- I'm gonna show you a cheap YouTube setup
that my friend Chickypie used
to get a million subscribers here on YouTube
and we're starting right now.
♫ This is how it is
What is going on?
My name is Nick.
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Okay for this one,
we are going to have to head over to Chickypie's.
So let's go.
- Hello, everyone!
My name's Chickypie.
- Today I'm here with Thai YouTuber, Chickypie.
Chickypie.
(speaking foreign language)
- Hi!
- Chickypie is a very successful Thai YouTuber.
She just crossed over the million subscriber mark
and we wanted to take you behind the scenes
and show you that you can have massive success on YouTube
without having to spend a ton of money
because I know that's a big concern
for a lot of people that watch my videos.
So now we are going to take you around her studio
and show you basically what goes on
behind the scenes here at Chickypie.
- Okay, so I gonna show you now.
- Yeah, perfect. - Okay.
- Yeah, let's go. - Go!
- Here, this is basically her studio in a nutshell.
Basically what she does is here in the background
she uses blankets
and she has a few different layers
of blankets in the background
and the reason that she has this
is so when she speaks
that the sound isn't bouncing off of the walls
of the rest of the room.
So basically the idea behind this,
you can see it all around the place.
You can see it here,
you can see it here.
They even put blankets here in front of 'em
so that they can deaden the sound.
So basically, instead of having the sound
reflect all over the room.
What the blankets do,
essentially is they catch the sound.
So basically they have these blankets that they hang up here
and they're not acoustic blankets or anything like that.
They're just basic blankets that you would get
at any type of department store or anything like that.
And if you look up here at the top,
all they have is a bar
that goes across and they just clip 'em
to the top of that bar
which basically holds them in place
and this whole setup right here,
if you run the cost on that,
it's just a handful of blankets, a bar and some clamps
which doesn't add up to a lot.
- This is where I cannot use screw or anything
so I use tape.
It is easy for me, yes.
So I do it like this.
- In addition to that,
they use basically clamp lights
that you can get at pretty much any hardware store
and the idea behind this is
they're not going out
and they're not buying big expensive photo lights.
You don't see a soft box in here.
What you see is you see
lights that are covered with plastic bags,
lights that are covered with wax paper
and things like that to diffuse the light.
Seven main lights with one back light
here to light up her hair
and kind of crisp her head and shoulders
and all of these are just basic lights
that you would get at the hardware store
and they are diffused by plastic bags
and-- - Shower cap.
- And a shower cap actually as another thing
that they are diffused by.
So that goes to show you
that you can whip a lot of this stuff together at home.
You can diffuse it with your plastic bags
which make sure if you are,
just to go ahead and put this disclaimer in there,
if you are covering them with plastic bags
or anything that might melt or catch on fire,
make sure that the bulbs are definitely
not a very hot burning bulb
because of course that can get you into some trouble, right?
- Yes.
- Yeah and you don't want your place to burn down.
So but yeah, plastic bags, shower caps, t-shirts,
all kinds of things like that
can be used to diffuse this kind of light.
- Hello, welcome to my channel!
- For gear, they started off with an iPhone.
Then as things got better they moved up to a Nikon D3200,
From there they upgraded to a G7 X
and now they're using a Canon 80D.
So they built as they grew and you can too.
So with all of that said
that really goes to show
what you can accomplish.
You can really take things or really,
you can really take things far
just by using stuff that you have around the house
or things that you kind of make yourself
from hardware stores and things like that.
So this is Jerry
and Jerry helps Chickypie out behind the scenes.
This, you've already been introduced as Chickypie.
So for you guys,
when you were first putting all this stuff together,
kind of walk us through if you would,
the process of building the set
and your thought behind getting all of this together.
- Yeah, well we've been doing this for two years
and when we first got her first setup,
it was very basic.
We just got a few clamp lights, some light bulbs
and we didn't wanna, in Thailand,
here they don't really have diffusers locally.
So we just used plastic grocery bags,
white grocery bags from the grocery store
and those worked out perfect.
We didn't even buy a tripod.
We just made our own.
We just bought some PVC pipes
and made our own tripod out of PVC pipes.
We use a lot of,
a lot of clamps.
A lot of clamps, those come in handy.
And that's how we started out
and started out on our iPod.
- Yes. - Or iPhone.
