your siblings you know how did you feel about it I I was I was excited about it you know at first I was like I don’t want to move I’ve got my friends here but then you know I started thinking about my future and it was the very first time as a kid because yeah as a kid you don’t think about your future the very first time that I’m like okay this this makes sense this will be good in the long run it’ll hurt a little bit right now I’ll have to lose my friends I have to like learn English you know I knew two words welcome and balloon and that was it yeah yeah yeah good at welcoming balloons I was yeah yeah welcome balloons you know that’s that’s where I got it from so how did you you know what was the process of learning English like so we we moved out from that kind of area to closer to my dad’s job which was far away from any Brazilian community so I didn’t know anybody you know I you know there was a Spanish kids in school you know the Puerto Ricans a lot for Ricans in Massachusetts too but I never fit in with those kind of people or the American so I tried to assimilate as much as possible I started I tried out for the baseball team and baseball is anything that isn’t like I didn’t know the rules there were 24 no soccer team do that that would have been a lot yeah I know right I never played soccer that’s why I could kick that a Brazil really yeah and they I was never any good at it no so you know we try it out there were 24 people I think who tried out for the baseball team and 22 made it I didn’t play baseball that you remember the other person I do he was he was really really large he was like I think over 200 pounds okay for a high school student right yeah it was it was very big right yeah so I try to assimilate as much as possible like I I thought that being American men being preppy so I went to like American Eagle and I bought a bunch of preppy clothes and I put them on and then I got a couple companies yeah nice shirt man and then the next day because I got a couple compliments I wore the same shirt and then it was like wait no that’s the same shirt you were in yesterday I was like but I washed it it was yesterday yeah that’s not cool today you had a big eagle on it yesterday and it still does today and I was the youngest kid in school because I I skip sixth grade so I you know a double bad for me right in your draw my life you said that you would go to in the supermarket and talk malls and go to the mall and talk to strangers to random malls I would drive out to like malls that I would never go back to ever again because I knew that I know anybody there we’re talking here’s 16 by that time you’re a teen yeah yeah okay so you’ve been around you’d been in the US for five six years well yeah still trying to master this thing right exactly yeah cuz it made me very shy I’m not being able to talk to anyone not being able to have any I was kind of like the loner kid you know me and like three other guys in school so like I haven’t been back to any high school reunions or anything like that cuz I didn’t have friends well what was the mall technique the mall technique I would just go back to to any mall that I would never go back to ever again and talk to random strangers and come up to them and shake their hand and say hey I’m a very shy person and I would like to talk to you too yes that’s that’s it to talk to you that’s it this is so counterintuitive though to to be shy but to be willing to go to a random mall and talk to a stranger because that’s something that a lot of normal non shine on shine people would have a difficult yeah doing yeah and I figured that that was like the hardest challenge for me and I read somewhere that was like if you if what is it like it was like if you’re afraid of spiders just like buy yourself a tarantula you know if you’re afraid of of this and that I’m afraid of talking to people I’m just gonna go and talk to random strangers and it’s Massachusetts Western Massachusetts a lot of them weren’t very kind right you know it’s like what are you trying to sell me kid I don’t know you’re trying to rob me or something really yeah I got a lot of that but you know every once in a while you know I started learning the little techniques to talk to people so like when you approach somebody you don’t approach them head-on you don’t say hey I’m here to talk to you you kind of push them to the side and you ask him a question that is that has a time of life you know what time it is or something like that or like do you know where I can find out the best buy around here and then they answer something like that it’s like oh do do you think that Best Buy or Circuit City is better and then you start turning enjoys the peace we know the answer to that yeah that’s by the time oh really because I I bought this thing over there at Circus and I thought that it was okay and then you start getting into a conversation somebody kind of naturally start getting into it but you know it’s so weird because you sound like either like a weird evangelist or a weird like there would be salesman who doesn’t I mean back in North Carolina one way you go into the Barnes & Noble and you’d be like they would they would hang out in certain places certain types of salesmen and you’d be like in looking at magazines or books at Barnes & Noble and someone will come up start talking to you and it would rest assured it would be a Salesman a pitch or something would be a sales pitch like Avon yes it was almost it was almost always the Amway guys because in any way uses well they also go by another another name but it’s essentially like it’s a pyramid scheme hmm you got some you get people to level marketing what yeah yeah is not multi-level marketing and I think that covers a wide variety of products but there’s always an initial technique that you’re in this conversation and you’re like in this way yeah yeah but for you it was just because I needed I need to break through yeah my shyness at first a lot of people were like worried that I was gonna sell them something you know people like that what really what what do you have to sell to me I’m like I just wanted to talk to you about the movies that are good didn’t know or did you give up on it now it helped me helped a whole lot so you you like became a master of this oh yeah yeah I don’t knew the techniques like the approaches the circuitcity banter circus no yeah I don’t think that I would be married to Sarah today had I not done this you met her in a mall I met her at them all and I sidled up to her it gave me the the social skills to be able to talk to people you know especially women because I was very very worried about talking to women because I was like they’re gonna think that I’m hitting on them or something use the side product into the side projection thing that’s right yeah yeah you know I told him like I’m gonna go to the mall and but I don’t think that they knew that why I was going to and talk to strangers and talk to strangers link’s do you think they would have would they have described you as yeah Joe’s working on his you know his social skills would then would they have known that that’s where you were at at the time if where they’ve been really surprised to know that this is how you were kind of treating yourself I don’t know I think they were just glad that I was out of my room because there was like a whole summer that I didn’t leave and I was just on this this website you use something YouTube like the entirety of it I was just there you know it was even before YouTube actor so I was like oh i was in the united TI blargh web sites which was the calculator programming web sites you know I I have like 3,000 posts in web sites I was moderator I wrote a whole operating system