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Former Ponies draw 3.6 million fans, industry awards in online film BY MICHELLE MIRON Editor
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LOS ANGELES, California — Three SAHS grads are proving it's possible to make a living producing video clips and posting them to YouTube. Not only that, but the work of 29-year-old Niko Pueringer, Sam Gorski and Jake Watson (Class of 2004) has been sophisticated and entertaining enough to earn national recognition in their industry. Corridor Digital, the L.A. firm Pueringer and Gorski founded in 2009, was honored last month in three different categories at the Fifth Annual Streamy Awards, which recognize the best and brightest footage each year in online video and on YouTube. The Corridor Digital channel
had logged 3.6 million subscribers and nearly 365 million views at the end of September. “It's kind of cool to make a living this way,” said Pueringer. “We're not huge, but we're not small either. The best part is that millions of people watch our work and talk about it, and we're able to see their reactions to it.” One of their Streamys recognizes their overall work in the action/science fiction genre, while two others honor their creation of an innovate entertainment series called “SnapperHero” broadcast on mobile messaging app Snapchat. The series that debuted in March features five personalities already popular on YouTube, Vine and Snapchat. Fan input is used to
write the superhero-themed script, with each episode lasting as little as 10 seconds and available to viewers for only 24 hours. “It's unique in the sense we've tried to tell a narrative story on Snapchat,” Pueringer explained. “The whole idea is that it's temporary. It hearkens back to the days in TV of live events — you had to tune in then, or miss it.” All that may sound confusing to the Internet- and social media-challenged, but what's easier to under is that the entrepreneurs earn money directly from YouTube and other venues based on the number of views their work receives online, since the venues are able to sell online ad space related to the clips. Pueringer credits his start to
an independent study program at Stillwater Junior High through which he and then-neighbor Gorski experimented with computer software, learning editing and special effects techniques that spurred their interest in more sophisticated work. Their instructor was Bruce Deger, Pueringer's stepfather. “We were computer nerds growing up,” Pueringer remembered. “At that point Sam and I pretty much knew we wanted to make films. Of course technology was shifting at that time too ... (it was) the advent of digital video and the first IMAX. We had the good fortune to have that class with some technology and visual editing on a com-
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