Why MrBeast and Casey Neistat Hired Dan Mace

no I'm I'm starting to dig into my savings I haven't uploaded a YouTube video and uh Jimmy phones out of the blue I knew you as Dan the director this like creative Wonder kit you YouTube I'm going to Hollywood 50,000 people have decided they're not interested in you those people can I read a text from Casey to you if you dare do that to Casey it'll cut your finger off this scenario I think will happen more and more I've never spoken about this before actually today on the Colin and smir show we're joined by Dan mace Dan is the chief creative officer at Beast philanthropy and together with Mr Beast he's grown that channel to over 20 million subscribers Dan is one of the most talented creatives on YouTube and before his time working with Mr Beast he was working with Casey neistat and before all of that he was directing multi-million dollar commercials when he was only 23 years old this conversation has so much value in it because Dan shares the lessons that he's learned from working with the two most influential creators in the history of YouTube this episode is sponsored by our friends at spotter spotter partners with creators to help accelerate their careers through Capital knowledge and Community they've paid over $850 million to creators like arach destroying Mr Beast Dude Perfect kinigra Dion and 400 other creators through catalog licensing Deals they also launched spotter labs this year which is a suite of AI tools that helps the top creators come up with better ideas for their channels and those tools were developed along side creators actually in brainstorms that were held here in our studio and every year spotter hosts the spotter Summit it's an event that Colin and I help put together where we bring together top creators and thought leaders to learn from each other and solve problems that we're all facing so if you're a Creator looking to accelerate your career through Capital knowledge and Community click the link in our description go to spot.com and Samir and reach out to the spotter team to see if you're eligible to partner with spotter all right now for our conversation with Dan mace [Music] Dan ma welcome to the show thank you for having me man great to have you here it's been four years since I started watching these videos four or five years wow 201 17 what were we what were we doing back then you were like right at the beginning yeah yeah but nothing's changed regarding the color palette like everything's the same like your guys's face is are exact we yeah it's like his beard is but outside of that yeah it's like uh I remember distinctly like you must have had like 3,000 4,000 subscribers maybe like even less I don't know and somehow I was in New York with Casey at the time and like you guys popped up and we watched something and then Casey was like these guys are super smart like they they good YouTubers and I remember like looking at the amount of subscribers and I just moved over to the YouTube side of things I was like how can there be good YouTubers only have 4,000 you know what I mean like the way that I entered YouTube was like success means lots of subscribers like that's how I kind of looked at the metric back then but it's interesting to like how far like how far you guys have you've just kept doing the same thing and stuck to it and you know like I I always find like with my content it doesn't perform as well as if if I'm doing stuff say the Beast philanthropy stuff or I'm helping Casey with his stuff and it's like you can Define it you know what it is but like with my [ __ ] it's all over the place so it's like if if I just stuck to one thing like you guys have this thing and then if you start I think it was like uh maybe Phil the Franco started daily vlogging at one point and it just like didn't take yeah yeah you know um but he's so he's undoubtedly the best at what he does such a big for the franer fan but like why VI away from that thing but as a creative your mind goes I want to try kind of be good at that but the nature of creativity today is that it is you know find a format and repeat the format that's that's like what the reward cycle is when it comes to the platforms yeah but I would you know it's very hard to look at yourself like even how you're saying things to us right now about how we're like consistent and we're good at this format like it's very hard to look at that as yourself and when I think even when I hear you saying like you're like I'm all over the place that you can say that but I can close my eyes and imagine a Dan mace video exactly like you have a style and a voice and a um you know a film making you know an autorip of of what you're making that is so clear and there's a Common Thread for us on the other end yeah you know but it doesn't feel that way to you often right yeah oh thanks I I for me like I I feel yeah it's crazy I don't know my yeah my content is just cha it's like it's like my head right now I don't even know what the question or the answer but I had something that I wanted to say and um was it that you me to sample These Bars that you have open on the table right now by the way have you had a Brew Bar that's the first plug of the episode if you're wondering what this is wait till later and you someone's been hanging out L someone's been hanging out with Mr Beast some avd right there no I think yeah and and what you were saying about like I think if if you're consistent and you're doing the same thing that like reward pathway of of excitement putting something out and and going like oh yes it's done like the blue lines growing you know if you're keeping on doing the same thing over and over and it's constantly working do you think that