Digital-first documentary maker Niko Omilana’s latest project has blown up on YouTube. Entitled I Travelled Around The Entire Earth with $0, the first 70-minute episode has so far clocked up 6.6 million views in eight days. Episode 2, dropped yesterday, is already up to 1.7m views – and counting.
Achieving outrageous goals on low budgets is a well-established trope in social media – but few creators have Omilana’s level of ambition. His previous project in a similar vein, Turning £0.01 into £1m, attracted 10 million views earlier this month.
Omilana, who enjoyed a brief period of exposure on Celebrity Traitors, has drawn plaudits from leading members of the digital-first community.
After Party Studios co-founder and ECD Ben Doyle commented on LinkedIn: “Rewind 7 years to a meeting in Kings Cross with Callum McGinley as we tried to convince a new-to-the-scene Niko we should go and pitch a prank show to a major broadcaster. Niko’s response was that he didn’t want to be distracted from focusing on growing his YouTube channel. Fast forward 7 years and 8 million subscribers, and this steadfast belief in where he was headed has landed him in the dream scenario: self-commissioning formats on his own terms, delivering exactly what his audience wants.”
Doyle added: “It’s fairly easy to imagine how the traditional world would have tackled this concept; faking half of it, huge crews, overcooking the editorial. Instead, one visionary and his camera guy head off with little more than a passport and blind faith that the journey of making the content IS the content, and the result is perfection.”
