Casey Neistat's Secret Weapon

🎥 Casey Neistat's Secret Weapon

Casey Neistat set a nearly impossible standard for filmmakers everywhere.

When he started releasing his daily vlogs in march of 2015, no one (not even him) knew how long the series would last. A week? A month? Maybe a year?

For 534 days, Casey released a 6-15 minute film about his life. The videos weren’t just thrown together. They were thoughtful, creative, funny. They made you feel something.

Casey influenced an entire generation of content creators. Today, there are millions of people using Casey’s daily vlog playbook.

There is one key element that Casey mastered in his vlogs that really sets him apart:

Pace

The most successful daily vloggers of today also use pace to effectively engage viewers. 

In a daily vlog, you only have 24 hours to tell a story. How do you explain the premise at a pace that keeps the viewer engaged til the end?

You don’t have the luxury of long, extended talking head shots. While they work fine for other forms of video storytelling, they are stationary and boring in a daily vlog. The more dynamic and engaging you can make the narration, the better.

For Casey, this often meant speaking to the camera as he flew through the streets of New York on his Boosted Board, or while he haphazardly unboxed packages from fans in his dope office.

Stillness is the enemy to the daily vlog.

Casey knew how to keep things moving.

In the age of short-form vertical videos, one of the most popular ways to achieve a dynamic pace is with a voiceover.

Talking to the camera is out, talking to a mic is way, way in.

A voiceover allows you to keep things moving on-screen without having to worry about telling the story throughout the day in real-time.

Both Timm Chiusano and Jack Cook use voice overs in their vlogs. The clips they use to tell the story of their days are usually 0.5 - 3 seconds long. You can tell that despite the small amount of time they have to work with, they put a ton of thought into each shot and angle.

The dynamic nature of the quick cuts and visually interesting shots keeps an engaging pace.

Casey’s energetic pace in his vlogs kept viewers coming back again and again. 

How else do you think Casey influenced content creators? Let me know.

Have an ELITE Week,

Hannah

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