Casey Neistat: The Internet’s Greatest Storyteller
On February 17, 2010, Casey Neistat would upload his first movie to YouTube. It was a silly and sarcastic 5 minute film about the emergency brakes on NYC subway’s. Uploaded in 480p, filled with noisy audio, several stop motion animations, and scored with gentle piano and fiddle music in the background. This video was many things. Unique, a little odd, and disruptive. But it was also better than 99% of YouTube videos at the time.
Casey would continue to upload his movies to YouTube, as it was a free and easy way to share his work with the world. Some of his other work in 2010 included The Ethics of Stealing a Bike and Soup Can Switchblade. These videos were getting a couple thousand views which excited Neistat enough to keep uploading.
On June 7, 2011, Casey would upload Bike Lanes. A 3 minute exposé on the silly bike lane rules in NYC and the injudicious way that the NYPD handed out tickets to bikers. This video would be Neistat’s big break on YouTube. The video currently sits at over 29 million views, his 5th most popular video to date. The success of this video isn’t because 29 million people care about bike lanes in NYC, its because of Casey’s ability to tell a story. If you want a quick taste of who Casey Neistat is, Bike Lanes is a good place to start.
If you’ll allow me to rewind for a moment, I want to provide some backstory on how Casey started his filmmaking career. As a 17 year old high school dropout with a baby boy, Casey got a job as a dishwasher in a restaurant for $8/hr. Life was hard at this time but he was not going to let that consume him. Circa 1999, Neistat would take his then girlfriend and their kid to New York City from Connecticut for a vacation. It was here that his brother, Van (who is also an excellent storyteller), taught him how to edit videos on his new iMac G3. The first iMac capable of doing so. Casey fell in love with being able to craft his footage into a story and when he got home to Connecticut, he immediately maxed out his credit card to buy a computer of his own. Casey is quoted in his Draw My Life video as saying “I spent all my free time making these little movies, and for the first time in my life, I felt like, by telling these stories I had a voice”. It wouldn’t be a year later until Casey, now single, would move to NYC with no money to become a filmmaker.
For the next few years, Casey and Van Neistat (going by the Neistat brothers) would make movies all the time for anyone who would spare a dollar. “We literally said yes to anything that involved picking up a camera”. Remember when I said that Bike Lanes was Casey’s first big break on YouTube? I phrased it that way because Casey’s first big break in general came in 2003, 2 years before YouTube even existed. Again, it was an exposé but this time focused on the dead battery policy in Apple’s original iPod. In his words: “That video exploded, this was back in the day when the world viral was used to describe an STD and not a video”. The buzz from this video alone exposed so many people to Casey and his brother’s videos. This lead to them working for a television producer named Tom Scott, who would later agree to fund them for a year to make whatever project they wanted.
The duo spent the next year travelling and filming their lives constantly. Every few weeks they would get together and edit what they had filmed into 25 minute movies. “Eventually we had 8 of these 25 minute movies and we called that a tv series”. Two years later in 2008, The Neistat Brothers sold their self titled Tv Show to HBO for around 2 million dollars. The show was nothing like anything that was on the air at the time and nothing has been like it since. If you watched some of the videos I mentioned earlier, the tv show was simply longer movies with the exact same style.
All of that backstory was to articulate that Casey Neistat had years of experience in making videos before his YouTube debut in 2010. While most of YouTube’s creators started on the platform and figured it out as they went, Casey already knew how to do it and how he liked to do it. On top of this he wasn’t in it for fame or money, he was in it because he loved it.
Okay, back to 2010. Casey would continue uploading his movies to YouTube with no schedule for the following years. Each video being seen more than the last and growing his fanbase as he went. It was in this time he uploaded some of his greatest works. Make It Count — a video for Nike where he took the entire budget they gave him and travelled the world and called it an commercial. My Girlfriend Candice — a 20 minute epic about an adventure with his girlfriend. And Crazy German Waterpark — A movie about Casey and his aforementioned son exploring a waterpark in Germany. These videos garnered millions of views and cemented Casey as a YouTuber to be reckoned with. However, it wasn't until March 26, 2015 that Casey’s career would hit take on otherworldly momentum.
MY FIRST VLOG, was Casey’s official hat in the ring declaration into becoming a full time YouTuber. He committed himself to shooting, editing, and uploading a new video every single day with no exceptions. Vlogging was not a new premise on YouTube. There were tons of people already doing this concept but every other vlog on the platform paled in comparison to Casey’s ability to make mind-blowingly entertaining videos every single day like a machine. As the videos went on they only got better and his process of working only got more streamlined. Casey Neistat shot, edited, and uploaded a new video every single day for 601 consecutive days.
In these almost 2 years, Casey went from a nice sized audience of supporters to upwards of 7 million subscribers. Every single vlog that Casey posted gained over a million views with some reaching 3–5 million views. Casey catapulted into superstardom. Into YouTube royalty. His content felt so unlike what YouTube was known for. There was no asking for subscribers or likes. There was no put-on cartoonish emotion in his voice. He was just a guy living in NYC who liked to make videos.
Even after the daily uploads ended, Neistat was still uploading multiple times a week, focusing on making larger videos with bigger narratives.
I want to rapid fire some accomplishments of Casey’s career now as it would be a massive undertaking to provide context for all of them. From 2010 until now Casey has:
- Worked with some of the largest companies in the world (Nike, Samsung, GoPro, Apple, Facebook, Google, the list goes on and on)
- Founded 2 tech companies in Beam and 368.
- Sold his tech companies to CNN for roughly 25 million dollars.
- Been recognized with 15 award nominations in the video creation space.
- Travelled the world doing public speaking about video creation and creativity.
- Directed and Produced multiple documentaries.
Currently, Casey sits at over 12 million subscribers and 3.1 billion (yes billion with a B) total views. His uploading is on and off these days as he raises his 2 daughters and tries to enjoy life without an audience. It was Casey’s storytelling ability and gritty, unique style that allowed him to flourish into one of the most popular creators on the internet. While its hard to express how good over 1100 videos by one man are in a single article, I hope that reading this has peaked your interest enough to check out a true master of story telling, Casey Neistat.
If I can only recommend one video to watch, it would be Do What You Can’t. A genuinely important video for creative’s to watch, an absolute lightning bolt of a film, and the quote that I used in my high school yearbook.
P.S — A brilliant tweet that encapsulates Casey’s video style
