 Welcome to The Crimson Engine. My name is Rubidiam. This is the first of a series of videos I'm going to be doing interviewing other filmmakers and creators. Today, I am really, really happy to have Scott from the Phoenician Sailor talking with me. He is a filmmaker in a very different way than I am, but very successful at creating a community around his art and the films that he makes, and I thought it would be great to check in with him, get to know him a little bit, and talk about you know, how he makes his films, how he works, how he's developed as a filmmaker, and also you know, how he comes up with ideas and you know, the work that he does on YouTube. So Scott, very happy to have you here. It's great to be here. I'm honored. I've been watching your channel for months. It's been informing me. Oh, great. I'm really glad. The videos are never a waste if people are getting something from them. Could you just give us a little rundown on who you are, what your Phoenician Sailor channel does, and how would the current setup that you're shooting on right now? Sure. Yeah. My name's Scott, and I have a channel, kind of alter ego channel that goes under the name Phoenician Sailor, and what I do there are mostly ASMR videos. Not exclusively, but the bulk of them are, or they play with the ASMR format. I've been doing it for maybe four years at this point, something like that, and as I've gone through, as I've progressed, I've constantly, I've always been like a gearhead since I was really young. So I progressed through the gear. In fact, I think the technology brought me to storytelling as much as the inverse, you know. And so I've sort of gone through, I started with a really old, a Canon Rebel T2i, I think was the first camera I ever had, and I'm currently, actually thanks to you using the Canon C200, which I love. In the days before Dual Pixel Auto-Focus, had you ever done a whole video only to find it was out of focus once you started editing it? Well, so I didn't run into that problem because a lot of the videos that I do, it's just me sitting in place, like talking. So there's not, my problem would be that you would just see me look off camera all the time because I would just be constantly looking to see if I was in focus. So rather, I had the problems that came about from not having auto-focus, but they manifested as just why is this guy looking off to the right all the time, or looking down below all the time? Yeah, you make some of the, definitely some of the highest production value and some of the most creative ASMR videos on YouTube. I'll leave a link, like an explainer link, what ASMR is in the show notes so that we don't, you know, we don't eat up people's time because I know a lot of people coming from your channel are already very familiar with it. What prompted you to kind of take things to the next level? Like most of those videos are just people talking to the camera. You've you've done themes, you've done like Blade Runner tribute sort of Van Cointesst videos, you've done Edgar Allen Poe stuff. What was the spark that kind of took you off in that like high production value genre direction? I think First of all, thank you. That's super kind of you to say. I think what it was was I I was looking for differentiators and early on I always wrote I was always, you know at school or once I got out of school was always writing short stories and I was always sort of a tech head and so I was looking I think for something that brought those things together and I had made videos before and been into videography before I think maybe the same path that a lot of people started into videography at least older people, you know when I had my first child I started being interested in, you know, filming what they were doing and this was right around the time when all of that stuff was blowing up. I mean it was things were changing so fast and you know, you were getting results and images that you couldn't even imagine or you couldn't imagine that would be available on a consumer or prosumer level a couple of years earlier and it's still it's weird. We got to hit Moore's law at some point there's got to be diminishing returns somewhere, but it seems like we're still progressing on a really really fast rate and things are getting better and better faster and faster so the only thing that like you can invest money in really is lenses, right? It seems like that's the only thing that that doesn't lose half its value the moment you walk it off the lot, right? Are you a you're a solo filmmaker for your YouTube videos? You're pretty much your cast and crew, right? Yes, yeah. I've worked with I've collaborated with other people in the past but that's the exception. Yeah, 90 95% of the time it's just me in a room acting. How do you feel? And I have the same issue with shooting these videos for YouTube but I'm starting to take BTS along on my commercial shoots and my like short film shoots and it I really struggle with it. I tend to bring stuff along to document the process but then once I'm at the shoot and I kind of like get into the get into the mindset of total direct or focus I you know the the BTS is a total distraction. I don't want to I don't want to even talk to them even though I'm bringing them along and paying them to film me and I wonder how you know how it in your process it is being both talent and creator and crew. Do you sort of you know how do you how do you quickly kind