Student Shoutout: Ben Weitzel Films, Directs, Animates

You can’t name your YouTube channel AwesomeBenTV without being — dare we say — pretty darn awesome, can you?

We got a chance to meet the awesome kid behind AwesomeBenTV recently, and we can tell you: He certainly lives up to his name.

Ben Weitzel, a fifth-grader at , created his YouTube channel in August and since then has gained nearly 50 subscribers and garnered about 2,300 views.

The videos range anywhere from Ben talking to the camera to animated videos he’s created with the program GoAnimate, where you pick your own characters and choose their actions and what you’d like them to say to each other.

“I just think of things that are interesting and random and then I put them in,” Ben said about the dialogue in his GoAnimate movies.

His “Why’d You Do It Captin?” video series has gotten pretty popular. It features male and female pirates having short conversations with each other. Combine the humor of a 10-year-old boy and animated characters with robotic voices that often emphasize the wrong syllables and you’re definitely in for a laugh.

Ben said he doesn’t think for too long about what the characters will say, but he might if the video is part of a series, like the pirate series. In one, a Johnny Depp-esque pirate tells another: “I thought I killed you,” to which the other pirate replies, “I hate you. I found a first-aid kit.”

Mary Weitzel, Ben’s mom, said she gets a kick out of Ben’s hobby.

“I think it’s hysterical,” she said.

“His personality really comes through in those.”

She and husband Brian got Ben a camera to share with his brother two years ago. The reasoning was they could videotape each other at school events. Since then, Ben has been bitten with the video bug and has videotaped not only school events but has made his own videos of himself and friends playing their instruments at home and other shenanigans.

In addition to being a video whiz, Ben plays the cello and piano and is also a Cub Scout.

You can see all of Ben's videos on his YouTube channel here. He's also got a Facebook page for his videos.