patrickhwillems

Adam McKay: What is Smart Dumb Comedy?

Wow, this is the third video essay in four weeks. I don't know how some channels do it every single week. I'm both exhausted from all the repetitive editing and antsy to get outside and shoot some narrative stuff again. Like, I've got a gig doing a college commencement video this weekend ( Oprah wil...

How to Get Into Comic Books

This is the most important video I'll probably make all year.

Over the past fifteen or so years, as comics have become more accepted by the mainstream, countless people I know have asked me to help them delve into the medium. Because it's tough! There are a million things out there and it's intimi...

The Matrix: How to Begin a Movie (video essay)

I made another one.

I mentioned at the end of the previous video that I was considering doing another video essay on The Matrix. The response and demand ended up being far greater than I expected (like, almost every comment on the video is a demand for another one), so I ...

Sheflok & Waffson III (the last of the big old movies)

People asked for it, so here it is: the feature-length film I made in 2007 as a college freshman...

Sheflok & Waffson III

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_lHPn30w1R4Y3JFdjNQYkljNlk 2017-04-30 22:29:24 +0000 UTC View Post

Sheflok & Waffson II (more old movies)

As promised, last week I released a bunch of the movies I made in high school for patrons to see. And I also made a video about them.

If you watched the video, you know there was a whole trilogy I made from 2005-2007. I released the first installment last week, so in case anyone is curious, here's...

The Matrix: A Lesson in Effective Scene Transitions

Of all the movies I've seen in my life, I've seen The Matrix the most. It's the movie that made me want to become a filmmaker. So it was inevitable that I would make a video essay about it.

As I mention in the outro, I actually had another topic related to the movie that I almost made thi...

Sheflok & Waffson: The Movie

(Due to copyright issues with music this is blocked in some countries. Let me know if you have an issue with this and I'll find a solution)

This was my big movie from 2005, and the start of a trilogy I spent the end of high school and the beginning of college making. It is very much a perfect repr...

Patrick Willems: Aspiring Lumberjack

Okay, here it is. My first movie. Made in the summer of 2004 with my friend Nick Mark.

The sound is terrible. My acting is terrible. The soundtrack is pretty great.

And here's the ridiculous teaser trailer set to "Duel of the Fates" 2017-04-19 21:07:30 +0000 UTC View Post

My Old Movies

I mentioned last week that since we crossed the $250/month goal on the Patreon, I would be putting a bunch of my old movies online for patrons to see. Expect a patron-only post about those in a moment. But for now, since I had to go find all those old movies anyway, I figured it would be a good excu...

What if John Woo Directed Squirrel Girl?

I've had this concept since last November. We've been working on it for the past couple months. I'm really excited about this one.

Obviously, it's the latest video in the "Alternate Universe Comic Book Movies" series, and this might be the silliest one. Also maybe my favorite. But that could be be...

WE REACHED A GOAL

Hello patrons! A quick update: last night we crossed one of the goals for the Patreon: $250/month.

So what does that mean? It means that soon I'll be putting a bunch of the movies I made back in high school online but ONLY FOR YOU PATRONS TO SEE.

This may take a week or two since I no longer...

Patrick Explains the Fast and the Furious (and Why It's Great)

Last summer when I mentioned to Jake that I was thinking of doing weekly videos again and doing some less narrative stuff like video essays, he immediately replied, "You should do a video for your Fast & Furious monologue."

Some background: since 2011 I have become something of a Fast & Fu...

Steven Spielberg & the Horror Inside Blockbusters

Hey kids! It's a new video essay!

Anyone who knows me at all knew I was eventually going to get around to talking about Spielberg in one of these. If I'm being honest, this probably won't be the last time. 

Last Thanksgiving my sister and I ended up getting sucked into a marathon of all...

Meet the Team

This one is WAY overdue. As in, I should have made it three years ago.

An issue I've been aware of on the channel for a long time is that while there are a bunch of recurring cast members, the audience doesn't really know who they are, since they only appear playing characters performing scripted ...

Nook Commercial

So after a couple weeks of videos about filmmaking, here's something very different. Actually this is way more like the kind of thing we used to make all the time, in that it's weird and colorful and exists only because we thought it was funny.

The super dull backstory: last fall my sister gave me...

How to Make a Good Fantastic Four Movie

Sorry this is a day late. I sat down to edit a couple days ago and then had the thought: "Let's add a ton of animation to it!" and suddenly editing took twice as long.

Anyway, this is a very, very nerdy video about comic book movies, specifically my frustration with the continued mishandling of th...

WE WROTE A SCREENPLAY IN 3 DAYS

This is pretty self-explanatory. But I'll give some explanation anyway!

Jake and I have been working on a horror movie screenplay for the past year. We had the whole thing mapped out and outlined, but were having trouble finding time to start the actual writing of the script, since there are alway...

Spooky House

This is  day late due to my severely underestimating the amount of work it would require. I'm really trying to stick to the Wednesday upload schedule, so hopefully as we go on I'll get better at planning the production timeline.

So this is a new narrative short that I will be the first to adm...

David Fincher & the Craft of Music Videos

A new video essay!

I don't know how some YouTubers make one of these every week, because it is a  crazy amount of work.

What I'm doing with the video essays is going through the long list of stuff I'm really nerdy about. Like, the things I go on lengthy monologues to my friends about. D...

How We Make These Videos

Since we started doing weekly videos back in November, one of my goals was to make more content that gives a peak  behind the curtain, so viewers can get to know the cast and crew better and see what our process is like. This is...kind of like that.

Basically, on the big list of video ideas I...

How to Become a Filmmaker (Or At Least How I Did It)

Well, guys, here it is: a full-on VLOG.

I had been noticing over the past couple months (especially with the Q&A video) how many aspiring filmmakers seemed to be watching, and how much people seemed to be interested in more talk about the process of filmmaking. I used to be totally opposed to ...

What if Alejandro G. Iñárritu Directed Wolverine?

WE MADE ANOTHER ALTERNATE UNIVERSE COMIC BOOK MOVIE

It's been a while. I love this series. They're some of the hardest videos to make that we do, but when we nail it (and I think we did here), it's so, so satisfying.

This one has been on the list for about a year, but I figured we wouldn't g...

DC Film's Character Problem

A new video essay! And it's really, really long!

I realize it might seem pretty soon after the Marvel color grading video to be talking about comic book movies again, but after how heated the comments section on that one got with all the DC vs Marvel debates breaking out, I wanted to balance thing...

We're Doing a Contest

This isn't an official regular video but I felt like it deserved a quick post here anyway.

We hit 50,000 subscribers last week. That's nuts. Especially considering that two months ago we were at 18,000.

So we're doing a contest. And so far the submissions are amazing. You can watch the video...

Introducing the Ultimate Badasses

Here's the new video! It's a big showcase for the DJI Ronin-M gymbal stabilizer that I got with the funding from YouTube NextUp. So if you were thinking, "When did he suddenly get a steadicam," this is why.

The background for this one is that I, like many of us, have grown immensely tired of the o...

2017

Here we go, the first video of 2017, and it's about...2017. And also 2016. It's kind of an experimental vlog where I reflect back on the past year and look ahead to the new one. Also, my mom makes a cameo. My mom is the best.

I originally had an additional section in there where I talked about my ...

A Super Long Q&A Video

If you're currently snowed in like I am, that's the perfect time to curl up by the fire and watch  a 30-minute-long video in which I answer 32 questions submitted by viewers. My wonderful sister, Mary, joined me and served as a sort of modertor.

There isn't much else to say about this. I hope...