Today we’d like to introduce you to William Baker.
Hi William, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I had wanted to be a YouTuber ever since I was 12, and a few years later, my friends and I decided to do it! It was super simple videos, and it never went anywhere, but I found myself really enjoying the editing side of it. After some time, I decided to start making short films just for fun and fell in love with filmmaking. I decided not to go to school for it and just freelance, learn everything from YouTube, and buy all the gear myself.
After some time, I felt like I was getting much better using very limited resources to make higher quality short films. Lighting was the key, but I didn’t see a lot about lighting on the internet. I wanted people to understand how cheap and easy making something look like a movie could be. I was editing weddings at the time, and I saw all the filmmaking gear sitting around, unused for years, and thought I needed to do something with it.
So in August of 2022, I began a series called “30 shot in 30 days” on TikTok. It was exactly what it sounded like: I take one month to create 30 cinematic shots all at my home. In the 30 videos I made, I taught people how I set everything up, often focusing on the lighting. It was a way for me to keep myself accountable in practicing and improving my cinematography.
It did really well on TikTok, and then blew up on Instagram, which gave me a partnership with the lighting company I was using lights from, amaran. Between the following that had come from those videos and the partnership with amaran, I was able to quit my job editing weddings and become a full time influencer.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
It’s crazy to me how the challenges change with time.
When I began, it was really challenging to know what would or wouldn’t work. After your first video goes viral, you want that feeling again, and there’s so much data on social media now to sort through. Early on, it was so challenging to understand it, and you want to understand it to be able to do your job well.
Now I feel like I have the opposite obstacle. Data and comparison drives a lot of my decision making. You’re always trying to redo the successful videos cause you don’t want to risk something that could fail. However, I lose interest in doing the same thing again and again, and honestly, so do audiences most of the time. It’s been challenging to relearn how think outside of the box, but I just keep reminding myself that thinking outside the box is how I got here in the first place.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I’m considered a social media influencer, but I think of myself as a filmmaker first. I believe anyone can make a movie, so I make videos that inspire people to go make them.
I feel like the biggest hurdle for most filmmakers is how daunting a film can be. You need tons of money, a filmmaking education, and you need to live somewhere where people are making films.
Well, I don’t think that’s true, and I try to show that by taking on daunting filmmaking challenges and sharing the process, failures and all. The most common one for me right now is to recreate scenes from movies. They’re often very complex, but I try recreating them on a much lower budget, using filmmaking tricks to save money. Some of those videos are educational, but the main thing the videos are about is showing the problem solving process and telling a story. In that way, I feel like filmmakers and non-filmmakers can find my content fun to watch, and I hope anyone who watches any of my videos feels encouraged and like they could go accomplish anything they wanted to.
I try to do that with all my videos across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. Different formats are better for different things, but I always want people to feel encouraged to go and create.
Can you talk to us about how you think about risk?
The biggest risk I took was pivoting to YouTube from TikTok and Instagram. It was back in 2023 when Oppenheimer was being released. I decided I would recreate the nuclear explosion and some of the special FX from the trailer. This was my first YouTube video. I spent a month and a half trying to manage my normal short form content alongside this YouTube video and spent hundreds of dollars on it, all because I was really excited by it.
That risk paid off. The video got 1 million views in about 24 hours, and it kickstarted my YouTube channel.
Right now I’m taking a risk. I’m pivoting my content again to focus on making short films. Specifically, making short films in 24 hours, working my way up to making my first feature length film. To me, risk taking is one of the most important parts of the process. Especially as a content creator, the risks you take make for better videos, and sharing something valuable and new to the platform.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/william.h.baker/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@WilliamHBaker
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@william.h.baker
