Sarah Bishop and Josiah Brooks are internet royalty.
Sarah is one third of Skit Box, who brought the world Activewear, and she has joined forces with Martha Coleman, Claire Phillips and Ainslie Clouston, as well as SketchShe’s Shae Lee Shackleford for not one, but two projects that got Brilliant Stories funding.
And after the launch of his animated short, The Tale Teller, Josiah from Draw with Jazza is holding meetups in London for some of his more than 600,000 subscribers. He’ll release a series about the making of the short too. The Tale Teller and its series got Skip Ahead funding.
Sarah and Josiah share their top YouTube channels with us:
Sarah’s first nomination is fellow Aussies, Aunty Donna. Sarah says that they’re “hands down” her favourite YouTubers. “Their stuff is absurd, weird and wonderful and I can’t get enough of it,” she says.
Josiah’s top pick is the JonTronShow. “I love the funny retro video games and the satire,” Josiah says. “It’s very entertaining.” At more than 10 million views, here’s Jon Tron’s most watched video:
Up next, College Humour’s Jake and Amir. Sarah describes Jake and Amir as “the Odd Couple of the online generation”. “They’ve pumped out an impressive number of vids, which are all heavily improvised and part of the fun is watching Jake trying desperately not to laugh during each take,” she says. Here’s one of Sarah’s favourites:
“It’s pop culture, politics and art,” Josiah says. Evan Puschak covers extremely diverse topics in his video essays for his channel, Nerdwriter. This analysis of a one minute answer that Donald Trump gives has notched up more than four million views:
Sarah also rates BriTANicK, which we’ve touched on previously. “Their video Academy Award Winning Movie Trailer is still one of my favourite online videos.”
Sarah was constantly star struck by musical comedy duo Garfunkel and Oates while she was studying at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in Los Angeles. “They’re like a female version of Flight of the Conchords,” Sarah says. These guys have since gone on to star in their own Netflix series. Here’s one of Sarah’s favourite Garfunkel and Oates songs:
“MatPat takes a topic from a movie and attempts to answer it scientifically, combining data gathered from the movie with authentic sources,” Josiah explains. One investigation, into whether or not Anna and Elsa from Frozen are real sisters, has had more than nine million views. Here’s one of Josiah’s favourites:
According to Sarah, Brittany Furlan is “the Queen of Vine” and good Viners are masters at joke structure. “I’m always learning new things when I watch their stuff,” Sarah says. “Like new and interesting ways to create a punchline without dialogue using reaction shots, quick cuts, sounds or music.”