that reward pathway like gets less and less you get less dopamine from it because you just know it's going to work well depending I think on the type of person you are and also what other metrics you get connected to because essentially if like your your own when you start your own creativity is the metric like I'm sure we can all connect to the first time you edited a video and watched it back yeah and you were just like holy [ __ ] like I did that and maybe I could do it differently like this that's the reward and then once you once you upload it to a YouTube right and then the numbers go up then the new there's a new drug and it's it's not just that edit was cool it's like that edit was only cool if these numbers go up yeah I call it view juice yeah yeah VJ yeah VJ right and then once that once you get numb to that it's like the money right oh now I'm getting booked for brand deals and now that's a whole another metric so then all of a sudden creativity As the metric is the lowest on the totem pole you know when you get into this reward cycle of what are the rewards is the reward that I did it or is the reward that people liked it or is the reward that it made money what's or is it a combination of all them yeah I I um there's a spectrum I was reading uh in one of the books that I read it was all about um how much of your creativity are you willing to abandon to pay the bills like that's like the first part of it right like you get into that and you like okay cool well I'm going to abandon a few bits and Bobs here so that I can I can become a wedding videographer but then at least I'm still yeah a videographer but then once you start to get the a YouTube channel and following and all the luxuries that come along with that those lines like that Spectrum starts become a little bit more chaotic cuz now you're starting to abandon all kinds of different things and you're starting to be swayed by relevancy Fame like you're walking down the road and maybe one time you got someone taking a photo with you next time you walk down that road that person's not there no one wants to photo you're like oh my I was once famous you know yeah and you're looking at people in the eyes being like do you recognize me you look like someone who would watch YouTube see my do you want academ you go stand at the store next to them like they're they're holding like a camera and a Joby and you're like you must know me and you're just a guy you're just a guy sampling bars in a a YouTube channel like wearing it on like whatever but yeah there's there's that I I I totally align with what you're saying it's it's all about your character type I think if you like you got to be really strong though you know to to be able to and we in inevitably I I guess Jimmy is like that and he's you know his relevancy is is stuck and it's staying for a long period of time and Casey as well is there but everyone else is kind of up and down and um you got to be kind of really tough to be able to be highly relevant and then to lose that yeah and then deal with it well I think you have to uh not be so connected to those outcomes that's the how are you if technically like to become that successful on YouTube it pretty much has to become your life so you you know I'm getting it's like ah it's such a tough one because it's like well I I have it in I'm a little bit more disconnected now than I was when um I was solely relying on my own channel um because right now I'm doing Beast philanthropy so there is somewhat of a a separation it's not just me it's me the team it's a project it's the give back there's a lot of amazing things that happen within that and then there's views and all that other stuff but I've I found that since starting working with Jimmy I've I've had more time with my family I've had more time with my friends um which has helped with the and then also the blue line is just like High than working on a beast property it's just like I didn't even know numbers could go this the back end like so maybe I'm just talking [ __ ] there's also constraints though which is so helpful like to have those creative constraints on the Beast philanthropy channel of like you know at the end of the day you have to tell these stories about certain types of things in a certain type of way there's there's a story and you can apply your creativity on that but on your channel that's just Dan ma oh that's the problem you could do anything anything of any form at any time and that sometimes is paralyzing yeah well except for expensive stuff if I was like Rich As [ __ ] then it would be real problems then like then you do I wouldn't be I would be shopping at Aran all day too much yeah so you're here I'm so fascinated by your story because I feel like I can deeply connect to this concept of being able to see creativity and creative world objectively when it's when it's a little bit further away from me like if I had my own YouTube channel I think I would have an existential crisis oh yeah like with my just my name with just me talking or just me creating I it would be really challenging for me because it's too close to my own identity and my creativity is like I'm excited about different ideas every day and again like I don't I don't feel like my mind fits into a format but I can sit with a Creator and be like I I can see you and see where you're going and I could probably help you with your stuff please um but like you're here in La accepting uh or you accepted a shorty award for Beast philanthropy yeah um you know you obviously work work with Jimmy you're the chief creative officer of Beast philanthropy I'm curious as a creative though from an identity perspective like how much how much ownership or creative kind of