for the ti-83 in assembly really yeah yeah I was what does the operating system do it just you can flash it so that basically it’s like you know if you took out like like the fire phone the Amazon fire phone is basically Android that switched around to be just Amazon stuff so I would like i coded Mario levels and my Super Mario Brothers and like a lot of and I started seeing other kids playing it you know so it kind of became like my first experience with viral stuff you know you made like a Mario game on a ti-83 yeah yeah yeah mm-hmm and people could download it from that from that forum from the website yeah TI calculator like oh my god I play that game so how did you yeah because that was the other thing I wanted to kind of crack open yeah is you know we know the way that you’ve approached your YouTube career and it’s very technical and mechanical and there’s like a methodical yeah there’s an engineering program or sort of scientific approach so so that’s the way that was kind of coming out a kid was getting into things like this like programming their calculator definitely yeah and I wanted to I mean if it’s yeah I’ve heard my videos described that’s surgical and it’s interesting because I was in in med school and I was gonna I was about to get into med school and I was gonna be a surgeon hmm so so yeah it’s very grad school so just to connect the dots from high school yeah you you may went to pre-med and UMass okay so you moved to Boston yeah yeah I moved to Boston and took your ti-83 calculator was hook it with I took the 89 at that point actually yeah I I like stuff yeah it’s big stuff yeah there’s a lot of a calculus deficit so for years premed yeah I mean describe I was in a five year it was three years for pre-med and then two years for it to get my masters so that I could start right away and I was taking a lot of extra classes for that so I didn’t have much time during high school during college I mean to be doing YouTube which is when you know I got started for me but I still did it you know I was exhausted and I would still be like editing videos and I’m like why am i doing this and I realize what and why did you choose that there why did you choose you know become a surgeon was there like a family expectation of wow my dad moved us here so that we could be successful and I feel obligated to do something that big a big job yeah you know you hear that you know doctors and lawyers and like those kind of things is is what you should be you know in yeah my I saw how much my dad my dad sacrificed you know because he used to be an engineer in Brazil and then when he got here he would wake up at 3 o’clock in the morning deliver newspapers and then go and work at a pizza place all day you know while he was looking for a job hmm it was 2001 mm no mm yeah 2001 it was right after a recession because I’m at 11 it and things like that you know so he couldn’t find a job anywhere and so you know it was tough for a really really long time um when when we first got here so I was like I got to do something big you know so I figured surgeries surgeons surgeons make a lot of money all right I’ll do that right so that’s kind of where the ambition your ambitious guy to begin with but the way it was directed based on that sort of sense of obligation yeah and what I love I ology – yeah so and you know you had you know your dad being an engineer you sounds like you had that that mindset that ability you had you had the brains for this thing I mean your county or you’re you making Mario on it on it on a calculator I will small aside here I didn’t make a – xur adventure Merle Haggard game on tid – no like a text one it was all text it had no it had a couple of little graphics when you – you didn’t rescue Merle Haggard from prison because he was imprisoned at one point and in my advanced math class the only thing I did was work on this game the end of the year it was on like my calculator and that I like transferred it to links and it’s and I had in college for a long time t-80 – yeah I had that the processing power and I had that game on there and then one of these days was some day you know the calculator got lost but it was no Mario I don’t know I can’t even begin to imagine we didn’t have we didn’t have know about that website you could have uploaded it and it could have gone viral probably have as much as Joe yeah there’s a lot of demand from Merle Haggard at prison use so the parallel story of you know when you’re going off to college from like a social standpoint of you kind of dismal regimen of adapting – yeah you know interpersonal communication yeah where were you at that point like going off to college that had to been a milestone yeah I was a lot better than I was a commuter to college so I I didn’t have it still was difficult for me you know we just didn’t have the money for me to live there you know it was close enough it was 40 minutes away so you know 40 minutes there for a minutes back but even in okay so that I mean you’re you created your channel you caught it mystery guitar man yeah right off the bat so it’s like you guitar glasses right from the start so what went into that there’s nothing a pre-med in there there was a Nintendo pre-med guitar man so thankfully so give us the story of the start of the channel and the glasses at the time they were people who were doing these like lisanova and little loca and we’re doing like these kind of what’s a call them like characters on YouTube you know and I was like okay what could be my thing and I shot my first like little vlog of me just talking to the camera I think I didn’t even put it up and Mayra so my camera was broken so I had my glasses on now I did put that one up yet I have my glasses on I was like uh you know glasses mystery you know so I put in mystery and that was taken of so mystery man that was taken and looked around there was a guitar sitting there was like a mystery guitar that was taking mystery guitar man that was the only thing it was like you had to it’s one of those things got a creator username and then it’s yeah I’m gonna do it right now process of elimination it was four o’clock in the morning when I said a minute because that’s when I received a welcome YouTube email I kept everything writing every single time someone subscribed to me I can search for that yeah and then in the net spin it’s been your trademark yeah the sunglasses have been your trademark yeah yeah I wished that Oakley would see that but yeah it’s been it kind of became my thing because I bit a couple video without the glasses and people like no no you like put the glasses back on like you you need to to keep them on for more like a branding standpoint like we just like that people are like they didn’t like your eyeballs yeah I feel like I’ve also weird like put your glasses back but not are you are you just being funny are you being for real now for real like I got those kind of comments oh you’ll get all types I guess oh yeah and at the time I didn’t have a thicker skin that I have nowadays you know cuz YouTube back then wasn’t as you know wasn’t hidden by anonymity was kind of like you know everyone was like oh I love this video but everyone is super positive and then you know you get a couple the mean ones and that’s how I can focus on you know even though there are a hundred like oh this is a great video there’s one that’s like I see the green screen over the top right at one minute in fish yes right you know that guy gets you so you so you’re telling me that you happen to be wearing sunglasses and like a first vlog that you did mm-hmm but then you decided it wasn’t a thing you just did it yeah it was then when you when you didn’t do it yeah people were like saying mean things about