YouTube Millionaires: Nukazooka Makes No-Budget, Special-Effects Shorts Look Like They’re Made With Big Bucks

Welcome to YouTube Millionaires, where we profile channels that have recently crossed the one million subscriber mark. There are channels crossing this threshold every week, and each has a story to tell about YouTube success. Read previous installments of YouTube Millionaires here.

This installment of YouTube Millionaires is brought to you by Segway.

The fraternal YouTube pair of Andrew and Seth McMurry have been producing very-high-quality, special-effects-laden, action-oriented shorts since way back in 2011 under the banner of AndrewMFilms and more recently the much-cooler sounding (no offense, Andrew) Nukazooka (the origin of which is from the combination of a soft drink in the video game Fallout and the word “bazooka”). Seth’s area of expertise is production, while Andrew is the special effects guru. And together they’ve created some of what must be the most fun-to-watch, coolest-looking, live-action shorts on YouTube. Videos featuring a Pulp Fiction-like briefcase with golden bricks special enough to fend off a Lego Invasion to an unsavory look at what happens when Mario dies are made with elegant effects and a semi-dark take on modern gaming and millennial nostalgia that have helped the brothers amass hundreds of millions of views and over a million YouTube subscribers.

We caught up with Seth to ask him what it was like to join the Million Subscribes Club and talk about how he and his brother do the things they do.

Tubefilter: How does it feel to have one million subscribers? What do you have to say to your fans?

Seth McMurry: The feeling is unbelievable! We are so grateful to our audience who continue to support us by watching and sharing our content. To our audience, I would say thank you thank you thank you!

TF: How long have you guys been making short films together?

SM: We have been making films for 5 years now.

TF: What do you think makes your creative partnership such a good one?

SM: I think the thing that makes our partnership work so well is trust. Not only on the business side but also the creative. If I don’t like something that Andrew has come up with, he trusts that I will be honest with him about that and same goes for me. The other thing that makes it work so well is that we both have the same vision for the channel in that we want to put out only the highest quality videos for our fans.

TF: How much time does it take to do post-production for one of your videos? Have you figured out any ways to accelerate the process?

SM: Post production is

what takes the most time for our videos. I would say a little under two weeks. We have recently changed our schedule from one video a month to two videos a month which has really pushed us. Andrew has become very efficient in After Effects which helps a lot, too.

TF: How do you decide which games to mash together in your videos?

SM: When we are using games in a video, it is usually decided by experience playing those games. We have used Mario quite a few times because that was such a big influence for us growing up.

TF: What is your opinion of the big-budget, special-effects laden films that dominate the Hollywood box office?

SM: We love high budget films just as much as the next person. I think what Andrew and I have shown though is that you really don’t need a high budget to make a “high budget” looking film. Most all of our videos we create have little to no budget involved, yet will look like they are made with a huge budget.

TF: You guys are active on Snapchat; what’s your strategy there?

SM: We are just recently getting into Snapchat. Our strategy with that is to show the behind the scenes of Nukazooka. Not just behind the scenes of our films, but actually being able to show what we do daily. We don’t do vlogs or types of videos that really show our personalities and Snapchat seems like a platform that we can use for that.

TF: You’ve also shown an interest in live streaming apps like Live.me. What excites you about that space?

SM: Live streaming, much like Snapchat, is a platform that we are able to show personality and gives us the ability to engage with our audience.

TF: What’s next for your channel? Any fun plans?

SM: As of right now we are going to just keep putting out awesome content for our audience. We are working on a few bigger projects and would love to possibly create some type of series or longer form content.

You can check it all out and stay up to speed with everything Nukazooka on its YouTube channel.

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