Professional Movie Critic - A Dream Job?
- Red
- Jan 22, 2023
- 6 min read
Sean Chandler likes movies.. a lot. So much so that he's made his dream of being a movie critic a reality.
It was the Summer of 1989 when Tim Burton's Batman released. The movie sparked young Sean's interest and hooked him on movies.
In an exclusive interview with Red's Reviews & Interviews, he recalls, "When I was in the third grade, a guy came to talk for career day about starting a comic book shop... it was just a couple miles from where I lived, and so for several years, every weekend, my sister and I would ride our bikes to the comic book shop."
Chandler was keen on comics and films since he was young, but it wasn't until he was in high school that the Internet started developing . He describes, "You started having, kind of, the first movie news websites and rumour mill type stuff, so I started following a lot of that."
The film critic's first experience with writing about movies was in the 90s. He created his own Jackie Chan fanpage, as the actor was becoming very popular in the US at the time. Chandler joked "You had a counter with how many people went to your website, and I got about a thousand clicks on it, but y'know, 990 of those were me just clicking refresh and the other 10 were my Mom."
Explaining the website, he recalled, "I did these movie reviews that were just dreadful... but back in high school...I always liked to create, I always liked movies, I always liked nerdy stuff. I had my little era where I was kinda into prestige stuff a little bit, but I've always been more interested in escapism." Unfortunately, Sean didn't continue with his reviews, until he first began his YouTube channel in 2012.
After being active on movie message boards and attempting to create a few blogs that went nowhere, Chandler was inspired by long time movie critics on YouTube, such as Jeremy Jahns, Chris Stuckmann and John Campea.
Describing his life at the time, Chandler explained, "I worked in a profession where I worked with teenagers in a church setting, and so I would do a lot of public speaking. So I knew that I could hold people's attention when I talked because I had to do it with middle schoolers every week, and I could hold their attention for 25 minutes. So I thought, 'I could talk about a movie for 5 minutes, that doesn't seem terribly difficult.'"
Continuing, Chandler revealed, "3 years before I started my channel, I started doing these prototypes where I tried doing movie review stuff. And it's funny because they're awful, they're just as bad as everyone else's first videos... awkward, clunky stuff... and it's awkward to talk to a camera when no one is in the room and you're trying to be energetic."
Chandler's success didn't arrive until 2016, however. "I kept having these false starts, I was very busy with what I was doing with my job at the Church, so I never stuck with it until 2016 when I didn't have a job. And so, I had plenty of free time and I was like 'Let me give this thing a try.'" As mentioned previously, Sean's past blogs and videos had little to no traction until after just a fortnight of making videos for his new YouTube channel, Chandler had a video that took off, with around 3,000 views.
Sean explained his thought process: "It seems like I'm better at this YouTube thing than I was with the writing thing. Maybe I'll stick with the YouTube thing!"
Going into 2017, the channel was still a hobby for Sean, and because he didn't have a job, he couldn't even go to the movies. He was passionate about this nonetheless and was having more success than a lot of other YouTube movie critics when they were at his level.
Chandler made a deal - every Thursday night he would go to see the newest movie at the cinema. He stated, "In 2017, I kinda really committed to it and just started to really get traction throughout that year."
Going full-time wasn't an easy road though. He revealed that, "9 months into it, April 2017 [he] made 30 videos - 11 dollars", but that's excluding his ten dollar per month adult allowance from his Mom who signed up to Sean's patreon account. This didn't matter too much to Sean though. He said that he "just enjoyed doing it" and "would be doing it for free anyway".
Sean has since received massive amounts of success, with his channel becoming increasingly popular by the day. His channel features a lot of videos about the popular Marvel Cinematic Universe franchise, and so when Avengers: Endgame (one of the biggest movies of all time) released, he recalls "just ticking off" videos - "it was just easy".
He describes his journey as a hobby that turned into a career. It's a dream job for him, stating, "I don't have to go to a job where I go do something for someone else, I. do something that I wanna do.... watching movies at nighttime: that's part of my job! Like, I'll tell people, 'Man, I work 12 hours every day!' I mean 6 hours of that was watching movies, but it's part of my job! That's cool."
He continues, "And then, when you have success reviewing movies, you start getting press access... you see things early. Which inherently, seeing movies before other people? That's cool! But what's even cooler is that you can take your friends. That's what's really fun. Like, how do I spend time with my friends? I ask, ' Hey what movies are coming out that you'd like me to take you to the press screening?'... It's a neat experience to be able to do that!".
Being a film critic on YouTube is more modern and unconventional compared to film critics who work for print. It can be risky and as Chandler puts it: "You don't know what is and isn't gonna be successful, you don't know when there's gonna be a pandemic and all the movies are delayed; so you have a year with no movie releases and you're a movie critic. That's a problem. There are so many things that are out of your control and you don't have the safety nets of a normal job... what that leads to is that it's very easy to become a workaholic and not turn off. I work from home... and so it's very easy for me to have my laptop in front of me and not spend time with my kids."
After having the job for a few years though, Chandler is able to stop himself from working. He explains, "It's having to tell myself you've made enough money. You're okay."
As Chandler previously mentioned, he is now considered a professional film critic and gets invited to press screenings to see movies early, as well as getting invited to speak at comic conventions. He's also had the opportunity to interview some A-list actors - all as a result of his hobby of watching movies and sharing his thoughts about them! His channel motto is that he "talk[s] about movies way too much" which drives the people around him insane. "Sean Chandler Talks About" is a place for film fanatics to congregate - listening to Sean's thoughts on the latest blockbusters and sharing their own thoughts in the comment section.
The YouTuber's process of creating one of his videos is a long one. When asked to do a 'talk through' of the process, he begins, "It goes back to January of every year. I try to take the week off and I create a calendar of the whole year. The whole year. I have 12 different files.... create a calendar for every month - every movie release date that's been announced, I fill it in. And then I go through every single month, and I try and think 'how am I going to have a hit video every week?'... brainstorming video ideas."
At the beginning of 2021, Chandler had around 250 video ideas, because he never "want[s] to start with a shortage of ideas."
The critic doesn't discuss movies based on old memories. He plans when he needs to watch whichever movie he'll be discussing and follows a schedule on a document he creates, also every January: "Movies I need to watch in (year)". He asks himself, "What do I need to watch in the next 3 months? As you start breaking it down, it gets a lot more manageable, a lot more reasonable."
Whilst watching a film, he takes note in bullet point form on "Evernote". The day before shooting a video, Sean might "go through it, and write it real sharp and crisp", although his videos aren't scripted, he often has either detailed notes or just a list of topics he wants to discuss. Photoshop and Adobe Premiere are the apps Chandler uses to edit his videos and thumbnails. After evaluating numerous titles and thumbnails to see "what best captures [the video]," he posts it when people are most interested in the film.
During the COVID era, Sean began work on creating a course on how to create a successful nerdy YouTube channel. Stay tuned and subscribe to "Sean Chandler Talks About" on YouTube for more info on that. You can follow Sean on Instagram too @seantalksabout
Comments