Will Yang Pocket Production: Why Your Phone and a Human Idea Still Beat AI Video 🤖🎥

Do you still need a $5,000 camera to make content that works? 🤔🎥 Will Yang says no. Will Yang Pocket Production is his phone-first way of shooting content, and he runs a five-person content team in Canada, where he moved in 2015.

In the latest episode of Inside A Hustler’s Brain, I sat down with Will Yang, a Canadian content creator, smartphone content expert and the man behind the Pocket Production sessions at SocialPacific. We recorded it in Prague, on his first trip to Europe, with a Czech beer on the table. 🍺

📊 In this episode, we covered:

• 🇨🇦 How a lonely newcomer in Halifax, Nova Scotia ended up running a content marketing agency
• 🤖 Why he uses AI for noise reduction and color, but never for the idea
• 🛠️ How his team uses Claude Cowork for pre-production, scheduling and budgets
• 📊 Using AI to study top-performing short videos and find better hooks
• 📱 Pocket Production: why your phone beats a $5,000 camera for most content
• 🎧 His one film-school lesson: audio matters more than video
• ⚙️ The phone setting he recommends: 4K at 60 frames per second
• 🎯 Why a shaky phone video often beats a polished ad on TikTok
• 🧠 What Gen Z wants from brands, and his take on AI avatars

🎥 Watch the full episode:

🎬 Who Is Will Yang?

Will Yang is a content creator and video storyteller based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. He went to film school, runs a small content marketing agency focused on destination and tourism marketing, and the agency also has its own modeling agency, so the team can hire its own actors and models for the camera.

He has been in marketing since 2017, which makes it almost 10 years. You can connect with Will on LinkedIn. 🤝

🇨🇦 From China to Halifax: How Will Yang Started

Will grew up in China and moved to Halifax in 2015. He told me he felt lonely there. The Asian community and the wider newcomer community felt isolated, so he started a channel that brought newcomers and friends together to do things, and he documented it with a lot of videos and photos.

That habit of filming everything turned into a small agency doing content marketing. Most of the work is B2B, and the agency designs its own campaigns and makes original content. In his words, it has been fun, but things are changing very fast now. 🚀

🤖 Will Yang on AI in 2026: A Love-Hate Relationship

When I asked what he thinks about AI in 2026, Will called it a love-hate relationship. Generative AI is getting very advanced, and he isn’t a big fan of it because his team is talented at production and likes making things by hand.

But AI still helps him every day. He uses it for noise reduction on noisy footage, to make color correction a bit easier and to speed things up. What he won’t do is let AI generate the whole campaign.

We never let AI steal our ideas. We have to think about what a good campaign is.

Will Yang

Film school shaped this view. He loves making a piece from the beginning to the end. He also admits that you have to use AI at every step now just to save time, and that his team probably uses AI more than he does. 😅

🛠️ The AI Tools Will Yang’s Team Uses Every Day

His five-person team leans on Claude Cowork to run production. They use it for pre-production, for scheduling with actors and the team, and for budgeting. He called it fantastic.

The social media team uses AI differently. They collect data from top-performing short videos, then use AI to analyze what works and what doesn’t, so they can find good hooks and good topics. 📈

I shared my own setup too. I now run AI agents as AI employees: one creates content, one helps with emails and one schedules posts across platforms, so I no longer need an outreach manager for my emails. If you want to see how an agency builds this, Andy Chadwick explained how Snippet Digital uses AI agents.

Will said AI is now the topic at every event he goes to. He can’t avoid it, and he likes seeing how people put AI tools into their business.

👔 Will AI Take Creators’ Jobs?

I told Will that big tech companies, including many in India, are doing massive layoffs and deploying AI agents to automate tasks. His answer was calm: nobody can change the trend, it is going to happen, and the real question is how we adapt.

For Will, the part to protect is the human part of the job: the great idea behind a campaign, the design, then the pre-production, the shoot and the edit, with AI as a companion. He compared it to past revolutions, where certain jobs got automated.

Who’s behind the AI and what’s the human idea, from the beginning to the end, can shine with the help of AI.

Will Yang

He also had a funny way to describe where we are. Some people hate AI and some love it, so right now we’re dating AI to find out what a good relationship between AI and us looks like. The future will tell. 💬

For another view on AI and jobs, read Alona Orshynska on AI tools and layoffs in ad tech.

📱 Will Yang Pocket Production: Your Phone vs a $5,000 Camera

Pocket Production means shooting professional content on the phone in your pocket. Will’s point is that clients love big cameras, but the phone gets it all, and you can make a movie with your phone today.

He gave three reasons the phone wins for most content:

• ⚡ It’s instant. Some moments last a second. There’s no time to take out a big camera and turn it on, and if you miss that second, it’s gone
• 📐 It’s small. You can place it at different angles and walk with it like a steady cam
• 🧠 It’s easy. The easier the tool is from your brain to the final product, the easier the whole job gets

I agree from my own shoots. My iPhone 17 Pro Max goes anywhere, and I bought an Insta360 gimbal that I used three times while shooting in Dubai. Carrying a heavy camera around and doing all the settings is hard. 📸

🎧 Why audio matters more than video

Will said his only takeaway from film school is that audio is more important than video. People can put up with bad video, but they can’t bear bad audio. He noticed I had two mics on set, so I think I passed that test. 🎙️

⚙️ The best phone setting: 4K at 60fps

His recommended setting is 4K at 60 frames per second. 4K lets you crop in post. 60fps lets you slow footage down to half speed, which also makes shaky footage look much better. The downside of 4K is that your storage fills up very fast.

What about 8K? Will’s reply: we don’t have 8K screens, do we? It does give you more room to crop, though.

🎯 Why Shaky Phone Videos Beat Polished Ads on TikTok

People don’t like polished videos, Will said. They like natural ones. A slightly shaky first few seconds can be a good hook because it feels authentic, and it feels real.

There’s also context. Most videos on TikTok look like that, so when yours is too polished, people think, “What is this? Is that an ad?” and scroll on. 📲

Short-form storytelling is moving fast on mobile, and Pankaj Uniyal explained the microdramas + AI trend on the show.

🧠 What Brands Miss About Gen Z

Will joked that he’s not Gen Z, but he has a lot of Gen Z friends. His read is that Gen Z focuses a lot on social topics, so a brand needs to understand those topics and tap into them.

He also thinks Gen Z and Gen Alpha see AI very differently from older generations. Since humans and AI are still “dating,” finding a good relationship with AI matters for those future generations.

🎭 Pocket Production vs AI Video, Avatars and Clones

AI can now generate a full video from a text prompt. Does Pocket Production still matter? Will says yes, and that’s why his relationship with AI is love-hate. He doesn’t like AI doing everything from start to finish. The idea should be a human idea, and the hands-on part is what makes people more important than AI. Then he laughed that he graduated from film school and doesn’t want to waste his five years there. 😂

He’s more open to AI avatars. You can experiment with them and use AI profiles to test your content. I told him I’ve tried tools like HeyGen and ElevenLabs, and that many creators now have their own AI clone that reads their scripts.

Will said he isn’t busy enough to need a clone yet. His bigger concern is the audience: if your audience is Gen Z, he doesn’t think an AI clone will work very well. It depends on the content. Kripesh Adwani shared how he built an AI avatar channel if you want to see the other side.

🔥 Fireside Round: Best Advice, Worst Advice and Tim Cook

• 🙅 Worst advice: “Be yourself.” Will’s reply: “Have you seen me be myself? You don’t want to see that.” He thinks you should hold back a tiny bit of yourself based on where your audience is
• 🎥 Best advice: it came from his friend Jay last year. Will was nervous talking in front of a camera, and Jay told him to just speak to the camera and make it one day. He says that changed his life
• 👩 Mentor: his mom. She has a full-time job and is also an entrepreneur, and she always tries her best. That’s where he learned to juggle many balls
• 🍏 One day with an entrepreneur: Tim Cook. Will calls himself a creative mind, not a logical one, and he admires how Tim runs a business so profitably. He’d ask about running a business and supply chains, “all those boring things that I don’t understand”
• 🗓️ Best year: 2015, when he first went to Halifax. It reminds him of freedom, fun, college and good memories

💡 Will Yang’s Advice and Why I Post on More Platforms

His advice to viewers was to watch more of this channel, because the show brings people with different views together. That’s on purpose. I want guests with different thoughts on AI, production, business and productivity, not only SEO.

I also told him I’m trying new formats on Instagram, LinkedIn and even TikTok, where I’m getting about 100 views right now. My Instagram reels get indexed fast, and two or three people have reached me on LinkedIn after seeing a reel, wanting to work with me as an agency or for PR. Six months of posting on YouTube and Instagram brought me connections and business I never expected. 📈

📝 Key Takeaways From the Will Yang Interview

• 📱 Your phone is enough for most content because it’s instant, small and easy
• 🎧 Fix audio before video. People forgive bad video but not bad audio
• ⚙️ Shoot 4K at 60fps so you can crop and slow down shaky footage, and watch your storage
• 🎯 On TikTok, authentic beats polished. Too polished looks like an ad
• 🤖 Use AI for noise, color, planning and hook research, and keep the idea human
• 🧠 Know your audience before using AI avatars. Gen Z may not like them

❓ FAQs About Will Yang and Pocket Production

Who is Will Yang?

Will Yang is a Canadian content creator and smartphone content expert based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He went to film school, runs a five-person content marketing team focused on destination and tourism marketing, and leads the Pocket Production sessions at SocialPacific.

What is Pocket Production?

Pocket Production is shooting professional content with your phone instead of a big camera. Will Yang says the phone is instant, small enough for different angles and easy to use, so you don’t miss moments.

What phone video settings does Will Yang recommend?

He recommends 4K at 60 frames per second. 4K lets you crop in post, and 60fps lets you slow footage down by half, which helps with shaky clips. 4K files fill your storage quickly.

How does Will Yang’s team use AI?

They use AI for noise reduction and color correction, Claude Cowork for pre-production, scheduling and budgets, and AI analysis of top-performing short videos to find hooks and topics. They don’t use AI for the campaign idea.

Where can I watch the full Will Yang podcast?

Watch it on the Inside A Hustler’s Brain YouTube channel by Jitendra Vaswani, or in the embed above.

🎙️ More Inside A Hustler’s Brain Interviews You’ll Love

• Milan Smets on Why Most YouTubers Fail at Monetization
• Kushagra Kalra on Building 5 Faceless YouTube Channels

If you shoot content for a brand or for yourself, share this one with your team. 💬 And tell me in the YouTube comments: do you agree with Will on AI?

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