your eyeballs yeah not only that but not only the mean things but like Oh like your name is mystery guitar man you should keep the glasses on the whole time you know and like so comments like that not only just mean things but but maybe the mean comments kind of reinforce okay it’s like well right right because my comments are the only thing you can remember really yeah yeah yeah you focus on the one out of 1000 what it say I definitely get that so and it ironically reinforced something that which which was good brain and invites me because it’s not people like things latch on to plus it’s great for me when I’m at VidCon if if I want to get to from A to B from one panel to the other I can just remove the glasses in and I’m a real-life Clark Kent now any also I mean it helps you’re able to monitor yourself constantly but they don’t wouldn’t no one know oh yeah oh my god it’s so easy especially when I’ve done TV shows where I can just read literally I can just tape a little thing to the screen and you know right now I’m looking at you but I could be looking at him and no one oh yeah and so then okay how did you begin to make that transition into making the kinds of videos that became your hallmark like where did that idea yeah yeah I started learning more about editing you know so I wanted to push editing at the time you know there were a couple people doing that cool editing tricks and After Effects things you know and I’m I don’t want to get into that you know so I started doing videos with clones you know you definitely see the seam in the middle because the camera is not it’s in a lot of focus or whatever you know and then I said okay what’s wrong with this like what why didn’t this works and I would search it up and I wouldn’t find anything and it was okay so I would tried three or four different things literally my vlogs would take about an hour to shoot even though they were about 15 seconds 20 seconds long because I would say a bunch of things I’d go back to the Edit and I’m like I didn’t work and I would say a bunch of other things and then go back to the Edit and then I’d get bored and just go okay I’ll just put that in that’s fun you know and yeah so it kind of became a style where like I would shave a frame off of everything and see what that sounded like so you start learning like okay on the esses as soon as you see that’s you can cut on oh you’re gonna let that go a little longer you know you start learning literally like to the frame editing for the vlogs and and you come out with the guitar impossible yeah yeah it was uh there were a few stop-motion things before that right not as fancy like toying with like parking meters right or things like that right yeah yeah but then this I mean that was the big one dude you know I think this is gonna be a big one I’ve told myself that yeah I was working at an editing house at the time and I was like stop motion with people like it’s been done here and there’s a guy called Paul versus a Steve or something like I forget what it’s called like where they’re fighting around it’s not motion I was like that’s cool but there’s no musical element to it you know like the I think it’d be cool to do something big and at the time YouTube used to handpick videos to go on the front page or the getting featured was like a big thing but you guys ever get featured by the way yeah I think you guys a couple times right yeah that we had technically the first feature for us was called the unibrow song yeah yeah we wanted to feature Rhett son doing like a rant about a basketball game Wolfpack versus Tar Heels but we asked them not to do it to the future something defeatist amounts that we were trying to yeah that was very really important back in those days oh yeah it was huge because you know that’s the front page of YouTube YouTube is is appearing everywhere Dane Cook talked about it and on SNL and we were like oh my gosh they in like real this is real know you already in LA at that point no still massachusett okay so you’re still in so okay so I want to make sure that we connect the dots but yeah yeah you know school and so you’re still in school in schools then and then when working on this really ambitious guitar video yeah and that right before that video I told my dad can I take a year off of school or six months I said six months off of school because I want to try this YouTube thing I’ll try this video thing out No and then I got myself a job at making horrific amounts of money editing for some guy you know off of Craigslist or something but that gave me a lot of experience in actually switching the final cut from Vegas what would your dad say yeah I thought that he was gonna be super mad at me but he was like do it for a year you know and then you got that job yeah yeah and and I was he’s like if you don’t do it you regret it for the rest of your life you know so there are things a good life yeah yeah he said there are things like that that I regret in my life that I wish I could have tried my life would have been different now adays you know so do it yeah and what were you editing for the dude that you were getting overpaid just like he was doing like thousand dollar music videos and things like that you know just like kind of ripping off a lot of artists back then and I could see you know that it was they weren’t good shooters that he was using so I would try my best to fix as much of it in post as possible you know and to like add a lot of spice to those videos you know and then maybe spare time you were you were hitting YouTube harder I had this brainchild of an idea right yeah I’m gonna I’m gonna play Mozart yeah yeah so I do the video and I so that was video you played each individual note and they just you would like play it and wait move play it play the next block the next string I had a like a giant sheet music front of me where I’d be like okay this C sharp is done you know and now that the D is done and you just kept the camera rolling cast on mm-hmm virus video yes V tape mm-hmm 12 really 12 a 12 hours of video because I would play the same note a couple different positions a couple different times you know yeah and then you had to develop a catalog even to find every note if you had 12 hours uh now I bet him I bit him sequentially well that helped yeah yeah so cutting out all the sound effect exactly yeah and then you know timing it out to the song you know so I I did it at a BPM where it was like so like two frames is a quarter note four frames is the math involved a lot of math involved yeah I was you know I had scripts back then for it for stuff you know so I I did it all I finished the video and I throw in this little snippet at the end where I’m singing a flat of the Conchords you know you know just for fun you know because I like doing that you know throwing out something yeah yeah so then I go to sleep and I put the video up and I’m exhausted because it’s I’m up for so long in my god I wake up and it has a hundred and fifty thousand hits and I’m like a hundred and fifty thousand people saw this that’s that’s how you were sleeping while I was sleeping that’s like a true three people you know I was I was amazed so like I had to get to work that day so I get to work in him my god look a hundred and by that time was like three hundred in something I’m like look at this it’s blowing up it’sit’s this is gonna work any and we were walking back from lunch and he points at a homeless guy he goes listen man you stop it with this online crap like you you have to focus on doing real work music videos your boss Tom this is my boss Chuck and yeah he goes you have to do real videos stuff that’s gonna go up on MTV and vh1 because this is just a waste of time and I was late you know so