Today we’d like to introduce you to Devin Larscheid.
Devin, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
In terms of video production, I’ve been making digital videos and short films since I was a junior in high school (around 2012). This was sparked through a film class I took at my high school which, coincidentally, was the first year a film class like that had even existed at my high school. I also watched a TON of YouTube at the time, so I was accustomed to seeing videos and entertainment being made regularly. After the first couple of projects in the film class and my first experiences with editing (we used Windows Movie Maker back then, what a trip), I immediately knew that making videos and entertaining people was something I wanted to do.
After graduating high school in 2013, I attended UC San Diego, studying visual media with an emphasis on cinema production, where I took a multitude of digital production/editing classes and dabbled in acting. Through this program, I made numerous projects, including an 18-minute short film for my senior thesis, and learned a ton about my work style. I graduated college in 2017 with a few major projects under my belt and a lot of production experience.
However, finding work after college was a much different story than completing projects in college. I found it extremely difficult to find any company that wanted to hire a freshly graduated film student with almost no professional work experience. I even went as far as to find some Production Assistant jobs on the set of a few commercials and shows. I loved being on set, but I hated doing grunt work. At the time, around August 2017, a friend was able to set up a short meeting with me and a big executive producer (Christopher Lockhart) from William Morris Endeavor to discuss what my next moves should be.
In the meeting, Mr. Lockhart talked to me about the new media age, and how copious amounts of artists were now creating and gaining exposure to their name through social media like YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, etc. He encouraged me to find an artist I knew or admired that had this exposure already, and offer to help this artist produce a few videos for free. Luckily for me, I had kept in touch with a recently blown-up YouTuber who went to my high school, Berlin Edmond (known on YouTube as Berleezy for his cartoon roasts). I immediately contacted Berlin and asked if I could help him produce a few skits, to which he agreed.
In the following months, Berlin and I talked, but no videos were produced. Berlin became busy with other things and I was simultaneously working on a few independent videography gigs. In November 2017, I entered a one-minute video competition for Film Riot, which I acted in, directed, and edited in around three weeks. Though I didn’t win anything, the video was a hit in my immediate network of friends, and even Berlin messaged me saying that he was extremely moved by the video. This led me to a revelation: I wanted to make my own videos for my own channel. I had decided that I was going to launch my own YouTube channel and Instagram page, where I would post comedic skits just like the ones I had always seen from the time I started watching YouTube. I made a promise to myself that I would write a script and create a video once a week for the next year. Thus began my social media journey.
For the next seven months, I made YouTube videos alongside a few friends that had similar interests in creating. Around May 2018, I stumbled upon a few Instagram comedians that were making one-minute comedy skits for Instagram and had been recently gaining traction on their pages and videos. I then decided to make the switch from YouTube to Instagram, seeing as it was a much easier platform to spread exposure on my videos, where I would also create 1-minute sketches that would be posted on my Instagram (and later YouTube).
Around the same time, I also created my first semi-viral video, titled “Every Rave Bro After EDC,” which was based on my EDM/rave experiences in college. The video landed around 120,000 initial views in the first few weeks of its release and was shared in various rave community groups on Facebook. The temporary fame earned me a nickname as “the rave bro” or “the rave guy that makes videos.” Since this video, I continued to make rave-centralized videos every few months (and still continue to now, every month), which has amassed me numerous views and helped me gain exposure over the past year and a half.
Then, things really began to change in late summer of 2018. In August, I met a YouTube SMOSH actor, Noah Grossman, at my cousin’s wedding in Malibu. We briefly talked about the possibility of collaborating and writing a few sketches, and he loved the idea of working together. A few months later, we planned a day of shooting, where we shot four one-minute Instagram sketches in one day. The collaboration, which was only meant to be a one-time thing, turned into another day of sketch-making a few weeks later, followed by another day of shooting a few more weeks later. Noah and I then decided that we would develop a team of individuals that carried an interest in creating content, and we would continue to make videos together for as long as we could.
Since then, Noah, myself, and our small team of influencers (s/o Elliott Hampton, Symone Nguyen-Knowles, Hamada Abdelhalim, Nand Mahasuwan, Jemz Pineda, and many of the others) create sketches and projects weekly that we post to all forms of social media, including YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Twitter. As our accounts continue to expand, we are constantly hashing out new ideas for bigger and better projects, including music videos, short films, podcasts, and collaborations with bigger influencers/artists. I’m thankful to have come this far in my social media journey and even more grateful to have met such amazing individuals and artists along the way. I know the future will continue to be bright as long as I have my passion and my friends’ support beside me.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
To be quite honest, the journey since deciding that I wanted to create videos and become a digital media influencer has not been an easy one. One of the biggest challenges has always been time management. Through juggling a side job (my current actual job at the moment is a teacher’s aide at a high school), an addiction to the gym, a dating life, and a family, finding time to write sketches and take a full day in the week to shoot them can be a lot of work. However, one of the things that allows me to continue with this time-consuming hobby is my love for it. I believe, if you really have a passion for something, no amount of work you do to fulfill that hobby, no matter how strenuous, will actually seem like work.
Other than time management, the typical struggle of financial support has also always proven to be a slight burden. A solid amount of my paycheck from working my side job can sometimes be taken to account for buying props, equipment, or even just lunch for everyone helping on set. Video producing is not the cheapest hobby in the least.
We’d love to hear more about your work.
Currently, I’m known best for the rave videos and one-minute skits I create on Instagram as well as on TikTok. As previously mentioned, my rave-centralized comedy videos have been one of the leading factors in my success on Instagram and is one of the reasons I continue to make rave comedy videos to date. My rave videos have collected around a total of 500,000+ views (cumulative) via Instagram EDM pages, Facebook groups, and EDM Reddit threads. My one-minute Instagram skits have also been a large success on the newer social media platform, TikTok, in where I’ve amassed over 75,000 followers and over 2.5 million views in about a month and a half’s time.
I think what sets me apart from others is my ability to remain stubbornly persistent in my creating. Week to week, I am constantly brainstorming with my team on video ideas and putting together shoot dates for us to make these ideas come to life. While I don’t always think I’m the funniest person out there (not even close to it), I think that my persistence and perseverance to improving my content and my work ethic will be the defining factor for what makes me even more successful in the future.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
If I had to start over, I would’ve started producing videos much earlier on than I did. If I had the chance to go back, I wish I would’ve begun creating videos for YouTube in high school or, at the latest, in college. The earlier of a jump you get and the more experience you can put under your belt, the better chance of success you’ll have to blow up.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://youtube.com/c/DevinLarscheid
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/devinlarscheid/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/indevinitely/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/devinlarscheid
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@devinlarscheid
Image Credit:
Images provided by: Elliott Hampton, Luis Salgado
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