A zombie apocalypse. The end of humankind. For one lonely year, Víctor Domínguez, the last YouTuber on Earth, has been trying to survive along with his two other friends. But one night, the three Millennials realise that they might not be the only survivors when their path crosses the one of a mysterious woman.
2020 International Spotlight Selection The Last YouTuber (URY) follows Victor’s (mis)adventures in a good mix of humour, apocalyptic fiction and social media content.
Melbourne WebFest spoke to Director and Writer Martín De Benedetti to find out more about the web series.
How did you come up with the idea? What inspired your series?
I’m a huge fan of Taika Waititi movies and I saw his movie What we do in the shadows five years ago. The idea of a mockumentary making fun of the monsters of popular culture was an inspiration for me. I also noticed that mockumentaries about YouTubers weren’t a common thing to see in productions (at least in 2015 in my country), so I came up with the idea of making a web-series about a YouTuber in a zombie apocalypse.
I tried to make fun of two things: asshole YouTubers and horror movies who are presented as found footage. What if we could see videos and content of an influencer during the end of the world, but he couldn’t control the editing? We could watch him fall, we could watch all the misery and moments that he doesn’t actually want to show online. Also, obviously, the end of the world and his misconceptions of life are a problem for him, so eventually he needs to grow up and learn about being an apocalypse survivor.
The shaky cam in the series was kind of a parody of Paranormal Activity, The Blair Witch Project and that genre of movies in general, that everyone considers scarier because “it looks real”. But, in the role of the scared characters, we got a charismatic YouTuber and his friend filming and making fun of him (yes: the cameraman was also the friend’s actor).
How long would it take to do the zombie makeup on filming days?
We have two categories: simple zombie and hard zombie. The simple zombies were all those whom you only see for a short time on screen or even in the background, so the makeup girl, Camila, worked about 30 minutes on each one.
The hard zombies are all those zombies who had close-ups or many seconds on screen so they needed to look real, with their eyes falling down. For those, Camila would work an hour or sometimes more.
When you make a zombie production, all your friends, family and co-workers want to show up and be a zombie for a day. That enthusiasm end when you tell them they need to show up at 5 A.M. on a weekend and wait for hours. Many of the zombies were real theatre actors who had never worked in audiovisual, so they felt like children on Halloween making Instagram stories and taking pictures.
If you were in your character’s shoes, do you think you’d be doing the same, trying to make the best out of a bad situation?
We are living in a kind of apocalypse right now: I can’t get out of my house, the economy is falling deep down and my cute neighbour Christine doesn’t salute with a kiss anymore. It’s all because of this pandemic I think. In this situation we, the millennials, don’t fight wars or kill savage cows to feed our families. We just stay at home, make memes, watch Youtubers and play guitar or something. We are not heroes: we are just young people who watch too much Rick and Morty and gameplays. Maybe we think that we are important but, in the end, you can’t expect more than memes and hashtags from us.
It’s ironic that The Last Youtuber was released at the same time the coronavirus hit in my country because, suddenly, the fiction became reality in an unexpected way. Victor is a parody of my generation: maybe we feel comfortable making videos and stuff but, in a critical situation, we have to admit we are kind of useless.
The Last YouTuber Trailer
How did you fund your series?
We won a small state support for new contents. In my country, we have a small population (three million people) so we don’t have a big film industry and it’s really hard to find sponsors. To make films in my country, you have to look for sponsors outside, compete for state funds, or win the lottery. You have similar odds for each option.
What was your greatest challenge creating the series?
Getting the money to do it. We spent 3 years competing for state funds. In the last year, I wasn’t hoping to win and I really thought we never going to film The last Youtuber. When we won, I cried and, by coincidence, that day I saw Valentain in the street (the actor playing the main character). It was like a signal. After winning the fund, everything else was easy or hard, but fixable.
What is the future of your series? Are you planning on making more episodes?
Currently, we are searching for sponsors for a second season, or maybe selling the idea and do it again with more money and Pewdiepie or something. All the team who worked in these 9 episodes are really happy with the series and everyone wants to make more. I personally feel blessed to have made a zombie comedy at only 25 years old, but my idea always was to make two seasons.
I don’t want to spoil the end to the readers but the cliffhanger at the end of the season finale really opens the universe for a new kind of adventures.
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