Frank Furtado Interview
Frank Furtado is the content manager for Middle 8, a YouTube channel with more than 600,000 subscribers. Frank’s videos are lengthy, highly researched, and always extremely impressive.
How did you get to where you are today, professionally?
I've always been a bit of a music nerd. My dad was a classic rock guy who was always listening to Led Zeppelin, Supertramp and INXS. When I was about 8, we got a computer and I started finding music I really connected with like The White Stripes, The Killers and Canada's very own Billy Talent. In high school, I'd always been a bit of an introvert, so in my freetime I was on my computer learning how to use editing software, editing video game montages and commentary videos. This was when I started a few YouTube channels and managed to see a few even go "viral".
With an interest in music and commentary, when it came time for college I decided to try my hand at a Radio Broadcasting course at Humber College in Toronto. I began interning at radio stations, for digital media teams, and even Sony Music Canada for a few months before heading back to Humber for a degree in Public Relations. There I learned how to tell better stories and how to manage a brand. It was about mid-way through my four-year program when I decided to start a serious YouTube Channel. I'd thought about doing film essays since I adored film, but in 2017, it seemed like a saturated niche on the platform already. That year, Australian band King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard had promised to release 5 albums before the year's end. They had already released 4 of the 5 and I thought they were brilliant, more people needed to hear about what they were doing. I decided to draft a script going through their dozen or so albums. I eventually found the courage to narrate the video, edit it, post it and share it in the King Gizzard subreddit.