User:KE3840J/FND Films

FND Films, also known as Fronk N' Dego Films, is a small group of college dropouts who make videos on Youtube and for other companies to support themselves. They have done work for companies such as Nickelodeon, Motorola, and Taco Bell although their focus leans more toward sketch comedy and short films.

Early Life

FND Films was initially started by childhood friends Vincent Degaetano and Aaron Fronk in their hometown of Twinsburg, OH. They started making videos in the fourth grade, but did not start putting their ideas on the internet until file sharing sites such as Youtube came out. Vinny and Aaron's first formatted sketch, entitled "The Snowball Massacre", was recorded during their sophomore year in high school and can still be found on Youtube. After making this first sketch, Vinny and Aaron decided to use a similar format for the rest of their videos adopting violence as a common punchline. As they grew in popularity and age, their use of violence diminished and their jokes slowly changed to become more dark.

High School Era

During their high school years, Vinny and Aaron made a lot of videos and quickly gained popularity within their school for doing sketches on the morning announcements. These short sketches were less than a minute in length and were called "The Vinny and Aaron Show". The content on this show varied from reviewing cute dog pictures to doing things to anger each other. During their time on the morning announcements, Vinny and Aaron also played a joke on the school by playing a parody of the music video for the song "Grillz" by [Nelly] and subsequently were suspended for it.

More popular than the videos that they made for the morning announcements were the videos that they made for their website, which frequently used the techniques of slapstick comedy to get a laugh. Some of their early videos include "Mystery Prize Inside", "Cookie Mania", and one of their most popular videos "Magic Mentos."

Life After Graduation

After graduating from Twinsburg High School, Vinny and Aaron moved on to attend the film school at Columbia University in Chicago. While attending school there, they met many people who they collaborated with but most importantly picked up their third member Cooper Johnson. After attending school in Chicago for only two years, they made the decision to drop out and focus on their Youtube channel since they were making enough money to live off of it, and saw being in school at the time as a waste of money. During this time, they were also getting deals from companies like Taco Bell who flew them out to Los Angeles to film a promotional video. These small outside jobs also helped them get enough money to live comfortably while maintaining their Youtube channel.

Experience in Hollywood

During their time in college, Vinny and Aaron had small job offerings in California which made them realize that they could learn more in the field at this point than in school. Some of these things that they learned in California reaffirmed their decision to create all of their own material without a big studio backing them. Their Youtube video "Lets Make a Movie" highlights some of the things that they saw in Hollywood such as producers who are only interested in making money rather than good content. Vinny and Aaron also found out about all of the limitations there are when working with a large studio because producing potentially offensive content can create a lawsuit. Since the content that Vinny and Aaron produce can sometimes be offensive, and they do not like to be told they can't produce something, they realized that producing everything themselves is what they really wanted to do. This became more possible with websites like Indiegogo where anyone can put up details on a project that they want to work on, and strangers can provide them with the funding. Recently, Vinny and Aaron raised $10,000 in funds to make a short film called "Punching" after getting positive feedback on a fake trailer that they made for it in March of 2012.