I was like ten minutes late that’s why he was giving me the spiel he’s like you’re gonna end up like that guy if you keep doing the seafood thing and then the guy goes don’t listen to him right now and he rolls over and there’s a laptop he wasn’t my space star though yeah so that was that was that was when I quit you know that I that thing and I was like you know what I’m gonna do it that day that well no I took a couple extra very good paying jobs okay but it wasn’t it they but I wanted to quit that day you saw it counts you quit and then what and then I I did another video and then another one another one and then I got picked to do this Fiesta Movement thing where they give you a car for six months and I mean you’ve done the video with Toby where it was the – yes you would do that one before that yeah yeah where like he uploaded half of a video and then I below – half of a video you play him at the same time yeah yeah you hit play on one and then there’s a countdown and then you hit play on mine and then you know so like I was playing around like that and I had recorded a video and I sent Toby the video and then he it’s Toby you know so he was nuts he was like jumping all around the screen and he was like coming after the camera and getting because it was a guitar duel where it was timed out where if you play both videos yeah you guys are playing back a fourth dueling with each other exactly yeah but he’s so his performance is the tillers toby performance and i’m like an idol i just look like a zombie next to him you know and i’m like i got it i gotta rerecord my stuff so I kept the audio and ivory recorded all my video where I’m kind of matching his level of enthusiasm no and people are like oh my god this is awesome so that kind of helped me to like kind of be more animated or animated Toby gave you your stage presence yeah yeah oh Jesus Toby’s manic what do you call it like state of being it’s funny we just call it Toby now oh it’s just Toby now it’s funny though like when you see you’re so like what were the chances that you were going to literally see yourself next to someone and B if I come here it’s like the perfect recipe for innovating and realizing like okay I’m gonna you know and so that’s like one of your signature things and the house little I you know I I took you guys the songs and put it into my stuff you know and like sounding songs you know I recorded a country song that ended up in one of my my videos that literally I just was singing what you guys were singing you know the Ford Fiesta thing was like it this was a sponsorship yeah yeah yeah it was a free car free insurance free gas so I did I was like I will never have the chance to do this again so I’m gonna drive all around the countryside I would tweet out hey I’m in Philadelphia who’s got a room for me and someone would treat back hey come come to me and I would follow them they DM me their address I would show up sometimes would be creepy how creepy did it get I got a little creepy one time but it’s alright it was just a misguided person oh it’s okay I was single I mean you’re the one you’re the one replying to the tweets I know I know I know but yeah so you know I would just drive all over all the country it took me about a month to get to LA and I had about 60 bucks left um you know it was a hundred sixty bucks like that would me but the plan was to get to LA to get to a light and to see if I could find an apartment and I was hoping to have like eight hundred nine hundred dollars on me but you know there was a lot of cities in the middle of the country that no one respond so I had to find like a Travelodge or whatever like that yeah right so I a friend of mine is in Vegas he’s like hey I’ve got two rooms in Vegas friend of mine couldn’t show so I’ve got an empty room here in Vegas you want to come to Vegas and like I’m not a Vegas guy but but I know how to live in LA now so I go to Vegas and I play poker until I get $900 yeah and I see you started with I say 160 once it was something like I forget exactly how much I’ve looked up because I have a very bad memory but I go back to LA and I have literally $50 left of me after I pay my I convinced the lady to not have me pay my security deposit first and last I was like you are one room away from full occupancy in your building you need to just I promise that I’ll be good for it next month you know I I will give you the money and then I was not I’ll take you to Vegas and we can play a little poker that was your first month’s rent as my first month’s rent yeah the $900 that she won yeah in poker had $50 left I was sleeping on the floor I was stealing my neighbor’s Linksys Wi-Fi without a password on it I was like I was I set up a little extension cord from the hallway into my bedroom so that I can I can keep editing and things like that and and charge up my camera and things I went to like soup kitchens and so you didn’t have an electoral Eck tricity was off it was off and you would just use the hall outlet yeah for your lap tied be sitting out there where was this apartment it was it you know Chris Thompson yeah yeah he it was his like apartment building he was he was upstairs and I was downstairs the vertical looping around you can see yeah okay I was walking around that I think the first time we came we saw you in LA it was you wish you were in that apartment still you say oh wow yeah there was I remember you had electricity i beliee eventually I got electricity yeah what was because actually um I got an offer from two friends of mine to fly out to North Carolina it was such a godsend have you know like you guys have no clue how much that like change in my life because I I was zero I was down to like negative amongst on my bank account and we never knew this the funny thing is we did at the time a month i I’ve inferred some of it they’re like wow you know Joe is he was broke like in other interviews you did but even I guess now you’re kind of clarifying something that we didn’t did not know it to this moment oh yeah yeah I I was really really broke i considered asking you guys for like my bag check fee you know i was like now but they’re doing so much already you know well and let’s give our side a story we are members we were shooting we were in Coleman Alabama we were shooting the epic and honest mobile home commercial which is one of one of my favorites that we made it’s like in the middle of nowhere Alabama but where we’re staying in Birmingham which is not which is a nice place I remember we were in this nice hotel and we were because our spots are like put us up there yeah and I remember we were having the conversation there and we called you we got you on the phone by that point because we had decided to do this t-shirt war thing which we had a t-shirt sponsor on board and then we came up with the idea stop-motion t-shirts what we came up with the idea yeah and once it was a stop-motion idea I was like this guy Joe he’s like I’d seen everyone had seen guitar impossible and then the other stop-motion videos and even this guy does a lot of stop-motion I just feel like we should you know he’s so committed to YouTube and he’s the stop-motion guy you know I I just I think when we conferred about it it wasn’t about well we can also do that it was like we should work with the YouTube guy who’s the stop-motion guy and it was a collect it was a an idea for a collaboration but it wasn’t the way collabs work now which collabs today are based on just shared audience and growing your audience yeah it was legitimately let’s collaborate with someone who’s going to bring the expertise to this idea that we need yeah no clue how to do stop-motion and also getting Billy read you know a million ball right because for