MrBeast, the YouTube channel with the most subscribers across the entire platform, is known for high-dollar challenges, from smashing Lamborghinis to giving away millions of dollars for completing off-the-wall challenges.
But that sort of nothing-is-off-limits approach applies to what happens behind the scenes, too – including putting cameras in dangerous situations.
During the Bild Expo in New York City, I filed into an auditorium with content creators and videographers to go behind the scenes of the YouTube channel with more than 400 million subscribers.
In a room full of filmmakers and gear nerds, MrBeast head of camera department, Ryan Elwell, and head of post and executive producer of Beast Games, Joshua Kulic, made a confession: nothing, including destroying cameras to get the shot, is off the table.
“Nothing is off limits, and I love that about MrBeast,” Elwell said. “I’ve put a lot of equipment in very compromising situations, and I will continue to do it for the video, for the end product. If that train is going to be hitting a Lamborghini, I’m going to be putting a camera right there, and there goes that camera, but it’s worth it for the shot.”
Kulic added, “We have melted carcasses of cameras just lining the camera case.”
While the team says that nothing is off limits, the camera crew doesn’t have an allegiance to a particular brand. “We will use anything,” Elwell said.
“We will use Arri or any other cinema camera like Reds. We use Canon, Sony, GoPro, iPhones. It really doesn’t matter. We’re all about how we can get that angle, how can we get that shot, and how can we have as little impact as possible on the atmosphere or the environment.”
During the interview-style presentation, Elwell discussed how the camera can have a psychological impact on the video’s atmosphere. He explained that how a contestant feels with a big camera pointed in their direction could interfere with the fairness of the game.
So while sometimes the camera crew is placing cameras right in the middle of a crash, other times the team is hanging back with long lenses, or dressing in suits or referee costumes and using smaller cameras to better blend in.
Describing the production team behind MrBeast as large is an understatement, but throughout the interview Elwell and Kulic repeatedly described how the team works together and communicates from the planning process through post-production.
The MrBeast team currently holds the world record for the most cameras filming simultaneously on a reality TV show, with 1,107, including 1,000 GoPros and 107 cameras.
During that same episode, the team broke 44 Guinness Records, including the most cinema cameras used for a single reality TV season with 43 and the most expensive reality show season at $100,000,000 (which is about £72,960,049 / AU$153,268,873).
“Behind the scenes, we have a huge team sometimes, hundreds of camera operators, safety teams, teams that are prepping and getting ready for construction, and there’s a lot of time and prep that goes into prior to ever pressing record,” Elwell said.
“It’s a huge scale, but sometimes we can break that down to one camera operator and one audio guy, it just depends on what tools are needed for the job.”
Coordinating teams and budgets that large isn’t a small undertaking, but Kulic said the team embraces controlled chaos, an approach that applies from planning to framing the story in post production. “We like chaos to an extent. Controlled chaos, right?” Kulic laughed.
“But that’s born out of the authenticity of the channel. We are not scripted at all. We want to keep that organic nature. The contestants are going to drive the story, and we’re just creating boundary boxes. Everything is built around that, so you have to be able to be flexible in the moment.”
A key element of the MrBeast channel is the storytelling. Elwell joked that when Kulic – who was his friend prior to working together at MrBeast – first started working for the company, prompting his response, “Who is MrBeast?” Elwell said he then started watching the videos and looked over to see his wife crying. “This is not just YouTube, there’s a lot of emotion and authenticity here.”
Both planning and pivoting feel key to the MrBeast channel’s knack for storytelling. “At the end of the day, we’re all movie buffs, we all love movies and cinema in general and our viewers are the same way,” Elwell said.” Although it is social media, it is YouTube, it’s faster, we understand that our viewers are still craving that emotional connection and authenticity. We’re always thinking about that.”
Elwell went on to explain that, during the planning process, the team talks about what could happen and where to place cameras and videographers to anticipate being in the right place at the right time. With the unscripted nature of the channel, however, he added that the team is constantly pivoting.
“We compare [the process] to a train, it’s a constantly moving train and it’s Josh and my responsibility to stay ahead of the train, and lay the track and the foundation and just be ready for anything that could happen because that train could go left, it could go right, it could go off a cliff.”
“We have the be ready for that cliff. We’re ready for any pivot that could happen. That’s part of the fun of MrBeast, too, is just the constant pivoting.”
Continuing the storytelling in post is done with a large team of video editors. “Emotion and, beyond that, the through line of the story is going to be the biggest thing,” Kulic said. “What is the story? What are we trying to do? I think when people think of MrBeast, it's the fast cutting, and that’s part of it at the beginning… but I think it's just finding those natural stories in the moment.”
Breaking 44 records in one event is something that feels hard to outdo with the next video, but Elwell says that something they ask themselves every video is, “How we we outdo our last video?”
“Our audience is faithful,” Ellwell said, “but they also want to see us push the envelope and raise the bar again and again and again. A lot of that is in the prep and the people and pieces that we put into place. We have a great team… because we are always collaborating, which brings in a lot of creative ideas. Everyone has a voice, it’s not just one person.”
Shooting and then editing footage from 1,107 cameras sounds impossible, but Kulic advises filmmakers to start small and scale up from there. “Break things down into smaller blocks for yourself. You don’t need to think of 1,000 cameras; maybe it’s 12 groups of 80. We’re finding ways to break things down and scale up from there… Start with one camera, add ten.”
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