5 days ago
The Future of Aussie YouTubers
MICHELLE WAKIM, REPORTER: Hello!
LACHLAN MACFARLANE, MACFARLANE BROS: Hi, I'm Lachlan.
AUSTIN MACFARLANE, MACFARLANE BROS: And I'm Austin. We're filmmakers and content creators based in Brisbane, Australia.
LACHLAN: And we have, we're active on social media under the username Macfarlane Brothers.
I'm very excited to talk to the two of you.
AUSTIN: I, I remember watching Behind the News…
LACHLAN: I was going to say…
AUSTIN: …back in the day, so it's, it's genuinely really, really cool to be here.
LACHLAN: Um, it's a bit photoshopped. It doesn't even look like me.
AUSTIN: Usually, I say we make mini blockbusters, so we make 10 second movies, fantasy, sci-fi, adventure. Usually, they're starring both Lachlan and I, and they have this sort of coming-of-age, escapist adventure feeling to them.
How did you two get started and what made you want to become content creators?
LACHLAN: I, I guess we didn't start out necessarily wanting to be content creators, we started out wanting to be filmmakers, and yeah, I was making these short videos, Austin started helping me with the videos and we started working on them together.
AUSTIN: Our first video we uploaded to our YouTube channel was in 2008. I would have been six years old at the time.
LACHLAN: I started doing them more consistently around 2011 though.
AUSTIN: Yeah.
LACHLAN: But they're all still up there.
I might have to do a deep dive, I reckon, and see if I can find that one if you're saying it's still up there.
AUSTIN: Please don't.
LACHLAN: We were just making these videos all through primary school and then secondary school and in university and then it was only in the last, maybe the beginning of 2022, yeah, where um, we actually started to see that we were getting a lot of views and it started to become viable as a thing for us to do full-time.
AUSTIN: Right now, our YouTube is on 984-thousand subscribers, which is the biggest following of, of all of the different platforms that we're on. On platforms like Instagram, our audience is more invested in our life, whereas on YouTube, our audience is far more invested in our content and in the media that we make.
Do you see YouTube as social media?
AUSTIN: Personally, no I don't really see YouTube as social media. I actually, personally, I didn't have social media until I was 16, but we had a YouTube channel since forever, it feels like. You know, I, I use YouTube on the TV mostly, or rather, I use the TV for YouTube for the most part. So, I've always viewed YouTube as a streaming platform.
LACHLAN: I definitely think it is more media than it is social media. That being said, if you asked me to name, you know, five social media platforms, YouTube would probably be in there.
AUSTIN: I was a little bit surprised when YouTube was included in the ban, but as Lachlan mentioned before, like, I understand if, if you're bringing up social media, you're going to say Instagram, Facebook, YouTube.
You were both quite young when you started doing this, so what was YouTube to you growing up?
LACHLAN: You know, like, the original, you know, tagline of YouTube was 'broadcast yourself'. That was the gimmick, or the appeal was that, 'Oh, I can actually take this video of me and put it online and it's public and people can access it from any computer'. So, when I started making videos, that was really fun, you know, because I'm basically putting this video out and premiering it to the, to the rest of the world.
AUSTIN: But not only that, I mean, YouTube was like a place to learn. We, we did go to film school, but like those really technical skills we developed pretty early on, you know, when we were 12 and 13 because we were watching YouTube videos.
LACHLAN: We, we both watch YouTubers and they kind of idolise them as most kids do when you watch something that you really enjoy.
AUSTIN: There's so many times that I'd watch a YouTube video with a cool visual effect shot, and then I'd like instantly look up how to do this effect, and then, I'd, I'd shoot it with Lachlan.
And do you think young people will be worse off for not having access to that?
AUSTIN: Yeah, I, I just know personally if I wasn't exposed to that stuff then I probably wouldn't be in this industry and YouTube was, and it kind of still is, the platform to creatively express yourself um, and I think, I think at least for us, it was important that our work was, was put out there even if it wasn't getting reached by that many people. I think that the process of making our work public felt important to me.
LACHLAN: It's worth mentioning that we never had a, a, own YouTube account when we were making these videos. We were getting our Dad to upload them on his account so I could foresee that happening for, for someone who is, who is an 11-year-old today. I can see them using their parents account in order to put up the videos that they, that they want to make.
What would you say to young content creators who might be feeling a little bit unsure about what's going to happen without having access to these platforms?
AUSTIN: Hmm. That's a really good question, um, I guess I'd say to young creators not to be dissuaded. I mean, creativity is a, is a muscle, and I think the reason why Lachlan and I have been able to find some success in the online space is because we've been consistently making videos. The fact that some of these videos now won't be able to go online, you know, isn't, isn't great for a new generation of creatives. But I would encourage people just to continue, continue making and continue creating and continue making things that they're passionate about and, and flexing that creative muscle.