connection do you feel to the work you're doing when it's not necessarily your own or does it feel like your own it's it's an honest question of like what does it feel like to work on someone else's Crea it's so funny so last night um we we go accept the award there's Darren as well um who's the best guy like I'm trying to think of his title I always forget it he's like the main guy the director of he's like the the top top tier person but he's also the greatest guy ever made and we walk out and this this girl comes down and she's like oh it's Such a Pity Jimmy's not yet to get the award but I'm really grateful that you guys could be here to get it in his honor and um I was like yeah cool like totally that's fair enough that feels awesome and then I could see there's like this thought process of yeah but we also like made the films do you know what I mean but like then it's had like but the films would never happen if it wasn't for Jimmy so it's a bit like to your to your question there there is sometimes it's my own ego that wants to to have the name attached to it and because I've come from having my own channel to be like oh Dan ma made that film and that's like oh look at me you know um and then there's what I've learned throughout this year is it's it's it's so much more about the work that we actually doing that it doesn't [ __ ] matter you know like if but that's a pretty evolved point of view it doesn't matter but it at some level it does matter in terms of it still gets me sometimes like like if I'm like you're you you got to find that that creative ownership somewhere yeah yeah no I I found Jimmy like in the beginning um after like the second video I was like bri do you mind if we write in the description like it be like way down at the bottom but do you mind if we write like this philm was made by Dian Ma and he was like yeah [ __ ] it whatever like that's totally cool it was um and in in doing that because I I also had that battle going like how do I uh regarding the credit of the film because in in for myself I'm a I'm a purist as a filmmaker like that's that's what I I love creating films that are are filmic and story narrative driven films you know um so a film where where there would be credits traditionally rolling at the end of the of the piece you know and uh where Jimmy is the the the main character he's also the executive producer he's the person that's paying for everything um but in in this case it's a YouTube video um and I also don't want to get my personal brand like lost cuz people if you type in D M in YouTube now literally I mean if you type in down maze on Google Now it literally says where is down maze that's what it say because I've just like gone missing with the good SEO maybe we'll title this episode we found him we found we found Dan yeah with a thumbnail I'm like under a bridge somewhere that' be a great intro for this episode we find you under a bridge we bring you here sit down I mean I can understand though that that is yeah it's why I asked the question is cu like I I could see myself but I also you know this stuff comes up in in traditional film making too the concept of autorip is it a Christopher Nolan film what about all the other people who worked on it you know like who gets the the the main credit you know who's who's really behind it and I also think in our space this question also comes up a lot when it comes to editors and and producers and you know our teams are getting bigger and there's a lot of creative forces but this scenario I think will happen more and more where there will be creators who are very creative and put a lot of work out on YouTube and have an audience on YouTube but maybe are just better fit working in a team environment or as a collaborator with someone and so you're kind of one of you're one of the first that has publicly done this you know with Casey and now as well with Jimmy so it's interesting to talk through the emotional implications of it too definitely I think yeah it's I'm I'm definitely much better at making other people's content than making my own and not to say at all Casey that I made his videos okay I didn't um I was very much a part of the process but um I could never take credit for making Casey's videos um I think there's like a really funny interview Casey did with um Rich Ro yeah and this is like Casey's the best cuz he would always compliment me but then afterwards like it would be like a backhanded compliment every single time I'll be like oh he's he's saying something so nice and then just slams me at the end and he said something like um I brought in you know I was I was uh getting close to being burnt out it's like 500 Days of vlogging um so I decided to bring in my friend and he he used words like my most talented friend someone who's a much better editor than me all these things I'm sitting my say my name and he's like and Rich Roll is like Dan M he's like I like oh my gosh and he's like and you know what it did it made everything go twice as slow I was like oh no but it's you know I guess it's it's like that but I I I think that for in the in the case of of that scenario with 368 and Casey it was I learned about character Dynamics yes you were a character in those videos I became a character out of nowhere I went there to edit and to video the Vlogs like that was like what I was going to do and I turned quite quickly after realizing like only Casey can edit and shoot Casey's stuff like every now and then you would throw a camera like very literally throw a camera right and you like and you'll be like yeah I'm going to run there and like don't miss the shot and you're going and like then you get it and then if you edit it it's wrong you know you'll try