the drawings yeah because we draw anything yeah he was like what Billy can draw it because we had done a few like science channel collaborations with him or no before that even before that I can’t remember how he made this was the first collaboration with Billy too but we knew Billy from my way back like him and Justin were like our two revolute Tube friends through but yeah because it was stop-motion it was like why try to emulate what you do when we could call you up so there was like an email exchange in the first phone call was we were in Birmingham mmm I was like man he talks quiet I’m barely hearing but he’s good at stop-motion and that’s what I said – Rhett when we got the phone and I had no clue you know you were in LA it was like yeah he’s also in LA this guy’s legit man he’s totally committed like he’s killing it I had no clue you were like guys called me I was literally out like about to go to like a soup kitchen or something like that because I was that broke yeah and I was like a job yes I was I was so quiet cuz I was trying to stop all crying cuz there was a all right I’m trying to replay it cuz I remember it’s like well yeah you’ll have to come out here yeah I was like well well pay pay pay pay all your expenses to come out as soon as I said you have to come out here I’m like oh no I won’t be able to afford that and then you said immediately then very next thing was we’ll pay you I mean there’s a sponsor involve you know the the t-shirt people right yeah and I was at cutting and in this kind of you know it’s pretty epic what ended up happening you guys come out and we have like basically a couple of days set aside to shoot this thing and in that time of trying to right before Thanksgiving right yeah – we try to shoot it and we realize that this is going to be more complicated all the shirts open to show up that’s what that’s what it was yeah yeah yeah yeah so we then we’re like guys I’m sorry we flew you both out here and it was like Lillington that basement studio and we we like did test shots right before things kind of hung out but my family was there so you guys were like paid for my Thanksgiving flight home because parents were moving to Clayton North Carolina right like literally doors minutes yes what what are the chances it’s so crazy then you guys flew back there’s like I will fly it back around Christmas I’m like perfect can you fly back for my birthday too we learned I mean everybody learned a lot on that but we learn like you guys you’ll have all the props and you’re relying on someone to ship them to you you know make sure that timing works don’t on that however I’ve got a crazy story about that that you guys I don’t think I’ve told you guys do you remember how it took me like an extra like three or four weeks to get you guys a video it was because my hard drive crash I was I had long I had to yeah I had two versions of the footage right and they were all in these old like western digital drives and I was like these these drives are going out you know I need to make sure that this is this is good you know and they’ve giant giant files so I set up an automated thing to automatically move all the files over because one of the my backup drive had died you know so I was like okay I’ll solve setup step to move from here to there and instead of moving it every single file got deleted literally every single file so I open it up and it’s like it’s like that red like the files are gone kind of thing and I’m like oh my god it’s not like we’ll fly out a third time and do that right it was like the shirts again yeah it was like crazy to shoot that it was nuts it was so meticulous it was one of the most meticulous thing in I just turned bright white and I was like how am I gonna tell these guys that I just lost everything oh my gosh they spent so much money flying us out twice like I can’t I messed this up for them I will never work in this town again this is the end so that’s why the video is you and sup Ricky our faces over yeah yeah just us going like oh it’s a reverse shot of me going that’s a great video oh my gosh you see this it’s perfect so how did you you obviously recover the footage and everybody told us it just took you four weeks to find know it so I couldn’t afford like I went to some of those like hard drive recovery places right and they were like it’s gonna be $3,000 and at this point I’m like that’s what no oh my gosh why so I started researching on how to do hard drive recovering myself and I did it I got all the footage there were like 20 frames that were missing or no that weren’t missing that were like that had a bunch of weird stuff on the side so I wrote a scope on that out and I had to re-edit the entire video again and that’s why it took me I think was actually like two or three weeks you edited the video twice twice yeah yeah yeah I don’t remember being like thinking like oh this is overdue or anything I don’t I mean we had a really good relationship with that sponsor so I don’t I don’t remember ever thinking man he’s taking a long time so you covered it very well I had a two hellish weeks trying to recover that footage and like I had drafted an email that said guys I’m so sorry like I will pay you back for this and and like I drafted like a little payment plan to pay you guys back well and the funny thing is is that video ended up doing so much for us oh yeah I mean yeah they’re people who followed our career for a long time know that that was a very pivotal moment in which I would say it was like the first legitimate viral video you know it was nice yeah it was the first one it was just like you search for stop-motion that was a number one video for like a year yeah it’s kind of what people knew us for at the time yeah you’re the t-shirt guys that means the song and yeah yeah yeah yeah the Facebook song and you had the but yeah this was that was big this one that exploded more quickly and I swear we came to LA before it was finished because I thought we looked at something or might it might have been the next one we shot it was a McDonald’s yeah yeah and of course yeah it for us it for all three of us it led to the agency for McDonald’s and like Oh Kermie then said they were just gonna copy us let’s yeah we’re gonna we’re gonna copy you guys and make a commercial but the agency guy said no these guys are big we should let we should ask them to do a same thing that you did with me you know yeah we just asked this guy to do stop-motion so a lot of times that was my very first like national commercial and that was the first time that I was like I could be a director hours – yeah it’s like cuz we talked them into we want to shoot it in North Carolina again we had a bigger studio and like so better here yeah so you and Billy came back out we went through the whole thing we made sure we had all the t-shirts before we flew you out huh you probably made sure to back up the hard drive six hard drive but yes I mean that was super big and I remember by the time t-shirt wore what came out yeah we got a big push from raywilliamjohnson who we had never met or talked we had actually met him but we didn’t know we had met it oh yeah I flew up right after we shot a t-shirt war I flew up to him because he paid for me to go there and like help him switch to HD cuz everything was switching to HD and he’s very like on the button you know so he was like this guy he does good videos online a lot of my early stuff was like you guys you know what he thought which is like okay this guy knows what he’s doing I’ll just I’ll just get him let him do it for me yeah exactly so I’m doing with the home theater guy right now so you were right ray william Johnson’s YouTube home theater guy you went to yeah I went to New York