Corridor Digital is an American production studio based in Los Angeles and founded in 2010 by special effects artists Sam Gorski and Niko Peuringer, known for creating viral media and short-form videos on YouTube.
Sam and Niko's videos often adapt popular video games or other media in an action/comedy/action-comedy style, and are known for embracing an anything-goes approach that relies equally on classic and modern filmmaking techniques, typically with inventive and creative visual effects. They usually co-direct and act in these videos as well. The channel has since expanded to a crew of nine full-time employees (including Sam and Niko), and has also on occasion made TV commercials for companies like Google.
In addition to making their bi-weekly content on their own channel, Sam and Niko also have a monthly action series on Bammo called Sync, with a thorough behind-the-scenes making of to accompany it. They also produced the Agent Origins: Ashes live-action trailer for The Division. They also developed a partnership with Netflix to produce videos on "Still Watching Netflix" where they try to recreate various stunts and sequences present in popular Netflix shows and movies.
In addition to their main channel, they also have a secondary channel called Corridor Crew
with content including behind the scenes videos, slice-of-life vlogs, edutainment videos utilizing VFX to demonstrate the topic, custom builds for various projects and various playful competitions among the staff. Most famous from this channel is their VFX Artists React series, in which they detail visual effects, cinematography and stuntwork utilizing their own expertise but often bringing in a Special Guest with enormous industry experience (including Seth Rogen, Adam Savage and Tim Miller).
The same crew also has the Corridor Digital website, which contains expanded content, as well as a gaming channel called Node, which has content on video games as well as tabletop games and airsoft/Nerf games and is run alongside D and Brandon Laatschnote .
Sam and Niko have been friends and collaborators since junior high, and additionally worked with Freddie Wong (who they went to UCLA with) and Rocket Jump around the time they began making videos, but later transitioned to becoming their own personalities.
Also, they have a few projects done with Steven Ogg. One of their videos, "To The Death", has its own work page.
Tropes:
- 11th-Hour Superpower: In "CLOCK BLOCKERS", the second-to-last round introduces a major shakeup to the video's mechanics. The video depicts a fictional 1v1 tactical shooter where two players fight each other by creating clones; each clone repeats the actions they took in earlier rounds (ex. purple Sam moves a pallet in round 1, and is stuck repeating that in every later round)... at least, until round 4 shakes this up: if a clone's forced to break out of their cycle, (in this round, blue Sam being saved from being shot,) they become Unlinked and can act freely. Round 5 is driven by the Unlinked mechanic, which enables clones to act unpredictably.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: In their "New Robot Can Now Fight Back!" video, a robot at a Boston Dynamics expy turns on its creators after taking one too many hockey sticks to the back. In the sequel a military prototype breaks out of a test session after the engineers try to force it to kill a Robot Dog.
- Adaptational Badass: Mario in Powered UP appears with Dynamic Entry after Lara Croft, Ezio, & Master Chief took the power ups. Mario fights them untouched.
- Adaptational Heroism: Harry and Marv from the R-rated version, unlike their original counterparts, they are not thieves, but people who were invited to a supposed party organized by Kevin.
- Adaptational Villainy: Kevin, Willy Wonka and Charlie, who are homicidal in the R-rated version of their movies. The biggest example would be Kevin being that unlike his original counterpart, he wasn't fighting back, instead he invited Marv and Harry (and their respective twins) to a party, so he could kill them.
- Adaptational Wimp: Spider-Man in the R-rated version, since he lacks his super-durability.
- Artifact Title: The Corridor Crew channel was originally intended for behind-the-scenes footage of how they produced their videos, but quickly became a mixture of group challenges, mini-documentaries and other crew interactions that come across as friends just hanging out rather than being about video projects.
- Author Appeal:
- They express pride that muzzle flashes are their specialty.
- Their reaction videos often has Niko mention pores and skin stretches when talking about model textures, leading to jokes about it whenever he begins to point out how to achieve realistic skin in visual effects.
- In one of their podcast episodes, Sam jokingly describe Corridor Digital's "office culture" as a trifecta consisting of electric vehicles, bone-conducting headphones, and playing Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
- Behind the Black: In round 4 of "CLOCK BLOCKERS", blue Sam rolls a tire for orange Sam to hide behind as it rolls past blue Niko. Blue Niko should be able to see orange Sam from where he's running from, but orange Sam is obscured from the camera, so blue Niko can't see him.