your hardest and but it's only in what's in his head and it's very difficult to ever extract that like you could be like can you please tell me and be like it'll be a waste of my time telling you you know I'd rather distur myself so my role became one of a a character or character that I play of myself within yeah those videos I remember that with like the uh Tech was it Tech I learned a lot about these kind of Storytelling elements of of creating different things that the audience would want to be a part of and see at a later stage and like avd I'm talking that lasts over a year you know of things of of take Tuesday intro that would never happen and we never had any like we just never did it I suggesting that like there's uh like not retention on a specific video but retention with a whole brand and a series we so many of those for someone who doesn't know in this instance the the bit in the Vlogs of that time was that you were responsible for making an intro for the segment Tech Tuesday and the recurring bit was that you were never you were always late and you didn't have it done did you didn't shoot a proper intro yet protect riew Tuesday no and you would make some like it was different every time so [ __ ] yeah think yeah I think it started off cuz we it was going to be that I I was going to edit all the videos and all that sort of thing and then I think we wanted to communicate to the audience that Casey was was the still very much the person editing and shooting and that I would I was given this little job okay that I just could not do but it got to a point where for me as as um and my personal brand and where I'd come from as a director um and in no way Casey meant it to come across this way but it was diminishing my value as that I was in in Casey's videos I was always late I was always interrupting someone I could never finish a task you know I was like the B of the joke which which was great and it was funny and it it helped the the Vlog but there was at at some parts of it I I found that maybe um for anyone that wanted to take me seriously as a film director would watch that and think H you know this guy a little bit of a goof yeah you went from being you know the you there's articles about you that that kind of like I remember this very well because again I mentioned this to you but I knew you as Dan the director yeah and there was articles I would read about you that positioned you as this like creative wonderkid you know of like this young director this like radical young director coming out of South Africa um directing these commercials and just just like you had a a very premium brand yeah uh I I remember this so clearly cuz you know there's also this thing that when you look at someone uh that you really admire a creative like and for me Casey Casey's Make It Count video obviously was the first one that I saw of his and then went into this world of like what is this what is this type of I went to film school so I was like what is this where did you go to PH school UC Santa Cruz it's a banana slug yeah I me I'm just going to be like one when you asked I was like what where's this going to go I don't know just [ __ ] I I don't know many I was like did plug plug there got greatest of all time you want to talk about the bars or you everyone plug something yeah okay so I I uh was watching Casey's videos and specifically with Make It Count you know he's in the car at one point with Max Joseph and I was like so who's that guy then I went to his channel and watched Max's stuff and I was like oh [ __ ] this is like Max Joseph was one of the most influential editors and creatives in my and I would seen follow the Frog course seen all of it insane totally insane everything and then saw Oscar boyon uh was also part of that yeah also part of that scene but Max um you know you can see the people who were inspired by Max Joseph I mean I think we tried Max for at least to years oh I've stolen so much Max Jose and that's why I'm saying it is I'm I watched your stuff and I was like oh Dan watches Max too easily you know like I I I understood it from your style of of film making and pacing and voiceover and all of it was I was so scared to like when when the first time I met Max I was like worried sure if he was going to like call me out yeah you know but he was super cool he's a very nice guy yeah yeah but I was I was wondering if he was going to be like that it's a little bit cuz sometimes when I watched follow the Frog the first time I was like this is revolutionary in the way of like how to merge time and space how how to get from one like he tells this entire narrative in a whole it's so diverse yeah and it's just literally about being a aware of uh to follow the Frog to to drink what is the the Frog product it's like a a wildlife something like te I actually don't even know now see Maxi did a [ __ ] job because he was like too good of a story too good too good yeah follow the Frog I definitely relate to that though the first time we met Max thinking there are some videos in our catalog uh that if if I were to show them to Max Joseph I would just have to say like guilty yeah like I yeah like I watched fall the Frog I watched everything on your channel yeah but I think that there's so many like I mean there's so many people that have come to me and said the same thing about my work there's people there's so many Casey copy cats that are that I found a way of doing I mean but you also CH like when you came to YouTube you changed a lot uh you you had a very specific style that I would could only describe as like obsessive where I would watch one of your cuts and I would have to pause and go how long did Dan spend on that it felt like you like sucked