FRESH CLIPPINGS
The New Director Mindset
With Obsession and Backrooms dominating the conversation, most of the industry discussion has focused on the larger implications for film, specifically the sudden realization that YouTube-native directors can make movies.
What has been mostly overlooked, though, is the mindset that this new generation of directors brings to filmmaking itself, because it’s genuinely different from anything that came before.
Blumhouse founder Jason Blum spoke about this at the Produced By conference. His argument was simple: YouTube creators are so obsessed with and connected to their audience that it fundamentally changes how they approach the filmmaking process. His example lands well. For a traditional director coming out of film school, test screenings have often been a painful exercise, something to survive rather than embrace. YouTube filmmakers treat them as a data source. Blum described them sitting in the front row, cameras out, recording audience reactions…
