Zach King Reveals How Much Money His Most Viral Clip Made

Tell me what you think between Vine and TikTok since you've conquered both. I mean, you can't like compare them in terms of the culture is still very different to me. But like the growth, you've just never quite seen. I don't know, it's weird. Like videos are viral, but what was different, I feel like if when I posted on TikTok, it actually went out to my whole audience. Every time you could like, you knew that Vine was gonna do well. And if it was a great joke or great bit or great trick or whatever, then it did extra well. But it always hit an audience. Yes. And whereas TikTok now, I mean, you'll post and it could be like, I don't know if this is gonna hit a million views. Like it's just, it's kind of random. It is a little bit- Does it rely on the thumbnail at all on TikTok? Well, we don't optimize any other than like selecting. Yeah. I guess what you could do is put a frame at the end if you wanted a glitch, like to fully customize a thumbnail. Right. But then it would be part of the video. Yes. You can't upload and choose a thumbnail. Do you put a lot of work into your thumbnails on TikTok? Not at all. If whatever's in the video is one of the frames. Oh, wow. Yeah, so there's no work there. But if you pick something good from it, does it do better or it doesn't? I haven't tested, we haven't tested that. That must be tough for you if you put, especially when you put like a lot of money into your tricks, a lot of effort into these, am I using the right word, tricks? I call them tricks just because that's what the audience says. Yeah. It's like the easiest thing. Like I don't think about it too much. Although technically for magicians, like I wanna be respectful there. Like I'm not a magician. I love one of your videos, you said that. You were like, listen, I'm not supposed to show my, magicians aren't supposed to show all their tricks, but I'm not a magician. I'm a filmmaker. I don't wanna be a peeve anybody off out there. Like that has, because being a magician is like its own craft. And I know that because I did it all the way through elementary through high school. You were a magician. I was a magician. I would go to like, that was one of my things in high school to raise money for my camera gear because I was in the filmmaking was to go to do birthday parties. And I knew all like the classic, you know, 20 tricks that you do at a birthday party and that pretty much are fail safe. They always work. Can you do one right now? I can't because you know, and I stopped because it is literally such a craft that if I were to do one now, I would have to like work on that. Like, it's like playing the piano. It's like, you don't wanna perform unless you actually know you can do the piece really well. But to keep that up takes so much work. I thought about your videos a lot over the last couple of days. And I watched probably almost all of them. But the thing I thought about you was, I watch your videos. I'm like, oh my God, I'm like, I love them. And then there's a point where you get frustrated. Because you're trying to figure them out? Because you're trying to, at least for me, I get frustrated. So I'll watch it. I watch a reel of yours 11 times. Dang. Going like, how, how? And then I found your YouTube channel, which is awesome because you explain. And I guess you do it on TikTok too. You'll post the video and then the next day you'll post how you did it. Well, I didn't find that at first, like yesterday. But I really love when you can explain it. Even, I've watched you even explain them and I still don't understand. My favorite are the behind the scenes that when you see them, it elevates the trick even more. Like we don't post all the behind the scenes because sometimes it's just like. It cheapens it. It cheapens, exactly. It's like knowing how the trick is done. But that's why I love filmmaking. Sometimes when you know the behind the scenes to a movie, you go into it and you're like, whoa, I really appreciate. Like I was just watching behind the scenes to a movie called Creep. And it's a movie about crocodiles underwater. And like I was looking at how, like you might watch that movie and never realize that they had to spend months in the water, like creating the scene. And like, but that's what I geek out about. You know, the behind the scenes and how they actually pull off the movie magic. Is that the best feeling for you is when you figure out a trick? They figure out, oh wait, because I saw you doing something. You're on a rock wall, basically. And then you're like, okay, I want to make it so I go from the rock wall to actually being mountain climbing. How do I do this? Do I do it with a drone? And then you said in the video, you're like, it's actually my favorite thing is when I crack that. Figure it out. Yeah. It's, I love the process on the way to figure out. Yeah. If you fully embrace it. Like I see a lot of, especially if you're a new team member and you join the team, I think it can be frustrating to figure out, like that is a part of the process. You have to love the part of like figuring out. It's like a, it's really figuring out a mystery of like, we know there's a solution somewhere. It's either going to cost a ton of money or it's a different ingenuity or it's a certain software or camera. And there's, or just rethinking creatively, like maybe it's the wrong trick. Like there's plenty of tricks we could do on a cliff, but maybe we need to pick a different one and like approach it. Like a lot of, I don't know, like we work backwards sometimes. It's like, we want the audience to feel this way. How can we design a trick that actually gets that feeling? It doesn't have to be the first idea you have for the, you know, like there's a ton of versions of a trick that could get that feeling. Yeah. And so we'll try to reverse engineer it and. The