Benzaie
| Benzaie | |
|---|---|
 Benzaie - Animasia 2014 - P1940753.jpg Benzaie in 2014 | |
| Born | Benjamin Daniel September 29, 1987 Niort, France |
| 🏳️ Nationality | French |
| 🎓 Alma mater | University of Poitiers |
| 💼 Occupation | |
| 📆 Years active | 2008-present |
| Known for | Hard Corner - Le Film |
Benjamin Daniel also known by his pseudonym Benzaie (/ˈbɛnzaɪ/) is a French director and actor born on 29 September 1987 in Niort.
He is best known for his videos on YouTube, which are mainly about video games and comedic sketches, like his flagship series Hard Corner, with a large part devoted to gaming. He has also created or participated in series, short films and a feature film.
Early Life
Benjamin Daniel was born on 29 September 1987 in the Deux-Sèvres region of Niort.[1]
Daniel has had a passion for video games since his childhood, having started at a young age with his grandfather's Oric Atmos and Atari ST.[2] He later studied English at the University of Poitiers with the aim of becoming a translator, later becoming a French language professor in England for about a year.[3]
Career
Benzaie eventually started making English videos on the Internet in 2008, where he posted on the website ThatGuyWithTheGlasses, making videos similar to that of the Angry Video Game Nerd. He then moved on to creating French-language videos on YouTube in 2011, as there was little competition there.[4] He also collaborated with the television channel Nolife. In October 2011, he launched his first YouTube channel BenzaieTV and a year later his channel BenzaieLive which is mainly composed of VODs from his Twitch channel. In 2014, Benzaie adapted his Hard Corner sketches into a feature film: Hard Corner, Le Film.
On 29 April 2017, he was part of the French team in the GeForce GTX Challenge tournament organised by Nvidia, in which streamers from France, Spain and Italy competed on 6 different games. Benzaie was one of the thirty streamers present at Z Event[5], which was organized by streamer ZeratoR to collect donations for the Red Cross to help the people affected by Hurricane Irma on 30 August 2017. The event raised almost 450,000 euros.
Hard Corner
The series features Benzaie as a video game salesman in his shop, the Hard Corner. The character is described as a caricature of a "dirty, metal-headed, macho geek".[6] He is vulgar, sometimes violent, and does not tolerate newbies at video games. The course of an episode always follows a typical plot. We first see a cold open sketch, sometimes related to the rest of the video, through Benzaie's dreams, after which he wakes up and welcomes us to his shop ("Oh, hey and welcome to Ben's Hard Corner!"). This is followed by the credits and then, usually, a customer entering the shop. Benzaie will insist on showing this customer a VHS and the contents of the tape are often a review of a collector's edition of a game, a games console or a review of an old series. Most of the time it is the core of the video. Benjamin Daniel was inspired by the American film Clerks to create this series.
In 2014, he directed a feature film adapted from the sketches entitled Hard Corner - Le Film. Filmed in Angoulême, the film later had a limited theatrical release in France.[7]
In July 2017, Benzaie created Mini-Corner, a shorter format of his show.
The series later concluded in September 2021. In December 2021, Hard Corner made its unexpected return, under the name "Hard Corner Z", as a reference to Dragon Ball Z, and as its release on 29 December 2021, was a success.
Other Work
Benzaie has produced several other videos, including the In 5 Seconds series, short sketches of less than a minute summarizing a game or an animated series in a caricatured way. He also worked on a French dub of the Starbarians animated series by Harry Partridge. He also spends a lot of his time streaming video games on Twitch.
Filmography
Actor
- 2011 : Computer and Spaceman: a true space opera : Spaceman
- 2013-2014 : The Visitor from the Future (web-series) : Ben / the Hard Corner salesman
- 2014: Hard Corner - Le Film: Benzaie
- 2014 : Liam Neeson VS The Avengers (animated short, director)
- 2015 : Avaliëa (web-series, episode 0): Björn
- 2017: Porn Soup (comedy series)
- 2017 : The Hard Porner? : Benzaie
- 2018: Harry Potter by Attic Player: Texas Granger
- 2019 : The Ouicheur (diptych, co-directed with Joueur du Grenier) : Geralt of Riv (young)
- 2020 : The Boomer (co-writer): the tough guy from everywhere
- 2020 : Stitch (screenwriter): Ben
- 2020: 11 Years of JDG : Texas Granger
- 2021 : Vintage (web-series): Florent Bruno
- 2021 : Broceliande (web-series): Pace
Dubbing Roles
- 2014 : The Starbarians: Fortporc (French voice)
- 2018: Neverwinter: The Heart of Fire (video game): Jim Darkmagic (French voice)
- 2020 : StarFlint: The Black Hole Prophecy (video game): The Tramp King
- 2020 : Dungeon of Naheulbeuk: The Amulet of Disorder (video game): Braztok / Michalon / Nerlim / the ROC gardener
- 2020 : Pumpkin Jack (video game): the narrator
- 2020 : Trilby Chickenfoot, Monster Hunter (Harry Partridge animation): Trilby Chickenfoot (French voice)
- 2020: Onirism (video game): the seller of the Hard Corner
- 2021 : Doc Abeilles (animation by Harry Partridge): secondary voices / Omnipotron (French voices)
- 2021 : Vinland Saga: secondary voice (French)
- 2022 : The Pokémon Horror (Harry Partridge animation): the hero (French voice)
Other Appearances
Benzaie is a playable character in the Streets of Fury EX video game, a beat-em-up game released in 2015, under his Hard Corner character.
Since 2018, he has lent his voice to the character of Marv in the comic book Witch Memory, which also features Fredéric Molas and Sébastien Rassiat from Joueur du Grenier and Bob Lennon.
References
- ↑ "Charente Libre : l'actualité de la Charente en direct - Charente Libre.fr". CharenteLibre.fr (in français). Retrieved 2022-11-28.
- ↑ "Interview de Benzaie, du Hard Corner". GamerStuff.fr (in français). 2013-06-15. Retrieved 2022-11-28.
- ↑ "Ses chroniques de jeux vidéo cartonnent sur Internet".
- ↑ madmoiZelle, Une (September 29, 2015). "Benzaie et sa chronique jeux vidéo Hard Corner". Madmoizelle.
- ↑ "Little Nightmares - (suite) - Benzi au #Zevent" – via www.youtube.com.
- ↑ "Benzaie et sa chronique jeux vidéo Hard Corner". madmoizelle.com. November 11, 2013.
- ↑ "Le film de Benzaïe, la star angoumoisine du net, dimanche au CGR". La Charente libre. March 27, 2014.
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