And when our channel started
we tried a few different things.
Some videos worked out, some didn't,
and then one took off
and we kind of ran with that.
- Yeah.
- And then each month we just bought a little bit more,
bought a few more lights, bought a few more PVC pipes,
and then after a while
the PVC pipes were kinda getting annoying
so then we bought some cheap tripods.
- Sure, sure.
- Bought one or two tripods
and then I think after a year,
I think after a year then we,
no actually after maybe two or three months
we upgraded the iPhone to a Nikon D3200 on--
- Website. - Craigslist.
- Okay. - On Craigslist.
I only paid a couple hundred dollars for that
and that worked out really good and then after about a year
or maybe six months, a year, then we moved,
then we got a G7 X.
And now after two years,
just recently we got an 80D so...
- Nice.
- So we just kinda-- - So movin' on up.
- Yeah. - Notching it up,
every step along the way.
Just bringing the whole thing up a little bit.
- Yeah yeah.
So it was a gradual process
that we just built everything
but when we started,
the thing I talked about the most
to make it look professional
is you have to have
the three point lighting,
the two lights in the front
and then the back light. - The back light.
- Yeah and that's the truth.
I mean you can see in the quality of their videos,
I mean their production quality is amazing.
Everything looks fantastic.
The editing is great
and all of this is done on an extremely low budget setup.
It's absolutely amazing to actually be in here and see this
because when you first see their videos,
you think like "Oh man,
"I bet this is a,
"I bet this is a huge set and"--
- A thousand dollar lights. - Yeah, you think,
I bet there's a ton of money behind this,
thousands of dollars worth of lights
and then equipment and all that stuff
but I came in and I see clamp lights
covered with garbage bags.
Like this right here,
this is a clamp light.
It's a lower watt bulb so it doesn't get that hot
so they don't have to worry about it melting the plastic
but they're using a plastic bag here
to actually diffuse-- - I can take it off.
- This light.
- This is from, the bag, from 7-11.
- Yeah and we still use these because,
we have more expensive lights now
but I really like the lights in here.
So it's not broke, don't fix it.
It's working.
- Yeah and one of the things
that Jerry was saying to me earlier
is that, they went and they got a ring light
and they wanted to test it
and see how things would look with the ring light
but they ended up moving back to this setup
with the lower priced lights
because the ring light didn't give them
the look that they were going for.
So that's something that you need to keep in mind
when you're setting up your studio area
is even though a light might seem
because you say oh, this is a $200 light,
it's gonna make everything look amazing.
That might not necessarily be the case.
You might get better results with things like this.
Right?
- Yes and I am very happy with this.
- Yeah, it looks fantastic.
Your production quality is absolutely amazing.
You guys do a fantastic job.
- Oh, thank you. - Thank you.
- So let me ask you some other questions too,
if you don't mind.
So you just crossed, recently,
you just crossed over a million subscribers.
Congratulations by the way.
- Thank you. - That's huge.
(speaking foreign language)
- Yeah. - Tell her.
- Thank you. - Yeah.
That's a huge milestone, fantastic job.
So you just crossed over a million subscribers.
How long did it take you? - Two years.
- Two years, okay. - Yes.
- Two years to get to a million subscribers.
That's amazing.
And how many videos, ballpark?
- Right now we have about 200 videos.
- 208. - 200 videos, nice.
- Yeah. - Yeah, that's amazing.
A million subscribers, 200 and some change videos,
and they have a fan base of just
rabid fans that absolutely love Chickypie.
- Yeah. - Yeah, fantastic.
- Yeah and we're lucky
'cause I guess for the Thai market,
it's a top 10 in the world for watch time.
- Nice.
- So it's kind of an emerging market.
- From going from zero to over a million
in a two year period,
what would you guys recommend?
If you could, if you could hop in a time machine
and you could go back
and you could talk to yourselves
when you were first starting out on YouTube,
what advice would you give yourselves
for trying to make it as good as you can?
- For me, is to make me feel like,
how to say that,
don't feel bad to yourself,
just try,
don't, just don't give up.
It's like I'm, I'm not like,
not only rich people can do
but just try it.
- Just try it.
Excellent tip.
Just go for it, just start.
- Yeah. - Right?
- And I can give something,
is when her channel started,
Chickypie was born,
we didn't know what kind of videos we were gonna make.