Harry Potter one that has 2 billion views on TikTok. How did you do that? Can we see that, Ferris? How, I've watched it. I don't know. Over the last four years, I've probably watched it a hundred times. That's sick. We got a TV screen in the frame. Let's go, Ferris. That's you, right? Yeah, that's me, yeah. You got glasses on. You look different with glasses on. Oh, well, that's for the Harry Potter, you know, outfit. Well, this is the perfect idea, obviously, because it's Harry Potter. People love Harry. Already a big fan base. Just love Harry Potter. But can we see it again? Okay, so freeze it. Okay, so, dude, your legs are there. The broom is there. What am I looking at right now? I am floating. You're looking at. No, I know you're floating. What am I actually looking at? You are looking at hours and hours of view. So there, I'm on a skateboard. Okay. So, I mean, like, so the whole mirror gag, I have the mirror in my hand. You feel so stupid watching your videos. I was watching one today, and you take two bottles of water out of the freezer, and you're like, and you pour it, and then ice starts. Well, that's real. Ice starts coming up. That's real. That is a. Oh, because I almost turned to Jess, and I was almost turned to you, and I was like, is this, am I watching real ice, or is this an edit? Yeah. I don't know. That's real? That's real. No, it's not. That is a science. That's a thing. Like Mark Roper. Zach, you don't go like this, and things get frozen. No, so you do. I don't remember. That video's a long time ago, but that's a classic science experiment that your kids could do. You put it, it's something about putting it in the, I can't remember the temperature, but you put the water bottle in a fridge, and when it gets to a certain temperature, you take it out right, it's like, within a degree of that, you have to do it, and so we were measuring the water, and that video took a week to make, just because we had to get that consistency right, and because you're talking about, it turns to instant slushy. Instant slush. And that's a real thing. Oh, that was real. And so, but that's what's fun. Like, if you mix some real things with the visual illusions, then you have, yeah, you confuse people. I'm gonna stick with King Bach's videos. I understand all those. You know, the girl with the big booty shows up, but yeah, yours, I'm like, I don't know. Okay, let's go back to this. So, what am I seeing here? So we're on a skateboard. First, give it a like. Thank you for liking it. Two point two billion likes. We needed that. Yeah, so I'm on a skateboard, and there's a mirror, and a leg duplication happening. Okay, so I'm looking at a mirror right now. Because I can see the mask line in the shadow here. You can tell it's a little too hard. Like, probably need to feather that a little more. Yeah, I gotta go back in. It's, and so we're definitely doing some sort of pavement replacement. So that's a mirror. Well, that's what's trippy about this, because we reveal it's the backside of the mirror. Okay, so go ahead. Let's see. Let's freeze it. What am I seeing here? So you're seeing another harsh mask line right here. Because we're taking out the long board. Okay, you're taking it out, and you're putting the legs in. Yes. I got you. And where do the legs come from? Rip all of your audio listeners. They're like, what are they looking, what are they doing? Guys, just, if you're on audio, I've gotta get to the bottom of this, how we did the Harry Potter video. Go. All right, and so the mirror reveals there, and then we've got, you know, this is the actual reflection of a leg. Because if you put something up to a mirror, it's gonna replicate the other side. Because you'll notice the foot, I have two left feet, like that left foot is still a left foot. Yes, it is, okay. And I mean, you can start to see this is, what's trippy, I think we took this and put it back there. But, because technically it wouldn't reflect, it'd be reflecting. Is this something that you go out and shoot, and then bring it into the edit, and it's not right, and you gotta go shoot it again? Yeah, I remember specifically on this one, we didn't do a lot of that. We just shot it. It was a random idea, it was Halloween, and I feel like some of the holidays, I don't know if you have this, you'll do bits where you're like, oh shoot, it's Valentine's, I gotta make a video like this week, because it's tomorrow. That was one of these, it was like Halloween, we're like, oh, we should do a costume thing, random costume selection, we have Harry Potter, let's do that. And then we go out and shoot it, and then, usually our videos, they take a long time, and we'll go out and shoot them, and come back and actually compare them in the edit, and go back and shoot them, and redo, it's a whole process. Whereas this one, I remember specifically, we went out and shot, and we're like, doesn't matter if it fails, we can shoot something else. And then it worked out, and once we saw the edit, we were like, whoa, that's kind of interesting. And then right there is the mirror. And then we're on a skateboard, the classic Casey Neistat Boosted Board. Incredible, what does a TikTok that gets two billion views pay you? So there was a kid who came out with a video, the answer is I can't track the exact thing, but I have a guess. There was no monetization at the time, so also there's that, but I think it's, I'm guessing about $7,000 is what it would pay, for a billion, per billion views. That's my guess. What? That's my guess. A billion views? The guesstimate there, we just hit a billion likes on all the videos, I don't know how many views. I bet you can look that up, right? Yeah. But the total creator fund is like 54,000. Since it started, for my count. That's how you've made on TikTok. So if, I'm guessing, maybe 10 billion views so far. Sounds about right, 7,000, 10 billion views.