- Blatant Lies: Charlie says he found a dollar on the street, even though the blood of the guy he assaulted and murdered is still on his face.
- Bloodier and Gorier: The "We Made [movie] R-RATED" VFX series is about taking fairly tame action and slapstick movies and making them significantly more violent and often comically gory. This ranges from the Marvel Cinematic Universe to Home Alone.
- Body Horror: When Mario glitches out in "The Glitch".
- Christmas Rushed: In documenting the full process of trying to make a video within a set time period they often comment on things that had to be dropped along the way in order to make their deadline. Some things are unnoticeable unless they point it out, others create a notable Special Effects Failure. To quote a TedxTalk Wren gave, "No film is ever finished, it just gets released."
- Clone Army: "CLOCK BLOCKERS" uses this as a premise for a theoretical 1v1 tactical shooter game. Two players face off in five rounds by creating increasingly more clones of themselves. Clones created in earlier rounds repeat their actions in later rounds (ex. purple Sam does nothing but move a pallet in round 1 before dying, and repeats that in every successive round).
- Conversational Troping: A lot of their Corridor Crew videos are about analyzing common tropes and seeing how realistic it could be. Notably Jake was able to pull off Clark Kenting through changing his voice and body language, deceiving the team into thinking he was an AC repairman.
- Crooks Are Better Armed: "Superman with a GoPro" uses this. Two crooks with rifles hold off a lone policeman with a pistol. Naturally, though, those rifles are then outmatched by Superman.
- Crossover: SlowMo Fallout Kills was a collaboration with The Slow Mo Guys.
- Cut Scene Incompetence: Two mooks exploit this trope in The Cutscene, managing to survive against an Invincible Hero by locking him into increasingly elaborate cutscenes where he can't immediately massacre them.
- Death by Adaptation: In most versions of the story, Grandpa Joe and the five kids who visit the factory live. In Rated-R Wonky Willy, based on the 1970s film, all of them die in a variety of gruesome deaths. Augustus explodes from being inflated by chocolate in the pipe, Violet gets grounded into candy, Veruca repeatedly hits several structures following her fall with her dead body laying by a group of chocolate bar boxes, Mike Teavee ends up having his body turned inside-out and severly deformed before being melted into chocolate, and finally Grandpa Joe gets shredded to guts by the giant fan which proceeds to do the same with Charlie.
- Depth of Field: In the "VFX Artists React to the Moon Landing" video, the unique depth of field of the American moon landing footage is brought up as proof that it couldn't have been faked, as it, among other special effects, were beyond the technical capabilities of cameras from The '60s.
- Diabolus ex Machina: World's BIGGEST Domino Run uses this twice to kick off and wrap up the main story.
- Face-Revealing Turn: "Googly Eyes" features one as a character named Clint is revealed to have, well...
- Gadgeteer Genius: Many videos on their various channels - whether as original content on their primary channel or behind-the-scenes vlogs - focus on members of the crew designing and building things, either from scratch or from spare parts. In particular, Wren - who has an engineering degree - has done several videos focused on designing and fabricating modifications to various pieces of filming equipment and drones, electric skateboards etc, as well as videos explaining core scientific principles using VFX.
- Gainax Ending: Awfully frequently.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: In the final round of "CLOCK BLOCKERS", Sam shoots white Sam so that he can steal his clone's cover and Unlink blue Sam from repeating his actions.note This backfires on Sam — because white Niko throws a grenade at white Sam, seeing white Sam already dead Unlinks white Niko, which allows white Niko to come in at the last second to Action Bomb Sam.
- Hyper-Destructive Bouncing Ball: "Ballin' Out Of Control"
- Jump Scare: A really effective one in "The Glitch", when Mario is trapped inside of a glitch and then suddenly has his face start glitching.
- Karma Houdini: Kevin in "RATED-R Home Alone" and Willy Wonka in "RATED-R Wonky Willy" never get punished for their killing spree.
- Lighter and Softer: They made Saw a G-Rated movie.
- Lightning Gun: Well, they're more like Dubstep guns.
- Magical Camera: "Photoreal".
- Man Versus Machine: Some of their team challenges involve seeing if Practical Effects are easier or produce better results compared to Digital Effects, or if someone can simulate a complicated trick shot on the computer before another person is able to do it through sheer repetition.
- MST: While their reaction videos are primarily to explain tricks and techniques shown in the clips, the crew's general sense of humor fails to stop them from cracking wise about some of the more silly stuff they notice.
