The lives of twins Justin and John Grosjean changed when they released a video - "Skyrim: 2012" to their channel on YouTube.
Justin, a media arts and technology senior at Michigan State University, and his brother John, a student at Oakland University, have always loved the games produced by the company Bethesda Softworks. They began making videos about six months ago and it was only natural that they wanted to make a video out of one of the games they love - Skyrim.
But they didn't expect it to be such a big hit.
The Grosjean brothers weren't completely satisfied with the final product and were hesitant to release the video. But they did it anyway and the next morning woke up to find that their video had gone viral.
"The views froze at 303 because there were so many views so fast," said Justin Grosjean. "It was crazy."
The number of subscribers to their YouTube channel also went through the roof, from 66 to almost 15,000 in a week. The video currently has almost 2 million views, and their channel has more than 23,000 subscribers.
When the brothers were little, about 8 or 9 years old, they played around with a camera doing jokes with their friends. Since then though, the brothers hadn't done much with film, but have always had a passion for the genre. Last summer, John got a DSLR camera and since then the brothers have been filming, posting videos to YouTube and getting good reactions.
The brothers are primarily self-taught when it comes to effects and production for their videos, but Justin mentioned that classes like Allison Dobbins' Intro to Adobe After Effects course helped solidify his knowledge - though the brothers admit many effects are achieved through hours of trial and error, trying to find what works.
The Grosjean brothers have officially made GrosBrosPros a limited liability corporation and are also now partners with YouTube, meaning they will continue to produce content on a regular basis. The film event coordinator for the Phoenix Comic Con reached out to the brothers and asked if he could show their films at the event. They produced a follow up video to their original success called "Skyrim 2012: Part Two," which has almost 290,000 views. The Grosjeans hope to eventually grow from making web episodes to feature-length films.