like same age you can shoot in widescreen you don’t have to like stretch your 4:3 he was doing some wacky stuff with his web gift it was computer we upgraded his his everything and at that time t-shirt work came out so he gave us a solid yeah so he was happy to promote you and we were along for the ride uh-huh after the big favor you gave him oh yeah that was a huge jump to you know when you kind of roasted us with that video yeah first time I was publicly called a hipster III don’t you think I knew what a hipster was then because that was this until he called me he just made fun of a lot of ryos yeah he it was the very first time ever that he was like this video is so good that I’m having hard time making fun of it but bear with me I’m gonna try anyway then I he was like okay so what are we gonna do here should I link to you should I link to them I was like at the time you could hacky YouTube so that a video would show up on someone else’s main page do you know what I mean yeah like so I told them this will be 55 you notice I get a show up on my page but the video is on their channel so they’ll get the ad money I’ll get the the people checking out my stuff I got I had no clue and I’m sorry guys you could have had these I got 80,000 subscribers in like two days yeah nuts it was nuts okay I think that that’s fair yeah you didn’t tell us about that but you also didn’t tell us about written but fixing it so that works out huh and then I remember when we were shooting t-shirt war the second time we’re sitting in cup of joe waiting for Billy to to fly in yeah and you were like guys I’ve decided I’m gonna start making a video every week oh yeah and I’m gonna I’m gonna do a schedule I said I’ll be every week and I remember thinking you’re crazy yeah you can’t do that I did two videos a week for I think two days and under the week’s start my channel really started picking up a lot of steam that started after tisha work came around the same time you kind of executed your plan yeah two videos a week mm-hmm that were like I started with one video a week and that I swapped it to two and and you blew up oh yeah it worked it certainly wasn’t just t-shirt war that was something that was that was those eighty thousand subscribers and yeah but yeah but but yeah you’re right I got I got a million subscribers in something like three months it was over three or four months it was and what was that time like I mean I guess and we didn’t have him as a point of reference we didn’t have her for a while a long time a long time after that maybe a year or two more but more than that we didn’t get to a million subscribers until you know probably 2013 so you just left us in the door oh yeah and then you guys left me into this after that but it was you signed up for something nuts and yeah you did it for two years yeah what was that time like did you get did you turn the power on you know what turned the power on I started dating Sarah you know I sleep a lot though I’m sleeping I mean given the amount of time that goes into your videos every single night was up to three three II 3:30 4 o’clock in the morning there were a couple videos where my vlogs like hang uh think goodness for the glasses you know cuz then my eyes are just soo her bag and still to this day where I was exhausted and there were a couple videos where I see it in the vlog guys it’s it’s 9 o’clock in the morning and I’ve been up for 48 hours as soon as I hit upload on this I’m gonna go sleep for a really long time and then I would wake up you know eight hours later and start reading comments and responding the comments cuz you can’t just put up a video yeah you need to do it all to the next one yeah yeah how did you meet Sarah and when did this happen we there was YouTube came out with her super secret Google Nexus phone right and they flew us all up to San Francisco she was working for Philip DeFranco at the time it’s like his manager and she you know we met there at Google you know I didn’t have any people with me you know was around the same time actually that we were doing t-shirt war it was so that December I started talking to her and we started dating and we were like well let’s never work together we hear about the horrible things that happen when you work together right and we were both agreed ‘yeah so then she stops working for phil and she starts thinking about hey yeah i think i’m gonna start like doing this managing thing you know cuz at the time I had called caaw me all these agencies and management companies and they’re all like no thinks like we’re not gonna do YouTube you know so I was like ah there’s there’s no manager she’s like what about if I do it you know I’m like yeah I think it’d be great for you to do with other people yeah so then it was doing the the McDonald’s thing you know I was like I was flying there and I prepped myself I had the six hard drives and I had like the shot list in my head and I was like I gotta like do a really good job and then Sony calls me Sony’s like guys I the Joey I saw your videos we want you to make eleven videos for us and I’m like that’s nuts no that’s that’s crazy that’s that’s 11 videos like because no it’s not up on our channel we want to create like a DVD that ships with our new Bloggie cameras that is like a manual you know instead of having like a PDF or something it would be like a fun thing like how to shoot cat videos how to shoot this how do I shoot fun sports videos you know so I’m like okay cool so I told told Sara like listen I know we’re not supposed to be working together but if you could just take this one thing you know I can’t do this this call and I think I remember oh she ate oh yeah just like negotiate and I’m in the middle of shooting this McDonald saying I cannot do this I mean this is way more important you know she’s like okay how much would you break even I was like I could do to each of you for like a thousand or two thousand dollars so if you get it’s like twenty or thirty thousand like that would be that would be awesome like eleven thousand dollars you know thirty thousand dollars I mean I could buy a new camera so she comes back to me she’s like would you begin with making thirteen videos I’m like yeah yeah you know for thirty thousand dollars I still had a thirty thousand dollars in my mind she goes no like I think it’s time for you to start your production company I got you one hundred and ten thousand I’m like oh my gosh so so literally that that like area in my life that time in my life I bought like big turnaround yeah yeah I bought a 4k camera I start I hired someone for the first time all that money went really fast you know cuz I poured it all back into doing the YouTube videos and I bought new editing stuff in it like to this day I still have some of the stuff from that era even though it was like five or six years ago you know right because it you know we bought like top-of-the-line stuff and and we were able to make more commercials but she was your manager so you stopped dating listen you know we stopped dating and got married instead and then it wasn’t if she’s my manager she’s taking 15% he might as well go into a joint let’s share this chicken so and then shortly after that I mean in 2011 she turns around in founds big frame yeah yeah so she oh she started the clown meeting before that okay and then you know she found a partner they switched the name to big frame and then eventually the assaulter DreamWorks you know so right so that was that was huge well like 15 million dollar huge oh yeah something like she didn’t she didn’t get 15 million dollar so that yeah company purchased a company yeah so you know a lot of the investors got their money back first well we got a good nice chunk of change