of like change hats between filming yourself and then being on the in front of improvising in front of the camera I guess? It's tough. I feel like the performance suffers a lot in those situations and and just one example of that is the constantly looking off to the side. I mean that I feel like I tend to film really long videos because part of the purpose of ASMR is to promote sleep and you don't want a video that at least I don't want you know a video that's so short that someone is just starting to fall asleep and the video ends and they get a commercial or something like that if they don't have YouTube program. So I tend to make longer videos and I think at least for me I don't know how noticeable this is for other people but for me the few times that I go back and watch my own videos I can tell there's somewhere around the 30 minute mark where I'm like oh I finally actually started getting into it here right like up until that point I was really just like looking at numbers and and worrying about if did I turn the refrigerator in the AC off did I you know all these other yeah yeah you were still in a technical technical or creative space rather than the performative right and it yeah in a moment it takes a while for me to forget that and then you know a lot of times near the end I'll be like I want to do that again you know because I feel like now I'm in the right headspace I just want to do it over again and I've done that it's one of the reasons I think my output is really low compared to most other ASMR content creators and YouTube creators I only put out a couple of videos a month you know and sometimes only one. Do you think if you had you know words you magically that have budgets you know five and ten thousand dollar budgets tomorrow for your videos do you think employing people to do all those technical roles would improve the quality or do you think having all those people around would influence the kind of like very intimate very sort of personal tone that you the ASMR and you specifically have. I think you could do it I think it would there'd be like a learning curve right and it also would depend on the people because there's a bit of that when I when I've worked with other ASMR's even though they're doing the same thing and we both recognize hey this thing to some people this this thing appears a little bit silly and we're but we're both on the same page about it but even then there's a there's a period of time of adjusting and there's one one time actually where me and a friend of mine who has a channel it goes by the name of ephemeral rift uh rented out the eastern state penitentiary in in Philadelphia that uh that prison in Philadelphia um it was a lot it was a lot of money we rented it for four hours we figured that would be more than enough time to shoot a video um but they couldn't leave us there alone they had to have people there and it threw us off so much that it ended up being the money was thrown away we couldn't we could not finish a video yeah I mean it's really interesting it's uh I feel like um you know this there's there's two forces that are that are leading us to that are shaping sort of the videos that we make and one is the democratization of technology where the means of production are getting cheaper and cheaper but then also like the means of distribution are now essentially free you know how do you come up with the ideas for your um sort of films what are you do you just you know uh did they just come to you did they develop over a long period of time do you without being presumptuous I would imagine that it's similar to how people get ideas for short films or whatever I mean almost any avenue right like I have ideas that I've been thinking about for years and then I have ideas that will be prompted by an object and I'll go I could do I did a few years ago I did uh they have those what's in my bag series of videos you know that are very popular oh yeah and I was browsing eBay and I saw this collection in an old medical bag it was a bunch of surgical tools in an old medical bag um that was from World War II and I thought oh wouldn't be great if you did like a what's in my bag video using something like that and the idea is it's cursed or it does something to the person who's you know looking at the items in the bag and that would kind of be the story behind it so that actually I went ahead and bought won the auction won the auction bought the thing um and did the video with that story in mind uh but that was that came from me just browsing eBay others will be like I'll get ideas from other ASMR videos I I tend I think I work better personally when I have a pretty strict framework and ASMR has a really strict framework right like the viewer is the viewer is the viewer it's the static camera yeah right there's only so many situations you can kind of extrapolate from them ASMR has a whole lot of those constraints you know you can't have loud noises you can't you can't have gunshots right there's a whole bunch of stuff that you really can't do and still call it ASMR even moving the camera is difficult having multiple shots is difficult because the the the premises it's the POV of the viewer although people you know people will break that a little bit and push that a little bit and that seems to be a malleable boundary but I think having those boundaries helps me come up with well given these given this infrastructure what pieces can