So we kinda, we watched a lot of YouTube.
We looked at other videos
and see what works, see what doesn't work,
and we tried a couple videos in different areas.
The first one she made was a funny dance video.
We wanted to do comedy and kind of funny stuff.
It was okay then it didn't really do that good.
So her second video was how to eat a banana.
- Yeah.
- So we kinda,
kinda pushed up the edgy, edginess a little bit,
but not too much
and then that one didn't really work.
- The banana video?
- No no. - Yeah.
- Is that still up?
- I think I take it down
because I don't know.
I just try to eat banana but it's a funny way.
- Yeah. - Sure.
- I think a lot of people crazy about that,
so I take it down.
- Yeah. - Yeah, sure.
- And so that one didn't really work.
We said okay let's try something different.
So Thai people like to eat. - Yes.
- They're really into food. - Yeah.
- So okay, let's try a big eating video.
So we did an eating video
where she eats a lot and that one took off.
And that one got really popular and we just ran with that.
That's how Chickypie was born
and also after we did a couple eating videos,
there were some reaction channels
and there's a reactor his name's Tyrone Magnus.
He has a million subscribers now.
All he does is reaction videos and I contacted him
and I said, she had a hundred subscribers then.
And I said, "Hey, you can react to our videos."
And he reacted and the next thing you know
her channel got like 300 subscribers, 600.
- 500!
- And ever since then it was,
the subscribers was boom.
So that, that kind of kick-started
was just having that one reaction.
- Nice. - Yeah.
So it started off slow--
- So that goes to show the importance then
of reaching out to other people.
- Yeah.
- Reaching out to other YouTubers,
saying, "Hey, we're making this content.
"If you wanna react to it.
"If you wanna do anything." - Yeah.
- The importance of basically
joining the community, essentially.
- Yeah.
So I guess my big advice
is when you're first starting,
try many different things.
Some will work, some won't work
and just try and see what works
for your style and your channel
and run with that.
And once you kinda got your concept down, like Chickypie,
like when we first started the channel,
we had no idea what we were doing.
We were just kinda,
it was kinda born of,
this works, this doesn't work.
Let's try this, let's try that.
Oh, I like this, I like that.
- Sure.
- Oh, these glasses look nice.
Oh, let's try that.
Oh, I like this shirt, her outfit and--
- And this shirt I wear for two years now.
- Nice.
- Yeah. - Yes.
- Yeah and so if something doesn't work,
try something different
and reach out to other YouTubers.
Oh, and try to be unique.
- Yeah, try and be unique,
reaching out to other people,
and not stopping.
- Yeah. - Essentially,
that's a really important point.
When you're making a lot of content and for whatever reason
she's not getting traction,
you're doing all the other things right
that you need to be doing
as far as ranking your videos and things like that
but nothing is working for you.
If your audience isn't responding to you,
it's okay to make changes.
- Yeah. - Right?
That's kind of the message there.
It's okay to make changes and try to do different things,
in order to get that response that you're after.
- Yeah, we actually,
we tried some gaming videos.
We did a few gaming videos on her channel
but that never, I guess-- - Not work.
- They're okay
but it didn't really get the reaction
like her eating videos do.
So that's why we do a lot of eating videos.
- Yeah, 'cause it works.
- Yeah, yeah. - Yeah, it works.
Yeah, you got a system and it works.
So no reason to not keep plugging away so to speak.
- Yeah. - Awesome.
Well thank you guys for letting me into the studio.
Thank you for letting me make a video here.
- Yeah. - And thanks for
the information that we're sharing
with the people that are gonna watch this video.
I appreciate it
and I think that what you guys are doing
or what you guys are doing is awesome
and congratulations again on a million.
- Thank you! - Oh, thank you, Nick.
(speaking foreign language)
- Because you are most likely in the English-speaking market
and you have not seen Chickypie yet.
I'm going to go ahead
and I'm gonna to put a card to her
right up here at the top of the screen
and we're gonna put a link to her down the description below
so that you can make sure and check out,
make sure that you go and check out her channel
and see what she is doing over there.
- I can rap. - Yeah, rap.
♫ My name is Chickypie
♫ Cute girl, cute girl
♫ All the people say I'm fun girl, fun girl
(clapping)
(loud smacking)
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Thank you so much for watching.
I'll see you next time.