Reckless Tortuga’s Jason Schnell on Conquering YouTube and His New Film BAD ROOMIES

One of the masterminds behind the widely popular YouTube channel Reckless Tortuga, Jason Schnell talks about creating hilarious shows like Psycho Girlfriend and The Online Gamer and reveals some secrets for achieving online video success.

Jason explains how the channel was born in a modest way about seven years ago when he teamed with fellow founders Lindsey Reckis, his wife, and his friend Eric Pumphrey. “We kind of just went, hey, what if we just stated making stuff – just for us – no real plan for anything, let’s just make stuff.”

His wife was taking a sketch writing class at comedy troupe Upright Citizens Brigade at the time, so she wrote a couple of scripts and they went out and shot them and put them online - the rest is history.

Elevator was the group’s first viral video, which in the beginning meant it had about 100,000 views on YouTube, “it was huge for us,” he recalls. By now the video has about 8 million views. Within the first three months, Elevator blew up and they began making videos ever week from that point forward.

“It was our first kind of hit, and I think it really struck a cord with a certain type of racism in modern day. I think racism has gotten a little too cartoony, the way it’s portrayed. So we kind of had this approach of really trying to find racist scenarios that were real that could really happen, and parody those.”

He reveals that the group started making money on YouTube about a year after they started. But it wasn’t until another year after that that they started to make significant cash, to the point where they could buy new equipment and cameras and invest in production.

The Basement was the channel’s first actual series - a spoof on horror and 80s pop culture - which went eight episodes that were all shot over two weekends. The first major series was Psycho Girlfriend, starring his wife. “It literally went on and continued for I think three or four years.”

Jason says he typically draws cast members from his personal circle of friends and production takes on a personal tone because shooting is done in their homes. “We cast everybody from our friends, and we try to find roles that fit their strengths.”

But Reckless Tortuga’s biggest fan favorite that really put them on the YouTube map was The Online Gamer. “Online Gamer was the thing that took our channel to a whole new level that we couldn’t even possibly fathom before when we had started,” he said.

His wife is an avid online gamer in real life and that experience turned out to be a great source for material. “The very first episode of Online Gamer and actually all the way through, all of the lines are direct quotes from things she had heard online. So the whole premise was, let’s take that offline – what happens if you were to say that to somebody to their face.”

He says the concept was just shot as a sketch as a comment on the gaming community, but just exploded. “Each stage, each kind of viral success, took us to the next level – and then that growth become exponential.”

Jason explains that there are a variety of ways to make money on YouTube, chiefly through AdSense, which is supplied by Google. The other major way is by doing branded integrations, the way most successful YouTubers make the majority of their money.

The concept is basically using product placement in the actual videos and Jason said you can’t make money from AdSense alone, you also have to do branded integrations. He added that the number of viewers really means nothing in terms of making money on YouTube.

He also revealed that he’s making the jump from YouTube episodes to feature film with Bad Roomies, which he describes as “a fun, modern sex comedy,” starring Tommy Savas from Reckless, Patrick Renna from The Sandlot and Annie Monroe from Southland. He’ll be directing the movie, which has nothing to do with Reckless.