Last Updated on May 14, 2021
Ignace Aleya is a Belgium-based YouTube content creator, filmmaker, visual FX artist and entertainment influencer on Intellifluence. At the age of 14, Ignace found his passion for film and started making short films until he was discovered on YouTube by some directors to do visual effects for a feature film at the age of 18. Every Tuesday and Friday, Ignace uploads a new filmmaking tutorial to his YouTube channel, powered by his company Tolerated Cinematics, which is currently being rebranded as Creator Galaxy.
Tell us about your background in film
Yeah definitely, So basically how I got started is I was fourteen years old, I was gaming a lot, and I wanted to do something with those games. I was doing pretty great so I wanted to make a movie of that like a little compilation but of course I started searching for to really make my audience surprised a little bit with some effects and editing styles and techniques. And people saw that and they wondered how did I do that so I started little by little putting out a tutorial at the point in time but I didn’t really realize I was making an educational tutorial channel or something. Yeah, I started doing gaming edits and then a little bit of tutorials on how I created those effects and then it kind of grew into making a film educational channel. And of course I experimented a lot on my own. I made a lot of short films. Mostly my knowledge is all self doubt, I did go to school [for] multimedia so that’s in the secondary school where you can kind of learn everything that is multimedia related so Photoshop and stuff like that, premier pro.
But basically I ended up teaching myself so at that point I already knew a lot from tutorials online. Even after I finished at school apparently I heard the year after me people were actually looking for my tutorials and doing that as a class so the teacher just said look up Ignace Aleya and do something what he tells you. That was basically the class for them so that was pretty cool. Then I ended up in graphic design school, especially for web design stuff, which was pretty great but it wasn’t really what was like the best fit for me and at that point I was already doing pretty okay on YouTube. And a director from America, from California, contacted me [asking] if I could do a simple effect for his movie and that way I started experimenting more with the effects in movies and then I found that this is really what I want to do for the rest of my life. So that’s basically where I started to do visual effects and film.
How did you get started as an influencer?
Not so long ago actually. Maybe the last two years I think but it’s only the last year that I really started focusing on that and really putting a little bit more of a story in those products and really being behind those products, and really believing in them. At first I did kind of just accept any kind of offer I got in my hands because yeah of course it’s all new for me and it’s kind of cool to find someone that is interested [in you] kind of promoting their brand on your channel but therefore it’s not a perfect fit for my channel and that’s where I kind of lost myself a little bit. But right now I’m definitely very selective with what I work with. I’m the Panasonic Belgium Ambassador at this point in time so that’s pretty great to get into that world and if I remember how I started I was just looking up to people who were doing this and now I’m just like on their team I’m together with them so that’s pretty cool. So basically it’s the last year that I really started influential marketing.
Photography is a very important component of influencer marketing. What are some things influencers can do to take better product pictures or videos?
When I kind of skyrocketed in my own kind of skill set and I’m not really saying skyrocket because it is an ongoing process and you keep getting better and you keep seeing what your next project could be better at. But where I really saw a lot of difference, a very big difference, in my skill set growing was when I started uploading daily and I don’t do that anymore but I did do it for six months last year. So starting in 2016 to 2017 for six months or so I uploaded every single day and that’s basically what I would give for advice. Just do it as much as you can and it’s going to be bad at first but if you keep doing this on a daily basis everything you do as a routine on a daily basis eventually you are going to get better at it. So how I experienced my kind of history is I learn something and I get good at a point and then I hit kind of like a ceiling and I can’t get any better and I’m so frustrated for a long time and I don’t get better but I keep making the same kind of stuff. And then after awhile of kind of pursuing that you do get better and you have another ramp up and then you fly down again and you ramp up again and that’s kind of how I felt how it was going for me. So basically it’s just keep doing it and not giving up and that’s all the advice I could give.
Where are some of your favorite locations to shoot, as a photographer?
Yeah, thank you. I don’t have a favorite location and I like to constantly have a new location too which is also maybe not the best thing to do because I’m always looking for new locations but I also think if you have one location that you’re stuck with and you don’t have much transport to go somewhere else or whatever. For example in Belgium it’s all like the same kind of environment so you have to think of new ways and how to make that scene look great on photo.
So I also think that’s a very important one just to pick a location, it doesn’t matter [where], and just keep trying to make different angles, different way of doing it to make it more beautiful. Personally I really like landscape photography but I’m also experimenting with other things. I just like to experiment a lot. I don’t have a really go to answer to that to say like “oh I want to go to that location and shoot only at that location”. I’m still in the experimenting phase I’m going to admit that I don’t know what I’m doing at the moment. Well I have an idea but I don’t feel like I know what I’m doing so it’s always experimenting and trying out stuff.
Tell us about influencer marketing in Belgium. Is it really popular?
In Belgium it’s actually very weird. Belgium is always behind on everything. So basically how Belgium works is it takes a long time before something kind of enters our system and when it enters it has like the weirdest kind of rule. Like if you want to fly drunk for example you have to be like ninety percent an actually pilot, you have to study actual pilot exams and take those. Which I think is absolutely crazy to fly a toy but that has nothing to do with the story now. With influential marketing it’s a very difficult one for me because most of my audience is U.S. based and therefore the Belgian marketing departments aren’t really interested in targeting those so it’s difficult for me to work with them. So I see myself working more with marketing campaigns that are based in the U.S. or just international in general. Like Panasonic Belgium does see some value because I also have a target audience in Belgium but of course the other part of the entire world doesn’t interest them which I understand completely and therefore it’s kind of difficult to work often with Belgian marketing agencies for this.
Have you had any odd influencer requests?
What could I say. Basically on a daily basis I get tons of weird Chinese companies contacting me for very weird things but they just don’t know. It’s like a system I got put into and they reach out. I have a lot of spam [from them] and [from] people that kind of want to reach the channel but I also don’t do single videos for a brand or something. I tend to not to do those anymore so I like to integrate more than do a dedicated video lately because I also think that works best and it allows me to be most creative as possible. So it’s kind of changing at the moment also. I don’t have a history of what I’m going to do now.
What are some of your influencer marketing goals (or career goals in general) for the next five years?
For the next five years. Well some career goals so is – currently it’s very hard because I do everything on my own so the entire channel is run by myself, two uploads a week. Which I also want to improve in quality, story wise, production value, and entertainment wise [because} I want to really think to more through but that takes time and it also very difficult because I only do YouTube. I still need to do some other things in order to kind of get around at the end of the month so we have a website that we are running, which is cratergalaxy.com which is not released currently. It’s currently toleratedcinematics.com but we’re completely going to re brand that to crater galaxy as it pronounces a little bit better it’s also a more targeted sentence. Crater Galaxy is going to be a platform where crater, digital craters, can find everything to improve their work load like courses, templates, presets, music, and we really want to build it in an entire community so that’s definitely a five year goal. To make that website the best it can be and really integrate that also in the channel and make more entertaining videos with more effort and more production value in them that’s also definitely a goal. I’m looking into that right now but it’s a difficult one to balance. Quality over quantity because YouTube tends to like quantity a lot and people like to see equality but the logarithm is on the deciding put here so it’s a difficult one Where do I see the channel? I hope one million subscribers would be nice, to reach a nice audience, to teach, to make fun, and to also make people have a good time while they are watching the tutorials. While they are learning something that just makes me feel amazing and the larger the audience can grow the better the community can become so that’s I signed up for.
Andrew is the Head of Client Services for Intellifluence and has a background in communications. He is committed to helping brands get the most out of their campaigns and is the co-host of the Influencer Spotlight series.