for that which you know made us be okay with and buying a house here and yeah in Los Angeles which is not an easy thing to do right we’re all learning yeah but okay yeah and I want to talk about that how this lines up because you know most I’ve ever talked about money just so you know like every single injury that I’ve ever done like they said you have any stipulation and you know if it’s a TV thing we’re like don’t talk about money but you know it’s like well the sale is a little acknowledged yeah yeah in terms of like you know the Sony gig it’s like that’s you just we didn’t have a point of reference I think the thing that Sarah brought was just a power of a point of reference exactly it wasn’t none of us knew how much what we were doing was worth oh yeah nobody knew and everyone was undervalued thousand dollar everybody every single person yeah yeah I mean off it off even after that t-shirt war once we paid you guys in the travel stuff we probably made like $2,000 off the video pirated you know it’s like no one knew what to do yeah but an in really interesting thing has happened I mean like that’s a major part of your story too is that you know get the success that you experienced and kind of moving and trying different things yeah but you know YouTube has changed a whole lot it has you know and it’s interesting when you look at your videos today you’re making videos that are as high or really higher quality than you ever made an oh nine and 2010 and 2011 but the audience has changed so much that a video like your recent video is like you know the the yarn animation video that video would have gotten a few million views definitely three years ago mm-hmm Rubik’s Cube animation how many Rubik’s cubes 100 different Rubik’s Cube 1,300 almost you know how many how many solutions like over a thousand different item permutation oh so I knew that you were gonna ask that question I had a guy call me with all the math I don’t know I mean if you do the math of that on that video I mean it’s in millions for sure but there’s this principle that is involved in all your videos which is I’m going to put a bunch of time and effort and thought and planning and execution into this thing to create this and half of the enjoyment of your videos is appreciating or trying to appreciate what exactly happened and that’s that’s why t-shirt war ended up working when it did because if you do show it to somebody and they don’t stop and think they’re just like it just washes but at the moment that you can see in somebody’s eyes when they’re watching that video yeah when they understand these guys changed t-shirts every single time over 200 times yeah when that’s how your videos work there’s a month where you get it right and then you appreciate it and three or four years ago on YouTube that translated into an amazing viral potential yeah why is that not happening now I don’t know I don’t know the reason why I mean one reason of course is because of volume you know there’s a lot of stuff out there and a lot of really well produced stuff out there so it’s tougher to like poke through you know of the the massive amount of people and crazy amounts of hours that are being uploaded there’s also been a younger audience coming in which are more interested in in personalities you know so the cult of personality so I think that’s another thing too but you know for me I’ve you know I’ve been asked a lot of times like how do you get big on YouTube like how do you how do you do it you know it’s like if you’re asking that question it you won’t because you’re not doing what you love you know it’s and it sounds so cliche and you know you read about it in like self-help books and things like that but it’s so true it’s if you’re not putting every single amount of effort that you can into every single video then at least for me I’m not getting the enjoyment mm-hm so I it’ll be clear that it I won’t be getting the enjoyment of it some people are perfectly content with just doing a daily vlog you know or something like that and it’s fun for them you know I just don’t get that out of it all right but when but how do you apply how do you deal with the fact that okay you know an amazing Rubik’s Cube stop-motion video that would be a 2 million view video is a 400,000 view video mm-hmm I mean how how do how do you interact with that yeah it’s just for yourself I’m not gonna say that it’s not like it doesn’t affect me at all yeah of course you know it’d be like oh man you know I just think that you know it’s like huh if this would have been 2 million hits the two or three years ago you know when there weren’t that many people on the or like when this was brand-new oh well next it on to the next thing you know so I would I mean I would still be doing it literally if I would just post it and it did didn’t even hitch 301 plus you know I would still be doing it because for me it’s what I get out of it is is making the actual video you know and if I just want to just to make money off of it and you know and if it was a view Zoar or Fame kind of thing I would have stopped a long time you know I would have I would have gone into production you know by you know just making videos as a production company you can earn a lot more money than then you know just doing YouTube you know trying to like make youtube videos mm-hmm that’s sometimes you know but your strategy is shifting well maybe strategy’s not a right word you’re my produce your approach is shifting yeah is is it independent of performance and is it just because of where you want to go next and what is that yeah it’s independent perform it’s yeah well I won’t say it’s independent completely a performance you know on videos it’s it’s it’s it made it a good time of shift because I’ve always wanted to get into narrative yeah you need to make movies to make TV shows to make stories you know and and to really I’ve always been on camera as a necessity because I didn’t have money to pay actors you know so I’ve I’ve always wanted to direct a movie and now you know I’ve slowly been working towards I started with Meridian which is my first short film and then a something called instant getaway and then I was like let’s make an entire reel of move which is 40 minutes you know so I had 40 minute short film all that were you know a lot of it was self-funded I were 40 minutes is a what is a reel of real yeah yeah I haven’t heard that meaning it’s a demo v because it’s 40 minutes but it’s not a short film because it’s not sure it’s technically a short film yeah real is what they used to use for projections you know so like you can fit 40 minutes of a movie into a big reel and then there’s like a little flash on the screen and then it switches to the next reel or ones but if you can make a real you can make a movie it is we had a third of a movie yeah you know it’s a good practice for me to make a movie and is it I saw an interesting at the top of it the question on on that one was are you building a cohesive sci-fi universe like between Meridian instant getaway beyond yeah yeah well you’re like you’re on to us and we being facetious or is it cohesive yeah it definitely was I mean this is the same company the same kind of characters not the same stories but there’s definitely the same company cipher is the same one you know we are we have so many things hidden and beyond that are for the next thing that we’re making you know so I want so there’s a cohesive it all makes sense together yeah yeah enough where it’s it’s like a spin-off almost you know what so what is the next thing well the next thing is gonna be a movie I’m calling a red shift and that’s just a title shift right yeah yeah yeah I told you about this like I got a lead me driving a stick