Go Into The Story Interview: Mikey & Wyatt

A conversation with the creators of the popular YouTube series.

Unless you’ve been sleeping under a proverbial rock, but YouTube is here to stay. In fact, YouTube attracts more viewers on TV than Netflix, Disney+, or Amazon Prime Video. Given its growing popularity, I thought I’d interview two young guys who in a little more than a year have turned their weekly web series Mikey & Wyatt into a popular venture. With 336k subscribers and some videos getting as many as 10m views, it’s also a profitable project.

Michael Brockmann is the talent being “Mikey,” a central recurring character in the series. I’ve known Mikey for several years as he was one of my students at the DePaul University film school. I reached out to Mikey to learn more about what’s it like to be a YouTuber entrepreneur. Here is the interview in its entirety.

Scott: Congratulations on the success of your YouTube channel Mikey & Wyatt. So, an obvious place to start our conversation: Are you guys considered “influencers” yet? Does YouTube have a system like Wannabe Influencer, Junior Influencer, Senior Influencer, and if so, what is your current rank?

Mikey: Thanks Scott and thank you for interviewing us! It’s an interesting question, I’m not sure we would consider ourselves “influencers” but I’m sure in some way we fall into that category. We are definitely full-time YouTubers which feels surreal to say because making money creating has been a dream of both of ours for a long time.

The second half of that question is really funny, YouTube does not have a ranking system like that… but if I were you, I’d copyright those tier names quickly and start an app called “Influencer” with those names being the rankings.

Scott: Could each of you describe your backgrounds and how you eventually became creative partners?

Mikey: I grew up in a really small town in Massachusetts, I had a very active imagination and was constantly building stories in my head. I was a terrible student (much to my mother’s dismay) and hated pretty much every subject in school until my 9th grade English teacher Mr. Jones (greatest teacher of all time) introduced me to creative writing. After I wrote my first short story, I knew I wanted to tell stories for the rest of my life… so I applied to colleges to be a Screenwriter and miraculously I was accepted to DePaul University… where I met some great professors including you (Scott Myers), Jessica King and Brian Mellen who taught me how to turn my ideas into good and structured screenplays.

Wyatt: Mikey and I both began working for a YouTuber named Stevie Emerson in 2021. I was brought on as a writer and Mikey was brought on as an editor. Through working together we quickly realized how similar our tastes were. We liked all the same movies, we’d always pitch the same jokes on set and we both liked drinking after a hard day’s work. After knowing each other for six months we ended up moving into a house together, we worked around the clock with Stevie making sketch comedy videos until 2024, when we decided it was time to do our own thing so we decided to create our own YouTube channel.

Scott: How would you describe the concept of the Mikey & Wyatt series?

Mikey: Wyatt and I wanted to make a comedy channel that is character-driven. Sometimes we will do sketch-comedy but what we really wanted to do was separate ourselves from the rest of the comedy creators on YouTube by making more “movie like” comedy scenes. We want people to feel like the scene they’re watching could’ve been ripped out of a comedy movie they’ve never seen.

Scott: To that end — creating a “character-driven” comedy channel — you have gathered an acting “troupe” of recurring roles. Did that happen organically or did you have a more formal approach (e.g., hold auditions)? Also, this is a good chance to mention each of your troupe members.

Mikey: It all pretty much happened organically. We’ve met a lot of people through friends of friends, comedy classes, acting classes and even parties. There are so many people in this town who are constantly looking to get on camera so if you write something decent, there are a lot of actors who want to show up and get good material for their reels.

If you’re lucky, when you start a YouTube channel or any business really… you’ll find one or two people who really believe in what you’re doing and help you grow the idea into something real. We were lucky enough to meet three people like that and without these people, we absolutely would not have the success we do today.

Very early on we were lucky enough to find an amazing actress named Claire Rice… you might not know her name now but I guarantee you, one day everyone will. She’s been acting her whole life and never really did comedy until she started working on our channel and she is just unbelievable at it. She makes every line better and she’s just an amazing and fun person to work with too (which is very important).

The other person we met pretty early on is named Andrew Judge. Andrew does literally everything for us. He’s a great digital photographer, great editor, he’s a colorist and most importantly he’s a fantastic actor. He is easily one of the funniest and hardest working people we know and he’s just an amazing vibe to have on set and in the office. If we call him and need help, he’s there no matter what.

