Browsing through the ole YouTubes the other day I found myself watching coverage from this years event SEMA event. That’s when I stumbled on a vid from two guys that just seemed to have something different than everyone else. These two guys – Max and Kyle, together have formed RoadHeads Media. The name alone should give you a hint that these guys have a sense of humor and an edge, but take a look at their “About” page on their website and you’ll know these guys can cut up! After realizing that I had somehow time warped myself forward two hours by escaping into their videos, I knew what I needed to do. I had to reach out to these two dudes, and introduce them to my Gears,Guns,and Grub loyalist. Check out the Q&A session I had with both Max and Kyle from RoadHeads, and then watch a couple of their vids that I’ve included. I’ve also included the typical social media necessities so that you can share some love with these guys. Enjoy!
* tell our readers a little about yourselves (i.e. What’s your background, how did you guys meet, etc)
In short, we’re two guys named Max and Kyle from Southern California who like to make videos about cars! The two of us met at a college party in 2011 or so and became good friends through our love of cars. We were both studying media production at the time and wanted a creative outlet to express our mutual interest, so we decided to launch RoadHeads.
The main focus of our channel is on car features. We love to get into depth about builds, interview the owners/builders and learn the history of each car we shoot. Some examples include a Chevy-powered 1963 Ferrari, a Jurassic Park Jeep, and track-prepped Porsche 911. Those types of videos are our bread and butter, but we also like to cover events and car shows, like SEMA or the Luftgekühlt show earlier this year.
We also do blog articles on our website (http://roadheadsmedia.com) that feature other information we can’t necessarily cram into each video.
We’re still a small channel, but we’re mainly doing it as a fun creative outlet, and not necessarily as a means to make money or clickbait people into views.
* What started you onto your YouTube journey and how long have you been at it?
We had talked about making car videos together in the past, and finally had the time and resources do it in 2015. We spent some time figuring out how we wanted to go about the channel and managed to line up a few shoots.
Our first video (the Outlaw Ferrari) blew up on a lot of other websites and actually gave us more exposure than any of our other videos to date. I think it has to do with the subject material rather than the video itself, because our production quality has definitely improved since then. We’ve had a lot of fun making each video, though.
We’re still constantly playing with the format of our videos to figure out what works. Our early videos had longer intros that featured ourselves a lot more, and we’ve kind of gotten away from that. Each shoot is a little different, though; sometimes we act like reporters with nice clothes and a mic flag, and sometimes we’re not in a video entirely. It’s kind of nice not to be boxed into one format, but we’re definitely still feeling it out.
* You have some great quality videos out there. Do either of you have training in production?
Thanks! We try to put as much effort into the production quality as possible. Like I mentioned, we both went to school for media production, so we have training with cameras, production, editing, etc. We also both edit videos professionally and have backgrounds in post production. Occasionally we’re lucky enough to get production help from friends, but we mostly handle the entire process.
Kyle takes care most of the photography and Max usually edits our videos, but we’ve been switching it up lately. We’re both comfortable in either role.
* How long does it typically take to put together a video?
It really depends on the caliber of the video. This past SEMA, for example, we had a few videos posted the day we shot them, but we spent about a week editing our full coverage video.
For car features the whole process can take a few weeks, since those projects are way more involved. From setting up the interview, to going through all the footage, to writing up and posting the article, it usually takes quite a while.
On the other hand, we’re usually able to turn car show videos around a lot faster. We had our Luftgekühlt video posted the day of the event because we knew we were racing a lot of other channels. I think we were the first channel to get a produced video uploaded.
We also have day jobs, so it’s hard to devote as much time to RoadHeads as we’d like, but we’re thankfully still able to find time.
* I know that you were able to get into the screening of Gymkhana 8 and actually ask Ken Block some questions (kudos on that by the way), have you been able to meet up or interview any other car celebs up to this point?
Yeah, that was a cool event! One of the benefits of our channel is that we can snag press credentials to a lot of awesome car events, and we do tend to run into a lot of the same people. We’ve met Magnus Walker a good 5 or 6 times now, and he’s always the nicest guy. We haven’t interviewed him on camera yet, but would love to at some point.
We ran into Jay Leno at Supercar Sunday once. The conversation went a little like this:
Us: “Hey Mr. Leno, we have a YouTube car show too!”
Jay: “Oh, okay. That’s nice.”
Not the most involved chat, but he was in a rush.
We also met Matt Farah of The Smoking Tire.
Us: “Our channel is called RoadHeads!”
Matt: “So does that mean you guys blow each other a lot?”
Real great guy.
We ran into Mr. Regular of Regular Car Reviews a few years ago, and we most recently made friends with Silent D, a newer YouTuber who we think is going to blow up soon. It’s always cool to cross paths with other like-minded enthusiasts!
* What has been your favorite video or project up to now?
We’ll take turns with this one.
Kyle: Either Wasteland Nova or Martini Porsche. Lot of hands on stuff and planning went into those to get some cool shots at solid locations. And the both interviewees were awesome letting us get those shots.
Max: WWII Belly Tank Hot Rod, no question. It’s the loudest, craziest, and most dangerous car we’ve shot, and I got to drive it. That’s the goal right there.
* Tell us about your latest trip to SEMA. (Was it your first time there, any favorite cars, celeb sightings, surprises, disappointments, etc)
There were some ups and downs but the whole experience was pretty awesome. We’d talked about doing SEMA for years, and luckily managed to score press passes a few months before the show. It was our first SEMA, and the first time we’ve travelled out of California for a shoot. I don’t recall any celeb sightings, but we saw some pretty famous cars which was more exciting.
Max: I was a huge fan of the Ringbrothers 69 Charger, which is owned by our friend Silent D. I was also a big fan of the widebody BMW 3.0 CSL. We did videos on both of these cars. The reason you see me in a neck-brace in some shots is because I totally slept wrong during the first night. That put a huge damper on things… And the Dodgers lost the World Series while we were there. Otherwise, it was a great trip.
Kyle: Two of my fav cars were Ken Block’s Cosworth Escort and the Datsun 510 owned by Daniel Wu. Crazy how there was a larger-than-a-football-field hall dedicated to just tires. That was an odd thing for me, then again it is a trade show. Another thing that we never experienced before were the car demonstrations. The Shelby’s drifting around, and even the continental tire drift track with the Bimmers. Pretty chill. Only wish there was more variety than just the Shelby’s and Mustangs.
* What’s next for RoadHeads (love the name by the way)?
We’re going to keep making videos as often as we can! Our goal is continue growing and improving the quality of our videos.
And yeah haha – the name is a joke, but it plays on the fact that we don’t take ourselves very seriously and we have a light-hearted approach to car culture. A lot of people don’t seem to understand the innuendo, though, or they think we’re a porn site.
* How can our readers learn more about you guys, follow your stuff, etc?
Check out their page at http://roadheadsmedia.com
Our YouTube channel is http://youtube.com/roadheadsmedia
We also post daily car pictures and updates on Instagram: @RoadHeadsMedia
Max has a separate Insta account of cars shot on 35mm film: @35mm_cars
And you can follow Kyle’s 2004 Subaru WRX adventures here: @unimprezzd