He Got 1 Million Followers in 30 Days—Here's How AI Changed Everything
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How did Brandon Baum grow his YouTube following so quickly?
shoot all of our content on iPhones, which I think is quite unique. These phones, they're not really phones. They're just, they're supercomputers that are incredibly small, that have these like really advanced gyroscope sensors on them. Also have these really advanced LiDAR sensors on them. The idea that anyone could imagine that there'll just be this one broad stroke where a single person could write a string of words and that output, the level of quality that goes into any form of like art at scale is preposterous. I'm basically trying to offload as much of my administrative tasks that I do as physically possible because I don't ever want to do any of them ever again. So if I can basically offload all of them and just focus on being creative for more of my life, I'll be very, very happy.
Welcome, humans, to the Neuron AI Explained, the show that helps you make sense of what AI is changing, who it's changing for, and what all of that means in the real world. I'm your host, Corey Knowles, and as always, beam again with enough enthusiasm to power a small inference cluster. We have Grant Harvey with us. How are you, Grant?
So in this scenario, I am a solar-based space-based data center. Yes. Yes. Okay. Okay. Cool. I'll channel my enthusiasm appropriately and... Well, I am actually pretty enthusiastic because today we're talking about one of the places AI is moving fastest, which is internet video. Our guest is Brandon Baum, better known to millions as HeyBrandonB, a creator who spent years making mind-bending cinematic videos for YouTube and beyond. These things are sick. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, seriously. We'll get into how he built all of that creative engine, what his workflow looked like before AI, what it looks like now, and whether these new tools are actually democratizing storytelling or just raising the bar for everyone.
Brandon, welcome to The Neuron. It's great to have you.
It's a pleasure to be here, guys. Thank you so much for having me. Also, what a lovely intro. What a great, what a warm stage to welcome into.
It's an honor to be here. Appreciate it. We're super glad to have you here. And I guess to get started, maybe for people who know the videos, but not the backstory, how did you get into making videos? And what made you stick with this long enough to get as great as you are today?
So I guess my origin story actually started probably when I was about 10, 11 years old. I've always been obsessed with YouTube. I was bit by a spider.
Yeah, sorry.
Prior to this call, we spoke about, you know, sort of like geeks uniting. And we spoke about how you would hide the fact that you used to play D&D to your friends. So the version of that for me was actually YouTube. And I used to watch YouTube videos. But back then, over a decade and a half ago, if you watched YouTube content, I mean, I don't want to say you were a loser, but it wasn't the cool thing to do. And I remember very avidly pretend or like hiding that fact from my friends, but just being so obsessed with it. It was the first time I sort of experienced this idea of like parasocial relationships where you would watch and sort of every day you just kind of be with these creators and it felt like they were just your friends.
And I was indulging into the worlds of, at the time, much earlier stage YouTube creators, but just falling so in love with this idea that I almost felt like I had this like direct communication with these amazing creators. Of course, by about the age of 12, it was then my dream to become a YouTuber. So I started uploading videos every single day. And of course they got the grand total of about two views. Yeah, that's good. You and someone else or you twice. Exactly. And then probably I'd say five years on from that, I then decided it was time to get some, you know, traditional experience under my belt. I started working in TV for a bit, trying to learn how, I guess, real production pipelines worked and how real sets and infrastructure came together.
Then I guess four years into that journey, I was kind of looking around, I was like, I'm not really watching TV myself and I'm still obsessed with this YouTube thing.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
How did Brandon Baum grow his YouTube following so quickly?
0:00–4:43
2
What unique filming techniques does Brandon use with iPhones?
4:43–19:53
3
What challenges did Brandon face while creating videos during COVID?
19:53–43:00
4
How has AI transformed Brandon's content creation workflow?
43:00–55:54
Speakers
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