Casey Neistat explains his philosophy very simply in the video Life Explained in 27 Seconds: “Life is like going the wrong way on a moving sidewalk. Walk and you stay put. Stand still and you go backwards. To get ahead you have to hustle”. Casey Neistat is always moving.
Casey Neistat embodies exactly the kind of person I want to be living the kind of life I want to live; or at least that’s the illusion he brings to his short films. He’s a creator who’s constantly creating, living a bustling life in the big city but always on the move to do new things in new places. More than that he brings a sense of professional craft to his vlogging. As a filmmaker of two decades (most of which has been guerilla filmmaking) he has a distinct skill for capturing the everyday world around him, with his scene to scene composition of his life naturally oozing with humour and genuine curiosity for life.
The glue that holds it all together is Casey himself, a down-to-earth presence who’s immediately and consistently endearing. Although this vlog isn’t often deeply personal you casually begin to know Casey as a person and as a creator. Most importantly of all, though, Casey inspires and encourages creativity in others. He makes it look incredibly easy, but furthermore he makes it sound incredibly easy to the average viewer. He favours the usage of professional equipment, but at the same time he embraces and touts the value of technology as common in today’s age as the smart-phone camera and even personally demonstrates the kind of simple high quality production it’s capable of. Through that he instills the sense that anyone with a camera can create like he does, that anyone can be a filmmaker or a vlogger in this day and age. This is the ultimate all-welcoming essence of creativity, something that Casey Neistat fully embodies.
I hope that Neistat will continue to make excellent films for years to come. Films that weave exciting stories out of everyday life. Films that carry with them the infectious spirit of creativity and passion. Films that teach us a little about how to live and to make things.
Too Many Words 