Last but not least… Jason Vizinni is our main cameraman and he helped us from the very beginning. When Wyatt and I first started the channel we had about $15 dollars to our names so Jason offered to shoot for us for free. He shot the first 5 days completely free of charge (that’s about $3000 of unpaid work) which helped us a lot because even early on our videos looked professional. He’s a very talented digital photographer and when we make our first movie he’s the guy that’s going to be filming it.

Most importantly all these people are our friends and it’s amazing to have such talented friends and people to work with because it makes the long days and nights feel fun and not like work.

Scott: I believe you try to upload a new video each week. What’s your schedule in terms of pre-production, production, and post?

Mikey: Yeah our goal is to post every single Tuesday, which pretty much makes this a 24/7 job. We don’t really have a set-schedule because everything moves so quickly but here is the basic idea of each step:

Pre Production: Writing takes place whenever we can find some time. Writing is the one part of the process you can’t really “force out”… so whenever one of us has a good idea we just get the computer and write out a draft (that usually takes about 3–4 hours.) Then we meet up, give each other notes and finish the scripts usually within 24 hours after that. Then Wyatt and I text our camera guy and our group of actors and try to find a day that works for everyone.

Production: We try to film anywhere from 2–4 videos in a day. We keep the camera setups fairly simple so that we can move quickly and get as many jokes out as possible. We will usually end up leaving the day with 2 postable sketches.

Post Production: Whenever we have time we edit, sometimes that means waking up at 3 in the morning and editing until midnight. It just depends on how much other work we had to do that week/how long and complicated the video is. We just recently hired a part-time editor named Matthew Jackson who has been a great help and is learning how to shoulder more and more of the editing weight. Tuesday I’ll usually wake up around 4am, make sure the video is 100% ready to be launched. Then make the thumbnail and we upload at 10am.

Scott: You’ve got this one called The Friendzone Series which has proved extremely popular with some videos getting 2M views and one landing 10M views. Why has this series been so popular?

Mikey: I think the series has been popular for a couple of reasons, firstly that it’s just a pretty relatable situation. The “Friendzone” is basically just being in love with someone who doesn’t love you back… and I think a lot of people can relate to that. Secondly I think it’s popular because it’s honest… when Wyatt and I finished the second video in the series we sort of looked at each other and were like “Hmmm… it’s not too funny but it feels real.” we felt like there was something special there and apparently a lot of other people did too. I think it feels so authentic because I may or may not have been (definitely was) in the friendzone plenty of times and a lot of the funny and unfunny aspects of it made it into the script… also Claire Rice is unbelievable in her role which is DEFINITELY a reason for the success.

Scott: What’s the vision for the M&W website and beyond? What’s your next creative project?

Mikey: Our vision is to continue to grow our YouTube channel until executives in Hollywood can’t ignore us anymore. We really want to make feature films and TV shows. I believe in YouTube being a major player in our success throughout our careers, so we won’t stop posting on YouTube… but we’d also like to get some real money in and make bigger projects that get shown in theatres. Despite all that we have accomplished in a short amount of time, Wyatt and I will never truly feel like we’ve done anything until we’ve made our first feature length film… it is a massive life goal for both of us.

Scott: Finally, you attended the film school at DePaul University. We had several classes together and in fact, you were my research assistant. What would you say to someone considering going to film school?

Mikey: Let me first say that I am incredibly lucky to have had the opportunity to go to Film School and I’m glad my mother pushed me to do so. Speaking from my own experience, DePaul’s Filmschool was very helpful to me it’s no coincidence that I was in several of your classes, I felt as if I learned the best from your method of teaching (and Jessica King’s) so I took as many classes as I could with the both of you and I am a SIGNIFICANTLY better writer because of it. I was very fortunate in that regard to have found two professors who believed in me and took time to help me develop my skills as both a writer and a person.

It would tell someone who is considering going to film school that it is absolutely helpful but it is not necessary. If you’re going to make the choice to go to film school, make the most out of it. Form connections and create projects with your fellow students. Create relationships with your professors and learn as much as you can from them. USE THE SCHOOL’S FILM EQUIPMENT and START MAKING MOVIES.

In talking with Mikey and screening a bunch of the Mikey & Wyatt videos, I reflected on the comedy act I had in 1985–1987. Dubbed Scott California, I took a satiric look at the Reagan era and conspicuous consumption. Part stand-up comedy, part comic songs, and fully off-the-wall, I’m certain had YouTube been around, I would’ve jumped all over it as a performer.

Fortunately, the world is spared that fate.

Check out the website for Mikey & Wyatt. While you’re at it, subscribe and give it a thumbs up.