I can I bend you know and that haven't been bent before or at least haven't been bent in this particular way in the way that you're doing yeah yeah I mean that's really similar to um a lot of people who are trying to create their first feature film or you know even to do a short you know the the costs associated with with film you have to keep everything down so you you know locations are expensive so what can you do in a single location yeah cast is expensive so what can you do with the minimal amount of people you know too and you know you look at a lot of movies that uh you know essentially like one room um you know closed room thrillers like like soar um is the idea of well I'm going to put two people in one room and I'm going to chain them in there um and you know why are they there well they don't know so they have to figure it out right you know in most western films drama is used as a way to captivate um character and you have like a ticking clock and you have these two forces opposed and really the story unfolds and people watch try and find out how it ends um but your videos it's a little different you're sort of like teasing out a mystery sort of thing and your relationship with the the the viewer who's also a character in the in the films um I mean how do you how do you plan that is it something that kind of evolves um naturally or do you start out with where you want to get to at the end that also totally varies but I won't I definitely won't eschew uh like uh oh this might be too this might be too compelling right so I'm not going to do it right I would definitely not do that I would I would just throw caution to win at that point and I you know I I'm certainly not going to judge whether or not I've done anything that is compelling or not compelling but I have gotten comments in the past that are like oh well I like this but I can't fall asleep to it right you know it's not it's not something that I can fall asleep to and I also but I have done videos that are you know and the majority of my videos probably are in this category uh where even if there's like a twist at the end or something um where you can either watch it in two sessions you know if there if it's an hour and a half long or whatever uh watch it across two different nights um and there's not like a lot of crucial plot points where if you blink you're not going to understand uh something that happened 10 minutes later you know it's it there's I think what I presume is that there is a level of distraction in the person watching and if I want them to know something I will repeat it a lot right as opposed to just kind of dropping it once subtly and being like okay if you caught that great and if you didn't oh well no I have to be like yeah this is not the it's not west world is it no it's no right exactly yeah you gotta you gotta you gotta assume that the first time you said it they didn't hear it the second time you said they didn't hear it maybe the third time they did so so that that's how it's like it's almost like a narrative a narrative technique that is much more or a storytelling technique that is much more character than plot we find out a lot more about who you are and who the character is who we inhabit through the through the process of the film right yeah it's like the the third episode in a series arc right where it just kind of explores the the character's backstory but doesn't drive anything major forward right um yeah I think that's a that is a that is a fair analogy to make yeah uh I you know with uh this channel I'm really interested in how different people um how people support their channels through um you know through their subscribers how you know they turn views into a way to you know buy equipment or promote the channel or support themselves like so this isn't my job this is not what I do for money this is what I do for fun um so I sort of made a pledge to myself that any money that I get from this uh goes back into it and I've been completely uh in fact you know yeah I've spent far more on this than I've made um either from ads or from a patreon I have a patreon account um I don't love plugging it and I don't love um promising things because I just don't have the time to do things like personal videos or the kind of reward tiers that are often uh offered uh via those services um so I try to make it like uh yeah great if you want to support me that's great uh if not you know I'm enjoying it anyway right I'm I'm trying to work towards the ladder but I'm terrible at that but yeah so I'll usually set everything up and then actually record maybe five minutes of footage and then actually grade it and see if I can get a grade that I like uh and if I can't I'll tinker with it and do that same thing over and over and over again isn't that that's so magical like I used to do that I do that a lot with the C200 and I used to do that with magic lantern because it's even less you can you can't meter it to the same extent because it's you know a hack but shooting in your own studio and being able to shoot a little test take it into the computer and know that you're going to be able to get the image that you want is like I mean it's like it's it's cheating it really is and essentially yeah and in maybe 90s I don't know what the percent is but at least 50% of the time I don't go with a grade that's anything like the one that I tested with but at least I know that's at my fall back right you