shift it’s all takes place it’s like that movie with with what’s-his-name minute that all takes place all in there our Tom Hardy yeah Tom Hardy is just like that it’s just like luck but it’s me in a stick shift in trying to figure out honey doesn’t know how to drive and I burn the flash out like the the conflict is I burn the clutch out and he’s gonna push the car yeah and I push the car and then that’s a preventive explosion a lot of special oh they called redshifts yeah it’s not a shot in the green screen – yeah we’re very excited about it yeah yeah is it first time that we’re talking about it okay red shift oh that’s what it is like the Big Bang uh-huh yeah exactly and we’re gonna be shooting up in Detroit so we’re I think host apocalyptic huh yes it is yeah mm-hmm Detroit exactly listen to Detroit and they’re like rolling their eyes of course we get all the post-apocalyptic movies yeah yeah yeah I mean there’s it’s incredible up there there I’ve been doing like some digi scouting is what I call it you know we’ve paid a couple photographers to go out and take pictures but I’m walking around with Google Streetview yeah and it’s you I didn’t know this but on the top left you can like switch around there’s a little slider that says historical views so you can go back to like 2009 2000 seven when they started doing it with crappier cameras yeah and like you click on 2009 and you know it’s beautiful neighborhoods and lush lawns and things like that and then you move on to to nowadays and it’s just like trees growing through houses and like totally forgotten in and entire neighborhoods that are just giant blades of grass growing and stuff like that it’s yeah it’s perfect perfect for the movie that was so when do you shoot I’m open issue this year before before winter are you self funding this too or no this this one is is a lot more expensive so I’d have to like sell a couple houses or something you know if you have a partner are you getting sponsors or yeah yeah we have a producer that’s attached and now we’re looking for financed ears and we have to finance ears that are interested so so yeah well hopefully we’ll be able right now something soon what keep us posted yeah yeah that’s exactly and thanks for giving us this story and yeah it was cool to have a part in it you know why didn’t you guys have no clue how big of a part he had in my life it was huge I I’m I’m kind of floored by that you know I I it played a huge part and you play a huge part in our career too so it was just it was a confluence of things so it was a true collaboration it’s certainly not your welcome it’s a WoW well it wasn’t for us to so I think that’s it we just need Billy Reed in this so you know I know right it would be like a big reunion all right well we could wait but I don’t already phone could just find it in a spot deduced an amazing mystery guitar man signature all right cool thanks man thank you [Music] and there you have it our ear biscuit with Joe Penna aka mystery guitar man let him know how you feel about this here biscuit or just what you think about it what you think and feel about it his Twitter is mystery guitar M because you couldn’t fit mr. guitar man apparently that’s too long mr. guitar M he were a circuit arm he might could have fit mystery guitar MA but that’s probably someone else that’s his mom let him know check Twitter hashtag ear biscuits and remember we appreciate your reviews on iTunes I feel like the title at the title the the tables were turned a little bit in this ear biscuit you know we were we were surprised by a number of things and I just want you know just kind of recap those and hear your thoughts right one the hard drive story but to just I I was the fact that he was appreciative to us for being instrumental in helping kind of set him on his career path well we didn’t realize I didn’t realize we didn’t know what position he was in at the time that we asked him to do this we were like well this guy moved to LA I mean when YouTube moves you to LA that means you made it right and that was what we thought and little did we know that he’s literally taking power from the outlet in the hallway and in there with nothing but a computer in his in his apartment I mean I don’t know if we would have done anything differently it you know if we hadn’t known that but it’s just weird that we had no idea that he was struggling and that this was like a really big opportunity we were just like this guy’s great at this we need him in order to make this video good and this would be cool to collaborate and you know so I’m flattered that he wanted to tell us hey you guys were more instrumental in my career than even you even appreciated or knew and like I said to him that goes both ways you know a t-shirt war had a tremendous impact on our career as well I mean there’s people who still come up to us yeah today it’s kind of the trick is the trademark video for a lot of people and was for a long time for everybody yeah I remember women when we were in LA for something and then of some kids who were visiting from Saudi Arabia recognized us and came up to us do you remember that yeah it was and it was and they were talking about t-shirt war and that was just the first international fans that we ever met because you didn’t I mean even though those people spoke English you didn’t have to understand English or have any cultural reference in order to appreciate that video so yeah thank you Joe for doing that for us yeah and certainly there were it his uh his success rests on you know how great is working right it’s not it’s not that we gave him an opportunity it was just a collaboration well and thank you for somehow recovering that footage Oh which you know I do remember now my memory at that time because it has been years now yep my memory that time is pretty foggy but I do remember there being a little bit of a delay we worked with a really you know an easygoing sponsor so they weren’t like demanding that it be done and I was just like oh this must be taking a while I remember thinking it was taking longer than we anticipated but it wasn’t like there was a deadline so I don’t remember getting panicky or anything but there was a little bit of asking him about wondering why we’re not seeing anything but he was just like I’m working on it and we worked it wasn’t working on recovering that it even exists right and I mean I’m kind of glad he didn’t tell us what would what what good would it have done nothing well I we probably would have paid for the recovery fee I think that’s what would have a probably definitely glad he didn’t tell us it probably because that would have been all the profit from the video go ahead and cover in the yes sure but it might would have how many years were knocked off Joe’s life in the panic zone of trying to recover that data that makes a more epic story I don’t want to that’s what you should remember on that that’s what you should remember when you’re going through something difficult is that maybe this will become an epic story on a podcast someday all right does that give you hope your biscuit – I’m gonna carry that into the next bad thing that happens to me and you know what you guys do the same maybe you don’t have a podcast but maybe there’s something that you have you have a story I like a friend yeah this for someone who can hear your story or or not I’m just trying I’m just trying to help you out or just talk to yourself a lot of people do that you can talk to yourself in the mirror to be a good story to tell myself when this is over it alright we’ll be back here and you keep talking to yourself it’s better to have a good story than a good time debate that amongst yourselves we’ll talk at you next week [Music] [Music]