That’s what happened last week, when I visited the YouTube Space in Playa Vista, CA, as it hosted the set of Video Game High School.

Freddie Wong and Matt Arnold on the set of “VGHS” Season 2.

The second season of the Kickstarter favorite is currently being filmed inside the the 41,000 foot square foot facility that once housed a Hughes helicopter factory.

VGHS is not the only project happening there, though, thanks to the YouTube Residency program, one of the ways YouTube has reached out to creators to help raise the level of content being created for the site.

Anyone can apply to be a part of the YouTube creator class, a group of 20 or so YouTubers brought in every quarter to work on their own projects and develop their video creation skills. During one of my visits, for example, I met Nikki Limo of trickniks, one of the participants of the Creator Class for the first quarter of 2013, who was editing for the very first time with some help from a YouTube staff member.

YouTube residencies are a different beast, however, and involve directly engaging with YouTube staff to pitch potential projects. The first two residents — VGHS director Freddie Wong and musically focused YouTuber DaveDays (AKA David Joseph Colditz) — got access to the space after they’d proposed series concepts they’d want to film there, and in addition agreed to play mentor to the Creative Class.

“The idea was to do something really big and ambitious, giving [creators] those extra resources to help them reach the next level — a runway to experiment,” Kathleen Grace, Manager of Production and Programming at YouTube Space LA, said via phone.

Colditz’s Writing Room is currently shooting and should premiere in April. It teams up YouTube musical artists whose focus is on doing cover versions of songs with professional songwriters, so that the artists, who may lack experience in creating their own songs, can get the experience of writing original music. Music videos for each song created during the process will also be released.

“Not only is Writer’s Room inherently collaborative, but it takes [DaveDays] to a new level too — it makes him a producer and a leader. It’s a growth opportunity for him and those he’s collaborating with,” Grace said.

There aren’t many rules for the content being created inside the YouTube space — the primary ones, according to Grace, are that it has to be copyright-cleared, and anything filmed there must premiere on YouTube.

The helicopter outside YouTube Space LA. Fun fact: It was actually built in the space (back when the space was a helicopter factory).

This means that VGHS, which premiered episodes of its first season on the proprietary platform Rocket Jump before putting them on YouTube, will have to have a different release strategy for Season 2: According to Wong, the series will premiere simultaneously on YouTube and Rocket Jump.

But beyond those restrictions, creators have access to a wealth of resources — the YouTube Space hosts several studios, three green-screens, a 4K projection theater, and other production resources including cameras and recording equipment, all available to the YouTube community for the low low price of free.

Check out the YouTube Space Los Angeles in this video tour or continue reading below.

The purpose? To help raise the production value of YouTube content for every creator. “We don’t believe in competition,” Wong said during our interview. “A better quality of video is better for everyone.”

“It’s a very chill environment — I love that it’s really all about the YouTube community,” Colditz said. His only regret is that while he was in the same space as Freddie Wong, he didn’t pop into the background of VGHS. “I don’t know why I didn’t photobomb them — I should have,” he said.

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The reasons always vary, from the creators getting higher-profile work to the creators simply not having any more money. Which is why it’s been exciting to see, over the last two months, a number of web series that announced plans for second seasons in 2013, ranging from independent productions to studio-sponsored shows.

Burning Love

Produced by Paramount and Ben Stiller’s Red Hour Digital for Yahoo, Burning Love was already a lot of fun — the dead-on Bachelor parody had an incredible cast, including Rob Marino, Michael Ian Black, Adam Scott, Malin Ackerman, Kristin Bell, and Ken Jeong.

It’s the sort of fun lark you’d expect to peter out after Season 1, especially because everyone involved has plenty of other stuff going on — so, when Marino revealed that a Season 2 and 3 were in the works, it was a delightful surprise.

Season 2, in classic Bachelor tradition, will feature an unsuccessful lady from the first season as a bachelorette being courted by suitors like Michael Cera, Nick Kroll, Paul Scheer, Kumail Nanjiani and Jerry O’Connell.

Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee

Possibly the most chill web series of 2012, Jerry Seinfeld’s interests in cars, coffee and other comedians collided in this Crackle series. According to The New York Times, the 10-episode first season, which featured comedy greats including Larry David, Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks, brought more than 10 million unique visitors to Crackle, and will be followed up by 24 new episodes.

While those first 10 episodes were ad-free, the big change for season two will be trying to solve that whole “making money with it” dilemma. “This next go-round we’re going to have to figure out some sort of revenue stream, so it makes more sense,” Seinfeld told the Times. With Seinfeld’s pedigree and the first season’s success, they should have some luck with it.

Squaresville

Matt Enlow’s teen dramedy, starring Mary-Kate Wiles and Kylie Sparks, initially funded its first season with Kickstarter and later partnered with Big Frame for production support. The series has an active social media presence, including Twitter and Tumblr, but one question they’d been very quiet on was where plans for a second season stood.

