Much is said on the negatives about the rise of technology, but very little is spoken about its benefits, which includes the democratizing of creativity and access to a global audience. For men like Mike Stoklasa, they may have found it challenging to break into the nepotism driven and legacy media companies that have dominated the old ways of media production. Today, with the help of technology, he is the owner of his own company which has attained huge financial success to go with it.
The journey to this success could be said to have begun on the 14th of November, 1978 when Stoklasa was born in Illinois. As with most personal information about the man, there is a lot that is left unknown, which in this case, includes his parents’ identities and the possible existence of siblings.
There is no information on where he got his basic education but he is known to have received his college degree at Columbia College, graduating in 2002. In what we presume is an influence of his college major, Mike Stoklasa began his professional career working for GMP Pictures, before he then established his own company as it is known today, Red Letter Media, LLC, alongside a business partner named Jay Bauman.
Established in 2004, Red Letter Media under the direction of Stoklasa and Co. has produced and grown into a successful film company with its own YouTube channel that has over 900 thousand subscribers. The company, whose YouTube channel is RedLetterMedia, has been producing content on the platform that is primarily reviews of films in the Star Wars and Star Trek franchise. It initially found fame via the release of the review of Star Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace in 2009.
Mike Stoklasa has been the face of the company’s YouTube presence, using his character, Harry S. Plinkett to review the films in the franchise. As a director, actor, and producer, he has produced several other works such as web series like The Grabowskis, Best of the Worst. He has also produced a number of short films, such as The Nerd Crew, The Recovered and a couple more others.
Outside of YouTube, Red Letter Media, the company has produced feature-length films, corporate videos and wedding videos.
