I Did It My Way: Behind the Scenes of Mr. Foamer Simpson’s YouTube Channel

coiski: What’s the end goal for your channel? Is there a benchmark you’re looking to reach? 

Simpson: You know when we first started – and this is not some humble brag or anything like that – there were no expectations. We only thought we were going to be doing it for a few months, while we rehabbed from knee surgery. And then like I mentioned, it grew and grew. Even now, we’re still very small as far as YouTube goes. I don’t know that we have an end goal, numbers-wise, but I will say that a million subscribers would be awesome. I mean, a million is like a hell of a number. I think our goal, more than any number thing, is we want to turn the channel into a lifestyle/vlog channel that includes everything we are about: sneakers, basketball, food and traveling; basically creating video content around anything we are doing. I don’t know when that will end or if that will end. I mean, currently, we live together, neither of us are married and neither of us have kids. So we’ll have to see how things play out, and right now, there is no end goal. Let’s just keep creating and trying to bring a vision to life.

coiski: Where and how would you say your best ideas come about? Is there a method to the madness so to speak? 

Simpson: We do have a whiteboard where we write down our ideas and videos we might have on deck. We try to plan it out a bit, or else it gets a little bit chaotic. But honestly, the best ideas come from him and I just shooting the s**t. Whether it’s driving back from the gym or out getting a meal, we’re always just talking about certain things. It’s really just me and him chopping it up on a daily basis – we’ve been able to come up with some cool stuff.

coiski: If budget and accessibility was no barrier, what would be the one video or piece of content you would like to do but haven’t yet?

Simpson: I mean, honestly, that is the biggest barrier we run into because we don’t have a company behind us or funding. Budget kind of holds us back in some cases. An idea I had that I really wanted to do was something similar to the Uncle Drew/Pepsi campaign. I’m not sure what we’d call it; maybe Uncle Foamie. I wanted to do a similar thing, but instead of Kyrie and K Love at the park, it would be my brother and I at the park. I originally had the idea to do a performance review that way. We don’t have $5K to spend on shooting a performance review, but that’s an idea I had that we had to put on the back burner, but I still hope to do something with it. Other than that, if budget were no issue, I’d have to say something with travel. Traveling to us is dope; being able to meet different people and experience different cultures and different foods and environments.

coiski: What do you shoot with and how has your setup evolved over the years? 

Simpson: Well when we first started, we weren’t thinking long term at all. We had a very cheap camera; I don’t even remember what kind, but that’s all we had. We didn’t go to school for video, and that’s pretty obvious to see from early on, especially if you watch the early videos. It was a disaster. Then as my brother and I got better at shooting/editing and understood how to make shots look good, we went through several different cameras. Now we have a handful of lenses, and we turned a bedroom into a studio, where we have a black screen, a green screen and a white screen. We added a drone to the mix a couple of years ago, and we’re excited about that. We bought a steady cam, a big rig that looks like the grill on a pickup truck. We got it on sale – maybe three years ago – and could never figure out how to get it to look good. I don’t even think there is one clip where we used it; we just couldn’t get that thing right.

coiski: If you could give anyone reading this just one piece of advice when embarking on creating something what would it be (a brand, a business, an idea, or a piece of art)? 

Simpson: I would tell them to go for it. I know that’s super cliché, but that’s really what it’s about. I mean, you can get these ideas and these plans but you have to go and do it. Just start, because otherwise time passes and it never gets off the ground. For me, once you start, you’re good. You’re in it, and you’re in the race towards your goals. For us, we just needed to turn the camera on. It wasn’t about the perfect camera or needing to go back to school for two years; you just have to go for it. That would be Part A. Part B would be to have fun! That’s why we’re still doing videos because, you know, at the end of the day I get to work with my brother who I love very much and we just get to do cool stuff, laugh, joke around and travel to cool places. That’s what fuels and is behind good content and good work.