A Continuous Story: Hi5 Studios
YouTube is a site where content creators of all kinds can share their creations with people from all around the world. YouTube states, “Our mission is to give everyone a voice and show them the world. We believe that everyone deserves to have a voice, and that the world is a better place when we listen, share and build community through our stories.” These stories, or narratives, don’t have to be in one simple video, but can be complicated with twists and turns. Some narratives can take months, even years, some may never end, because the narrative being told is the life of the creator. A narrative like Hi5 Studios in Valencia, California.
Hi5 Studios is an ever expanding company with almost a dozen channels. It tells a story of success and failure, of family and friends. It is a story that all started because of one man.
This story begins in April, 2012. A young man by the name Matthias begins to post YouTube videos. His videos range from covers of popular songs, to parodies of songs and some of his own original music. Soon, he also makes some sketches and challenge videos.
Seeing the success of his challenge videos, Matthias invited his younger brother, J-Fred, and his brother-in-law, Bryan, to join him. Together the three of them created a new channel called Team Edge that posted their first video doing Dan and Phil’s 7 Second Challenge on September 28, 2015. In the video viewers can immediately tell that the three of them are family based on the way they tease and bicker with each other. Over time, the Team Edge channel grew from doing challenge videos in Matthias’s living room, to Matthias’s garage, to getting their own warehouse. As the spaces for their challenges grew, so did their challenges. In their most recent and largest space they are able to jump from a ledge to land on a mattress in Don’t Fall Through the Wrong Ceiling | Second Story Jump!! (posted on August 24, 2018) and a full Fortnite themed shopping cart race in Fortnite Shopping Cart Shootout | IRL!! (posted on September 14, 2018).
However, along the way of Team Edge’s success, Matthias stepped back from the channel to focus on his many other projects in the works. On September 5, 2016, a video titled We Found a Venomous Spider! was uploaded on a channel, now called Battle Universe, but was known as Hi5 Universe. This video was introducing the Matthias and Team Edge audience to their brand new space to do videos and vlogs of what the members of Team Edge were doing when they weren’t filming their challenge videos. This channel would show a lot of what was happening in the new found company and allow the viewers to see how it would evolve.
Of course, Matthias can’t stay away from his roots, he will appear in a few Team Edge videos here and there, but being the CEO of Hi5 Studios and a father, he mainly works on the managing of the company and his own vlog channel.
Hi5 Studios is no longer just a small operation in a single building, but an expanding universe in multiple places. Their bases are coordinated by colors, like Orange Base (the original), Blue Base and Red Base. Hi5 Studios is also growing in channels from having just Matthias, now Matthias 2, and Team Edge to also having channels like Rekt, Hi5 Studios (vlogs), Fail Time!, Team Edge Gaming (Rest in Peace), Get Good Gaming (still going strong), Dope or Nope and a lot of the employees own channels.
In the video titled Please Don’t Sue Hi5 Studios… posted on May 4, 2018, Matthias goes around the company in preparation for the launch of one of the newest channel, Fail Time! This new channel is an evolution of a type of video Matthias used to make before the first base was introduced.
In their LinkedIn profile, Hi5 Studios describes itself as a, “YouTube In-House Multichannel Network garnering over 100 million in views monthly. Creating great shows that build loyal audiences.” Having multiple different channels on one of the most popular social media platforms has given the Hi5 Universe a chance to reach a wide range of audiences. Each channel that Hi5 produces comes a new kind of content that different viewers find entertaining. Rekt has experiments that ultimately destroy something. Get Good Gaming has familiar faces from other channels coming together to play popular video games. Dope or Nope takes the popular unboxing videos of Matthias and rating the products. Team Edge with their unique challenge videos. And Hi5 Studios with the vlogs of life around the different bases.
In a recent video titled Special Guest From Make A Wish! posted on August 17, 2018 on the Hi5 Studios channel, The Hi5 family came together to give Brycen a special tour of all the bases. Brycen says Get Good Gaming is his favorite channel, “because like all of them (Matthias, Connor, Tanner and Paul) in close corners, like, messing around with each other, like trying to sabotage each other in games is kind of funny…they’re always, like, bickering at each other, saying they’re cheating, things like that and I just find it funny. Also you guys play games that I enjoy watching or playing myself.” The vlogger behind the camera, Woodland “Woods” Demars, summarizes this as, “just the bros broing out.” Woodland also asks Brycen about the new Dope or Nope set up, where Brycen says he likes how everyone is in the frame and gets to have their own input.
The narrative Hi5 Studios creates allows the viewers to come together from across the world. In the past, some of the channels would have live streams before their next video would be uploaded and they would interact with their audience. It is unsure if the community these videos and channels created was the intent from the start, however it was created nonetheless. Over the years the studio has grown and they have done a lot to connect with their audiences more and more, to know exactly what they should create, get rid of or fix.
This is what Hi5 Studios is all about. Of all the content they create, they try to make sure that there is a type of family friendly content that almost anyone and everyone can enjoy. The platform of YouTube has allowed them to connect to people all around the world, to share their story of success and inspire others to follow their passions. Their videos have reached far and wide all because of the types of videos they created. And to think, just three years ago, almost to the date, Hi5 Universe was just three brothers messing around in a living room.
Here is a link to the Hi5 Studios channel:
