Most family channels on YouTube focus on the life journeys of parents and their children, the daily ups and downs. The Vasquez family – Jose, Jennifer, Matthew, Jemileen, and Joshua, better known under their channel name MaJeliv – decided to take a different, more binge-worthy direction.
Together, the family has been creating viral reaction videos to content ranging from DC and Marvel mega-hits over X-Men ‘97 to Indian cinema.
Here is how they channel their creative family power into stand-out content creation.
Quick Facts
- MaJeliv is the channel of the Vasquez family – parents Jose and Jennifer and their children Matthew, Jemileen, and Joshua.
- They are a family of artists and actors. On YouTube, they specialize in reaction videos.
- They react to trailers, shows, and movies in a diverse range of genres, from the latest MCU releases to Bollywood.
Keep reading for the full story!
For this series of blog posts, we sat down with some of the most successful creators at Tasty Edits. Here, they share their experience and expertise with you.
Contents
A Family of Artists and Actors
“The channel originally started out as a space for us to share our creative videos, that we created as a family,” Matthew told us. “All of us are actors or artists. My mom and my sister dance. My dad’s an actor. Four out of the five of us are in the TV and film industry.”
At first, the channel was simply where the family’s creative projects lived if they wanted to share them. Then, there was a period during which they collectively did fun skits.
But it was in 2017 that Matthew first had the idea of doing a collective reaction video.
“I had seen a few before, and we did a reaction video to the Power Rangers movie that came out in 2017,” Matthew recalls. “That was a lot of fun. My dad grew up on Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers.”
Not much later, the trailer for Avengers Infinity War came out – and the family decided to react to it. “That video blew up. It opened up a whole new niche – a new world – for us. In terms with how we could connect with an audience, how we could connect to like-minded people who just love movies.”
MaJeliv’s original reaction to the Infinity War trailer. It now has over 1.7 M views.
Reaction Video Success
Their channel gained traction and the family has been posting reaction videos for over seven years. During this time, Matthew, and his sister Jemileen and brother Joshua have turned from middle school kids into young adults.
“It has been a super interesting dynamic,” Matthew explains. “We were all super young when we started. We’ve gone from just a family that’s recording ourselves, to business partners and co-creators.”
Most of all, they are passionate about investing all their creative energy into their content, and engaging their audience.
“Our expertise and knowledge – our lens on these films and TV shows as actors, as people who are in the industry, is something other creators don’t have. We’re also just being ourselves – we’ve found a way of channeling our artistry into our content.” Matthew says.
Episode 1 of one of MaJeliv’s latest big projects: Reacting to all of X-Men ’97. Watching, reacting, editing and more all need to fit in everyone’s schedule – not an easy task.
Over time, their channel name has also taken on an additional meaning. Originally an amalgamation of their first names, it has been revealed to them that the acronym MAJELIV also stands for Making Jesus’s Light Visible.
“We are a family of faith,” Matthew explains. “And that’s very important to us too. Having art that elevates the human experience and pours out hope into the world.”
Teaming Up to Scale Up for Consistent Output
Time management can be tricky. After all, the family is juggling creating content with regular industry work, including auditions. That’s why MaJeliv recently started adding to their creative team to scale up their channel output, hiring professional video editors and thumbnail artists.
“During Covid, we started doing episode reactions and we started watching Indian films, which unleashed a whole other demographic of audience members.”
It was this audience growth and the big project of watching an entire series of X-Men – the 1997 one – that really drove the family to systematically scaling up their channel.
Video editing used to be on Matthew’s plate. Having professional video editors take some of the work off him soon turned out to be a major time saver.
The driving force behind MaJeliv, though, remains the same as it has always been – the family’s passion for the medium.
“We definitely love to pour out our creativity into each video,” Matthew says. “I do see every video as an opportunity to get creative.”
FAQs
MaJeliv is the channel name of the Vasquez family. They are a family of artists and actors who specialize in reaction content.
MaJeliv started out as a fusion of the first names of the Vasquez family members, but was later revealed to them through their faith to stand for “Making Jesus’s Light Visible”.
MaJeliv are a family that creates movie, series, and trailer reaction content on YouTube.
The Vasquez family are a family of content creators on YouTube, better known by their channel name MaJeliv. The family consists of parents Jose and Jennifer and their children, Matthew Jemileen and Joshua.
MaJeliv react to a wide variety of trailers, TV shows and movies, many of them from the MCU, DC and Star Wars universes. They also tackle a diverse range of cinematic genres, from animation to Indian cinema.