Until last month, that is, when Enlow and Wiles took to YouTube to announce that a second season had in fact been shot and would be coming out early 2013.

Viewcounts for Squaresville‘s first season ranged in the solid five figures, but more importantly the show took home three trophies from the IAWTV Awards earlier this month: Best Writing, Best Ensemble Cast, and Best Comedy Series. Season 2, therefore, should attract some attention.

Video Game High School

Season 1 of Brandon Laatsch and Freddie Wong’s video game comedy series not only helped launch the Rocket Jump platform, but racked up 31.5 million views in its first month online.

For the second season, the VGHS team has turned once again to Kickstarter, using their first season campaign as a model and asking for $636,010, the exact cost of the first season (which Wong recently revealed in infographic form).

The second season format, according to Kickstarter, will be six “TV-length” episodes with a total runtime of 160-180 minutes. Most intriguingly, they’re offering “stretch” goals should they exceed their funding, including — at the $1,000,000 level — a limited theatrical distribution.

It’s not so much that 2013 is the year of the second season, but more the year of more web series becoming sustainable. And each success story is a positive sign for the web video space.

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When the web series Video Game High School made headlines with the enthusiastic response to its Kickstarter campaign, there was no denying that the scripted comedy fantasy about a school for video game fanatics would find an audience online — especially given that it was co-created by Brandon Laatsch and Freddie Wong, AKA FreddieW, who has built a strong fanbase on YouTube with his blend of comedy, VFX and gaming references.

But Video Game High School wasn’t your ordinary web series release — because it drove the launch of the independent content platform Rocket Jump.

Building upon Wong’s pre-established audience online, and also drawing content from creators like Corridor Digital and Feast of Fiction, Rocket Jump uses a proprietary video player to host content for, according to the site’s About page, “people willing to stand on that razor’s edge of the envelope that gets pushed outside the box.”

Video Game High School was Rocket Jump’s first big release, with episodes released first to the Rocket Jump site, and then, a week later, uploaded to YouTube. And the strategy paid off. Numbers provided to us by the Collective (and independently verified by Visible Measures) showed that the series has so far, between YouTube and Rocket Jump, received 31.5 million views.

And while 24.4 million of those views — approximately two-thirds — came from YouTube, the remaining 6.9 million came from Rocket Jump. Most importantly, episode-to-episode, YouTube viewership remained consistent, but on Rocket Jump, viewership grew as the series progressed — increasing audience throughout the course of the campaign.

“We were able to drive real audience and grow that audience on a proprietary platform — without cannibalizing our YouTube audience. In that case it was a tremendous success,” Dan Weinstein of Collective Digital Studio, which co-produced and co-distributed the series, said via phone.

Rocket Jump, according to Weinstein, isn’t meant to replace the team’s YouTube presence — instead, “It’s about expanding their brand and providing a different level of engagement for their audience.”

But building an independent platform for their content has a number of advantages for the Rocket Jump team. First, it means that unlike YouTube, they have a greater level of control over the advertising appearing with their content: Rocket Jump videos currently include video pre-rolls as well as banner ads.

In addition, the Collective — which represents Rocket Jump in dealings with advertisers and sponsors — has a clearly defined property to offer. “Brands know who Freddie is,” Weinstein said. “Add in Rocket Jump, something [that's] owned 100 percent, and it’s another tool in the arsenal.”

But it’s not just the FreddieW show, either: Like other online video brands built around a central personality, such as Chris Hardwick’s Nerdist empire, Rocket Jump has the potential to grow into something much larger than one person. “It was meant to be bigger than the FreddieW brand,” Weinstein said. “They built it to be bigger than themselves.”

The Rocket Jump strategy wouldn’t necessarily work for anyone, especially the lesser-known independent creator. “It takes a large dedicated fanbase to migrate the experience to an owned and operated website,” Weinstein said. But for the right content, there might be life outside of YouTube.

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With the partnership, the companies will create top-level TV apps for the Collective’s online clients on a number of connected TV platforms. The deal will put popular YouTube series like The Annoying Orange, Fred, iJustine and FreddieW on connected TVs and other devices from Samsung, LG, Vizio, Insignia, Western Digital, Popbox and Google’s Android Market for TV. Altogether, their content will soon be available on more than 7.2 million connected TV screens.

Being a “top-level” app means that those shows won’t be stuck under the umbrella of another distributor like Blip.tv or YouTube, but will have branded experiences of their own available in TV app stores right alongside channels like Netflix and Hulu Plus. For series that until now have mainly been viewed in a web browser, the introduction of these apps is a big win for viewers who can now watch that content from the comfort of their living rooms, and is a huge validation for web original content.