- Nightmare Face: Mario once he glitches out in "The Glitch".
- No Ending: The Glitch ends with a fake YouTube "plugin failed" screen before the Windows "Blue Screen of Death" pops up.
- Practical Effects: The video MiniDrones Blew Up My Toys! is largely made with practical effects, meaning that they actually did blow up a few toy cars in the toy car chase.
- Real-Place Background: Being based in Los Angeles, their video for Real GTA naturally uses real environments paralleling those used in the in-game Los Santos as backgrounds.
- Rainbow Puke: "Potion Overdose" shows that puking rainbows is easily the mildest side effect of, well, a potion overdose.
- Re-Cut: Among various VFX challenges they impose on their team, they will seek to heavily modify the footage of an existing film. Sometimes it's to fix a Special Effect Failure or to make it Bloodier and Gorier. Then there taking John Wick to insane levels with Big Wick Energy.
- Rule of Cool: Much of their videos have no real purpose beyond showing off visual effects, stuntwork, and cool ideas the crew came up with that week.
- Running Gag: Clint hasn't seen most of the movies they react to in VFX Artists React.
- Shout-Out: To recent video games, by the boat load, considering they provide the basis for videos. Halo, Team Fortress 2, Mass Effect 3, and Skyrim only scratch the surface.
- Sitcom Archnemesis: Frequent collaborator Jan-Michael Losada has this relationship with the Corridor Crew, and Wren in particularly. It's a recurrent gag during Crew videos that whenever he visits the studio, he will engage the entire crew in Nerf gun skirmishes all on his own, frequently coming very close to a Total Party Kill, and during several videos focused on Wren he will be seen in the background heckling Wren and in the Nerf gun drone video makes it his mission to destroy Wren's Nerf dart firing drone in single combat; he does not succeed.
- However, the relationship is clearly one of mutual respect and friendship: Wren builds Jan a prosthetic finger to replace the pinky finger Jan is missing under mysterious circumstances, and during their annual Super Smash Brothers Ultimate tournament, despite losing to Wren in their opening match together, Jan is seen cheering Wren on as he gets closer to the final round and, when Wren defeats prior champion Niko, cheers and hoists Wren up on his shoulders.
- Slow Laser: Exaggerated in World's Largest Laser Gun. While Wren's laser is devastating enough to vaporize anything it touches, it moves so slowly that it has to be shaken out of the gun and can be dodged by simply stepping out of its path. This doesn't stop a bystander from getting barbecued and Wren going to jail for it.
- Springtime for Hitler: One Real Trailer, Fake Movie project was supposed to demonstrate that Keanu Reeves was the lynchpin to the John Wick franchise that substituting another actor wouldn't work, so they swapped in Steven Seagal. The problem was the resulting video was such a funny parody of the franchise and actor (and mean-spirited) that most of the staff said they were actually interested in a full-length version, undermining the intention behind the video.
- Stating the Simple Solution: Many times in reactions they'll point out how productions create unnecessary problems for themselves when more practical means could reduce the workload, a big example being Zero where great pains was taken to turn the main actor into a dwarf when just hiring a short actor would suffice.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: During the trial in “What Happens When Your Boss Breaks His Own Rules”, Wesley makes a not-so-subtle attempt to win over the jurors through bribing them with a briefcase full of money. Considering the trial is essentially an extended skit, one wouldn’t expect anything to come of this. However, Sam (the Judge) opens sentencing by finding Wesley guilty of Perjury and Bribery before sentencing him to be disbarred.
- Taken for Granite: "Head Hunters".
- Technology Marches On: The topic of a number of their videos, as their own experience has shown a dramatic improvement in what equipment is available to casual filmmaker and the evolving software that assists them. One video had them try to update the visual effects of an 8 year video "The Glitch" that featured extensive visual effects for that time but with a new top-tier workstationnote , Peter was able to pre-render the effects in real time and do far more than they could have imagined.
- Voodoo Shark: Mostly in response to their reaction, the VFX studio behind Zero released a VFX breakdown. It only ends up frustrating the crew more because one of the clips does nothing to explain how they achieved the effect.Niko: It's like showing me a magic trick and the solution is...actual magic.
- Worf Had the Flu: In the "Stormtroopers, but They're ACCURATE", video, the main reason why Stormtroopers have terrible accuracy is that they have poor eyesight. Once they're given laser eye surgery, their accuracy drastically improves, to the point of killing several of the main cast.