know it's there yeah exactly um and that's another reason why I think I don't make a lot of videos is because I'm doing that like I will usually take me about a week once I've uh set up a scene um or once I'm setting up a sit during the process of setting up the scene shooting and then editing probably uh you said earlier ASMR is one take that may be true for a lot of ASMR it is not true for me um I I have many videos where they were actually shot on separate days um and you just you could tell if you were looking for it but I try to make it so that you you can't tell um but definitely uh yeah I'm not a one take person uh although the I do find that I'm getting better at it and the more freedom I have to fail the less I fail so that's great yeah so yeah yeah because it takes the pressure off in it I feel like there's something there's something amazing about how you know uh Brett you have 70 000 plus subscribers um you know the even even one percent of that um if you've if they're you know die hard fans or like super fans um that's still 700 people that like really love your really love what you're doing and are really reacting in a positive way that's enough you know going forward to kind of like you say make enough money um to be able to put it back into the videos and raise the production um and you know production levels and and let you um experiment with more things I feel like you're experimenting in a place that already has a market for it and you're kind of like rather than doing it something totally different you're taking something that there's a demand for and then pushing it creating within that space like we talked about like within the rules within the constraints of that genre yeah I did cheat what do you think the yeah uh by by sort of taking a pre-existing audience as you said right like uh and doing something that I wanted to do and kind of shoehorning it into that format um it wasn't necessarily because I don't get ASMR I don't get the tingles or anything like that um so you know you don't get high on your own supply no I don't get it in a way I'm a horrible fraud right but um but you're right it was uh for me it was uh seeing ASMR videos seeing what people were doing with the ASMR videos and with the exception of one or two creators when I started three or four years ago now of course there's a lot more with the exception of a couple of creators there weren't many people that were pushing the envelope um so I felt like oh well there's a there's a niche that I could you know maybe get into and and push a little bit that what do you think the future is for like uh you know for both your videos like where do you see what you're doing in five years and like where is ASMR going where where do you want to take it essentially so I've worked in technology and uh game development and AI and all of the sort of future facing fields where uh speculation on things like this is par for the course and I have seen and so has everybody like seen so many things that were the next big the next flying car right uh 360 videos um you know virtual reality goggles augmented reality uh ASMR spa is like places you go to and actually experience live ASMR that I guess I'm a little dubious about almost all of that I kind of feel like um one of the reasons that it's ASMR succeeding is that it's sort of in it's it's in it's uh I guess it's hot spot it's it's it's hit it's or its sweet spot um you can listen you you have no obligation to interact with or um uh acknowledge another person right so it's like a kind of intimacy that you can kind of turn on and off at will without the fear of offending anyone but but it is interesting to see how far it is or how much it is sort of um I almost want to say it like in this in this almost pejorative sort of like infiltrated seems like the right word is like sort of uh infiltrated via social media and via all of these user sponsored uh user sponsored platforms uh that it's now becoming much and much much more normal normalized the way I found out about ASMR was at work somebody sent around an email chain making fun of it and that was four years ago five years ago yeah I remember they getting that email and watching the video and thinking oh gosh I kind of like this what am I what does this mean what is there something wrong with me I think we'll leave it there for today thank you so much Scott um for sharing your experience and your wisdom um and your kind of filmmaking experiences uh with what you do I'll definitely link to your channel um in the uh in the comments and then you know people can absolutely leave more questions um find you at your own um channel and then you know I'd love to have you back and do another one of these depending on how we go and how many how many of these I do thanks for being coming along and uh doing the very first ever um of these interviews hope to do a lot more and uh it's been a really great start so I appreciate your your input I'm I'm glad to be your guinea pig and it was a lot of fun and thank you because I literally have stolen so I think you can go back and look at some of my videos and you can see oh look he has he has the lights in the back he has the little fairy lights in the back he has you know the one line between that's that's not my invention that's that's going way back but if you got it for me I'm I'm happy to contribute that absolutely thanks so much Scott talk to you next time thanks for being