"Was that good?"
Casey looks to his left.
Who is he asking that?
Himself, apparently.
See, Casey Neistat IS a filmmaker, just not the type you and I got used to.
I'll explain.
---
On January 12th, 2018, Casey Neistat posted a video on his YouTube channel titled "FILMMAKING IS A SPORT", and by the end of this article I'm gonna try and convince you why this exact video will come to be determined as the opening shot to a new era of global filmmaking.
---
We'll start with the man himself: If you managed to use the internet up until now and NOT hear about Casey Neistat (how did you do that?) - He is the one-man-crew powering what is safe to say the world's most popular vlog (if you don't know what that is - this is probably not the article you should be reading right now).
Casey singlehandedly directs, produces, shoots, edits and stars in his own videos which he posts to YouTube once every few days, ranging from 3-4 minute viral phenomena (Exhibit A) to extended summaries of his daily activities and shenanigans (Exhibit B).
Casey leads a seemingly exciting life: boat cruises, hyper-expensive airplane travel, drone riding and so on. But the content of his videos is not what we've gathered here for - It's his message.
At every chance he gets, Casey reminds his viewers of today's cliche: you have to work hard to achieve your dreams, and if you put in everything you got, anything is possible. True, every aspiring basketball player and Twitch streamer these days spits out these exact same words, but that don't make 'em wrong.
See, Casey has done it. He figured out his greatest dreams, and for about 15 years now - chased them down. In the video this article is written around, Casey reveals he got what he thought he wanted - the Red Carpets, the awards, the recognition, the praise - but only when he got there, he realized this is NOT the reality he was looking for.
The most important thing for Casey Neistat is to tell stories through his art, and make them accessible to as many people as possible.
He cuts to a shot of him announcing the vlog: "I'm going to make a movie EVERY DAY" . And he did. A proper movie. Think about it for a second - True, it's way shorter, stars mostly just this one ecstatic guy, and most of the time doesn't really have a plot - yet it's the first thing I click on when I log into YouTube.
Why?
Because it is expertly made.
Why do we spend hours at baseball stadiums? Why do we gasp when the magician unveils the dove? Why do we smile when the guy falls off the zipline in the fail compilation?
Because we love to be entertained.
Casey Neistat's videos are, above any other quality, entertaining.
We love the drones, the bikinis, the boosted board, the helicopters and the jet-skis. But we also love the framing, the direction, the narrative, the transitions and the music. It's simply a great piece of art.
Casey is making videos for his audience and for income, but above all, he makes them for himself because it is the highest level at which he can express his art.
He is doing what filmmakers have been doing since the invention of movies, just through a different medium. He is expressing his art and his ideas to his audience. My question is - how is he different from Tarantino? or Scorsese? Kubrick? maybe Hitchcock?
He isn't. He takes ideas and brings them to life - we just don't need to pay exorbitant ticket prices or pop champagnes at premieres to enjoy it.
---
All of that is fine and dandy, but Casey is not the first person to be doing this. Youtube has been around since 2005, and the earliest vlog is accredited to Adam Kontras, in as early as the year 2000. Thousand of vlogs exist on Youtube, alongside endless hours of content people all around the world deem worthy of sharing with their fellow humans.
Among these, there came creators who wanted to perfect their craft and hone their video making skills, and today we can find endless authors of magnificently put-together videos, ranging from Marques Brownlee, which makes you fall in love with the sheer quality of every aspect of his visuals and sound while "only" reviewing a piece of tech, through The Slow-Mo Guys, who just document every cool thing you can think of in Slow Motion, all the way to Vsauce, who starts every video with a very stimulating, often scientific question and attempts to give it the best possible answer through engaging, fun visuals.
All of these and more comprise the infinitely diverse ecosystem that is Youtube, in which almost 5 billion videos are being watched every day and the average viewing session lasts more than 40 minutes. People are turning to free community-sourced content, and if they have to watch an ad or two to get it, they're more than willing.
Taking all of these into account, I predict the filmmaking industry to gradually move and more in the direction of accessible, short, engaging content.
I'm not saying traditional films will fade away completely and we're cancelling the Oscars tomorrow (Hollywood is still a $41.2B a year industry), but I can definitely see the tide shifting over to the content creators side in the next few years.
And when it happens, you can link your grandkids to this video, and tell them, "see? this is the guy who started it all".
In the not-so-distant future, when you think of film, you will think of people like Casey Neistat.
Watch out Hollywood, Casey's coming for you.
Nice post! I will follow you from now on.
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