Camp Studios didn’t start as a production company, but as a community. Meeting at events designed to connect artists and creatives, a group of online creators formed a bond due to their shared mission. Wanting to share that mission, the group of friends created Camp Studios, founded under Creator Camp, located here in Austin.
“We were trying to build a community of artists on the internet,” Max Reisinger, CEO of Creator
Camp, said. “Through doing these events (we) basically found a bunch of talented folks and alot of those folks had large, ambitious projects. And we realized that there wasn’t the infrastructure to support these folks on the internet. … So Camp Studios was built to help fund ambitions of artists of the next generation.”
The trailer for “Two Sleepy People,” the studio’s debut feature releasing in November, was posted Monday on the Camp Studios’ social media accounts. Writer and director of the film Baron Ryan, who many know as ‘@americanbaron’ on social media, said the idea grew from being around other people who created and had a big need to escape.
With a short production process, Camp Studios brought filmmaking back to its basics, with writing, filming and editing done in over 90 days.
“You don’t have time to sink in and experiment,” Ryan said. “There were some happy accidents that happened, but they weren’t really a result of us trying something or experimenting. It really was a result of just an accident occurring that changed the whole vibe of the film and added to it.”
For Camp Studios, the challenge lies not in production, but rethinking the distribution of film itself. Traditional routes, like Hollywood studios, focus on box office sales and streaming platforms exclude smaller voices and no longer sustain them. Reisinger said he sees that as an opening.
“Creators have a really unique opportunity to go directly to their audiences and post organically without needing to spend money,” Reisinger said.
Viewers can vote to bring screenings of “Two Sleepy People” to their cities, proving small projects don’t need Hollywood budgets to reach their intended audience.
“What Camp Studios is, in general, trying to do is just focus on where it all starts, which is the writing and the characters,” Ryan said. “That’s why we feel things with this medium. The whole point is that it never had to be that expensive to do what we went to the movies for in the first place.”
Economics freshman Aaradhya Khandelwal followed Camp Studios when they were just beginning.
“For me, what they’re doing is absolutely brilliant,” Khandelwal said. “To make an individual film which stands out and will show their greatness is something that they’re willing to do. And I’m intuitive to that“
For Camp Studios, “Two Sleepy People” marks the start of their journey to demonstrate that stories are carried by community. But the long-term aim stretches further. Ryan said they want to adjust the definition of cinema to fit a generation raised on the internet.
“People will always want movies,” Ryan said. “We just have to be a more relevant voice.”