“We’re looking to make our content and channel creators available everywhere and as ubiquitous as possible,” The Collective founder and CEO Michael Green told me in a phone interview. “Sitting next to Netflix is where we want to be.”

Not only will the introduction of top-level TV apps provide greater potential reach for The Collective Digital Studios content, but it will also provide greater monetization opportunities. Episodes of shows will run together as a linear playlist, which will make the experience more like watching regular TV. Rather than having to search for new content after every video, viewers will be able to watch multiple videos in a row.

With pre- and post-rolls running between the videos, that could open up a whole lot of new inventory, particularly if viewers are watching in a TV-like “lean back” position. According to Flingo founder and CEO Ashwin Navin, that makes the advertising feel more like a “channel break” on traditional TV.

While Flingo is making the apps available in part by having its technology embedded on multiple connected TV platforms, the backend content management is being handled by Blip.tv. Earlier this year, The Collective struck a deal with Blip to help distribute and sell ads against its digital content. Now that partnership is helping The Collective’s creators to get even wider reach on TVs and other devices.

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While many of The Collective’s heavy hitters grew up on YouTube, Blip.tv will provide additional tools and technology resources that weren’t available by just creating a YouTube channel and becoming part of its Partner Program. Those stars will continue to have a presence on YouTube, but their backend will be powered by Blip.tv and the web series network will provide additional support as part of the partnership. The announcement could indicate that as some other web series mature, their creators may also begin to look beyond YouTube for more robust distribution, monetization and reporting help.

For fans of The Collective’s shows on YouTube, nothing will change — all the videos and comments will stay right where they are — but the partnership will add whole new syndication outlets for its shows. In addition to the massive audiences its producers have already amassed on YouTube, they will show up on the recently redesigned Blip.tv homepage, as well as other distribution points, such as Blip.tv’s Roku channel or Verizon’s video-on-demand service. In addition to broader distribution, Blip.tv will work with The Collective’s creators to build video sites for their shows.

It will also provide monetization on those new distribution points, selling ads and sharing revenues with creators as part of the partnership. This basically allows the producers to expand monetization of their shows; With potential new audiences, Blip.tv can sell ads beyond just the inventory available on YouTube.

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Michelle Rodriguez’s Machete Fail, featuring Rodriguez and stars Danny Trejo and Michelle Rodriguez, was conceived by the Break Media creative team — but shot and directed by Freddie Wong, whose special effects skills have made him a YouTube star.

Michelle Rodriguez’s Machete Fail – Watch more Funny Videos

Wong has worked with other YouTubers — like Mystery Guitar Man recently — but the Break video represents a real leap in star power for him.

Strangely enough, when Wong tweeted out a photo of him posing with the cast, some commenters didn’t believe it was real, and thought he had Photoshopped himself into it. “I’m going to have to call BS on this. But Fantastic!” said ReliantFilms.

A Break representative wrote via email that Wong was the first choice of directors for creative lead Andy Signore, who “knew that Freddie’s style of shooting and the repeated success of his other videos made him the perfect choice.” According to the rep, Break’s relationship with Wong will continue for future projects.

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So, YouTuber Freddie Wong is a rock star. At least, that’s how he first got popular on YouTube. For, while many have done the impossible Guitar Hero song played on expert video, Wong’s October 2006 take involves a videographer, roadies, Adobe After Effects, and, of course, a prop motorcycle.

Currently at 7.1 million views, Wong’s interpretation of Rush’s YYZ launched him as a bit of a video game celebrity, cemented after he won first place in the Guitar Hero 2 competition at the July 2007 World Series of Video Games (according to Wikipedia) and performed at YouTube Live.

However, Wong is anything but one note, and the 24-year-old’s over-the-top personality translates nicely into the YouTube format, aided by his strong technical skills (he’s a graduate of the USC School of Cinematic Arts). Also, there’s a sense that no matter what Wong is uploading to his YouTube channel, it’s going to be funny and a bit nerdy. Like, say, his most recent video, which reveals how racist his roommate’s cat is.

Wong’s applications of his film knowledge range from him debunking the belief that OK Go’s This Too Shall Pass video was shot in one take…

And demonstrating (sort of) how to create 720p-formatted videos…

To actually making movies, such as the low-budget fan film Modern Warfare: Frozen Crossing.

According to Wong’s official site (which includes an in-depth blog on production, focusing on the online video world), he works doing “everything from freelance VFX/Sound to feature film production.” And while he recently produced the independent horror feature Bear, his focus is on YouTube.

While Wong isn’t as huge into the interactivity as, say, Mystery Guitar Man, the joy he brings to goofing around with cameras and special effects and his friends is contagious. It’s the kind of gonzo filmmaking spirit that you read about Spielberg and Lucas having when they, too, spent their twenties running around Los Angeles with cameras. Except thanks to YouTube, we get to see it in action.

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