Quotes

You often hear in new media circles that we're back in the Wild West of filmmaking," Joonam said. "There are no rules on YouTube. No one is going to tell you when to add a break, or there needs to be a specific format. You put it up and the world will tell you if it's successful regardless if you're following rules you learned in film schools.

Our content seeks to open your heart or blow your mind. We focus on not only entertaining, but also engaging with the community to spark conversations that go deeper than the comment threads commonly seen on YouTube. It's a pretty cool thing to try and do every day.

In every art form there's always been this democratization throughout history. When you look at photography in the early 1900s when Kodak came out with a Brownie camera, you would see a big reaction from photographers who despised this because now anyone could do what they were sought after to do. Filmmakers are going through a similar thing. Cameras are a lot cheaper, and software being massively available to everyone, it's going to cause a wave, and Hollywood should take notice.

To me, it's always been about delivering a feeling that leaves viewers open to investigating their personal beliefs, while also inspiring positive social action," Joonam later told me. "That's what matters to me.

SoulPancake is a place where you can go when you're looking to have conversations that go deeper than what you can typically find on the Internet," said Bayan Joonam, lead filmmaker and head of production at SoulPancake. "The amazing thing about the brand is that it allows everyone to take ownership over what they consider to be 'SoulPancake,' based on what they find important or meaningful about their human experience.