Spoiler Alert: The Fine Brothers Are Rising Stars Online

Cracking open the door to mainstream directing careers proved to be harder than the bothers thought, however. Rather than giving up or going through years of rejection, the brothers found another way.

 

“We ended up putting our heads together and saying, ‘Well, what can we be doing? What’s new and different to kind of stand out?’” added Benny. “Being tech-savvy kids, we were like, ‘Hey, the internet’s going to be something.’”

 

Without role models or even YouTube to look to, the Fine Brothers didn’t begin putting work online until 2004. When they did, they created long-form 15-minute film pieces and broke them up for online viewing. They ran their own site and posted QuickTime files.

 

“We had to hope that we didn’t have too viral a hit, because then our bandwidth would shut down our website, which did happen a couple times back then,” Benny said. “Embedding changed our life, but this was before you could embed videos from third-party sites.”

 

The two moved to Los Angeles in 2007, working a variety of freelance and regular gigs. Rafi did odd jobs in the film industry, such as camera assistant and production assistant. They both worked at startups and ran Maker Studios for a time in 2009. They only managed to go full time with their own work 2 years ago.

 

 

While the Fine Brothers are doing fine on their own, they recognized that signing with a network has advantages, especially in terms of publicity and support. As small-business owners, they had to do the noncreative work themselves, hire extra staff, or partner with a network. The choice was clear. Finding the right network, however, took a while, and in the process the brothers learned a lot about contracts and clauses. After a year in which they opened discussions with 10 different networks, the Fine Brothers signed with Revision3 in September 2012.

 

 

“Revision3 is one of the MCNs, the multichannel networks, and for the longest time, ever since we had left Maker, we have been trying to figure out the exact relationship that would work for us as a production company with a multichannel network,” Rafi explained. “Over the years, we’ve just really loved the people at Revision3, have always thought that they’ve been good business people that we trust and got along with, and share similar values with.

 

“Our deal with them was that we looked down the list of all the different types of things that the channels do with networks, and found the right relationship for us with them. It’s mostly centered around ad sales and integrations and infrastructure support for our company.”

 

So far, the brothers haven’t partnered on content specifically for Revision3, and the agreement leaves them open to make deals with other networks

 

“It really came down to just better ad sales and support in areas that we can’t focus on with how much content we’re making,” explains Benny.

 

 

“Ever since we’ve been out here we’ve been pitching television,” says Rafi. “We still to this day pitch television. I think the first start hopefully will be -- even in this next year -- my hope would be that ‘React’ is going to make its way to television.” The brothers are also pitching scripted series.

 

The web will certainly always be a part of their creative work, so they’d like to see the business side of online video achieve some type of parity with television. Right now, the two aren’t even close.

 

“I think that it lies in the advertising mostly,” Rafi says. “I think that there’s still a huge gap of understanding that ‘Kids React’ gets a million views a week, which is more than a lot of television shows do, but we can’t make even a tenth of the revenue that a television show would make. It’s a big leap that we still have to make, that nobody’s been able to do.”

 

Right now, online success can actually be a trap for creators who want to grow and explore different areas. Getting a more fair financial situation would stop that.

 

“What’s going to be a huge game-changer for filmmakers and production companies online is when the revenue actually is able to come in, and you can build a sustainable business off of that to create new IP and build your brand more and more instead of just being stuck with one property,” says Rafi. “A lot of the people that have found success online end up being stuck a bit because they have a property that they have to keep making, and they can’t really sustain and grow from that one property because the revenue just isn’t there to really, truly build out your company in a bigger way.”

 

Like a handful of other writers and directors, the Fine Brothers have shown that they can make it big in the online world. In 2013, they’ll aim to bring their business to the next level. Maybe they’ll be great-grandfathers by then.

 

This article appears in the April/May 2013 issue of Streaming Media magazine as "Streaming Spotlight: The Fine Brothers React: Fighting Bad Contracts, Making Funny Videos."