- I always look at
visual effects and I say
when I do this
it's not work to me.
(upbeat rhythmic music)
(explosions)
- Is this thing on?
- [Sam] Yeah it's on.
- Alright
this is Eric.
This is to test the bomb I just made.
- We were in the same fifth grade class.
And you know, we sat together
somewhere in that first
week and we met each other.
- We just started, you know hanging out on
the playground and stuff
like fifth graders do.
We started becoming friends.
- [Sam] Dude what's going on?
- I don't know, I'm gonna check it out.
We just started shooting videos together.
- Eric!
Somehow it quickly transformed
from us just messing around
to us wanting to take it seriously
and try to make some content for YouTube.
- Sam and I have
different minds.
Where mine works more on the creative end
and his is more technical.
It kind of allows us to
work both ends of the spectrum
as just a two man show which is
pretty special I think.
- [Narrator] When Sam was 12 years old,
he discovered videocopilot.net.
A website that provides free
tutorials for visual effects.
- [Sam] I'd come home from school
and sit down and I would just work.
That's how I've basically learned all
my visual effects knowledge
is just through working
on individual projects,
you have a goal and we
need to make it happen.
(gun firing)
- [Narrator] Sam and
Eric's videos for their
Sokrispymedia YouTube channel
eventually drew the attention
of two college students
named Justin Robinson and Jamie Costa
who volunteered to act in their videos.
- We were super young so
of course we were like,
yeah, like we need anybody we can get
that doesn't look 12 like us.
- [Sam] It feels much
more legitimately having
an older actor in it
and not just kids.
People take it a lot more seriously.
We were really able to
show our skills visually
by having these actors at our disposal.
- [Eric] I think we definitely owe
a lot to Justin and Jamie.
They allowed us to
make a lot of great content and
I definitely thank them for everything.
- [Narrator] With the
raised production value
of having adult actors,
along with Sam's visual effects skills,
Sokrispymedia's first
viral video was born.
- I started thinking like,
what if people were able to draw
and then these drawings came to life.
Then they were able to battle.
- And when we came up with Chalk Warfare,
I was not expecting that to go viral.
I didn't think the visuals
were gonna look good,
I didn't think it was gonna work out well.
We upload that one and it's just,
the response is incredible.
You know it was just such a good feeling
knowing that people were
enjoying our content
that we worked so hard on.
- That's I think when we knew that we really
created something special.
- [Narrator] Sam and Eric
were just 15 years old
when they made Chalk Warfare.
In the following years,
they created two sequels to the video
that also went viral.
Although they were producing
high quality content
and gaining exposure on YouTube,
Sam and Eric faced obstacles
when people realized
how young they were.
- We went through a huge phase where
we did get taken advantage
of at some points in time
just because of our age.
- We would talk people
who were a lot older than us.
In the industry, sometimes it felt like
they sort of looked down on us
because we were so young.
What we did a lot of times was
just let the content speak for itself
and not really reveal our age.
- [Sam] You know Eric's, I'm
willing to say my only friend
that I still have from elementary school.
It's incredible how having
a passion for something
creatively can keep
two people together and
foster a friendship.
I've just always known like visual effects
is something that I love.
If there's something in
your life that you do
and you just genuinely love
doing it, you get lost in it,
I'd say that's something
that you should fight for
doing for the rest of your life.
- Production center and this is the "Burb"
where I used to sleep every night.
So I had the mattress right here
and then I would put all of my
belongings in the center two
compartments.
As you can hear there's a lot of traffic
that comes around here.
So sometimes it was difficult
to get a good night sleep
cause you've always got cars driving by,
students walking past
basically every morning.