us deep into your brain for maybe like a split second that was like a million frame stop motion animation [ __ ] and we just had to think like how long did Dan take for that one second yeah yeah not worth it okay there's like an intricacy to it I'm I'm curious because like you knew about Max Joseph and Casey before you started working with Casey when you started actually working with him and you leave traditional media essentially what did you think was the promise of YouTube or the promise of even that one opportunity can I read can I read a text from Casey to you oh yeah yeah yeah he said all I have is this part of it we will book for you you got to take a leap greatness comes with bravery you do the same [ __ ] in South Africa you can expect the same results try something new equals a new outcome oh [ __ ] yeah that's from way back um that must have been in like 200 16 yeah end of 2016 um I so I I knew about Max's work before Casey's work because of um I had a researcher I was working traditionally as a film director and hard Works um you would jobs would come in they call them bids and uh there would always be three directors bidding on one job sometimes they would throw in a fourth wild card it's a brutal process like um and because what you would do is you would work on a BD for two weeks and then you would lose and you wouldn't get paid for all of that but you would sit with a researcher and a producer and you would work out the costs You' work out all this this is going somewhere okay so I'm interested this this is this is uh in advertising you're talking about this is yeah in in advertising so you get signed to production company production company will host say 10 15 20 directors and the agency um they would have a certain amount of accounts so say they've got uh diio who would have like Tusa or Guinness or whatever they'll go like we want to find then that agency would write out an ad geez we rely going through the whole thing but let's go yeah do it the agency you would then go um okay cool well Guinness is bringing out a new bottle this year so we want to make a campaign around that um and we we thinking about a a comedic kind of AD then we'll go to the copywriters and the the um ecd and and the art director and they would write something and then they would go okay well let's go through this whole uh collage of film directors throughout if it's South Africa something it's over the world sometimes and uh catalog not collage but I was thinking about that collage was I like coll we keep collage and ecd by the way is executive creative director yeah um and uh so this collage of directors and um from there they would approach the different production companies and uh you could never be a part of the same production companies have two directors go against each other so it' literally be like three but you wouldn't know who else you bidding against cuz then obviously like the producers could go behind and kind of like start to maybe backand or whatever um so you would always try and figure out who who which director you going up against but you would have a researcher anyways I did this job um and follow the Frog was one of the firms that my research ped up and I remember when I watched it I was like [ __ ] that shit's good and uh yeah that's from there then I found out about Max Joseph I watched something else of his um and then I kind of after that I didn't see too much more Max Joseph stuff um I went straight into uh if you notice from way back when from my first film it's always sound and music is always intertwined like the whole way through I've got this weird like need to make music out of weird [ __ ] like that's always in everything with Jimmy and stuff too with the Beast philanthropy films I get so excited we're g to go we making this diagetic soundtrack out of out of these people singing and doing all the stuff and when he looks at it he'll be like yo it's cool but I mean like just for a little bit though you know because we need to get into the the film like he's going to sit and watch like a minute of like maybe the purist maybe the The Artsy kind of people um like I'm interested in [ __ ] like that but um yeah so right from the start I was into that sort of thing and then uh I think at I must have been 23 or 24 I made a film called gift which was about I was going through a r really difficult time in my life then and um i' kind I wrote this film I wrote a poem about a boy that um danced to the sound of his fears um because in South Africa um we have street performers at we call them robots but they're actually traffic lights pretty funny okay I'm not lying like if you go over there at the robot that's the traffic light um so at the traffic lights there you would you know stop in traffic and there would be people performing and I saw this kid dancing with no music and I thought um you know about making a film about the how he dances to the silence what fuels this Rhythm and is very deep anyway um I mean back then I was 23 and to write something like that sounds like really deluded now because it's that seems like it needs quite a lot of life experience to to kind of break that apart so when I go back and I watch that and I hear some of the wording that I used it's really embarrassing the intent was the concept is is like i' I've seen it it was the it was your my road reel right oh that's the first awarded one yeah yeah um with that film specifically like um that's hard to make you know like what you made is not easy to make uh that means that you really did care about the CRA and I know that sounds AB for me to say to a filmaker or a creative but we're in a world today where I think that the majority of creators care care are trained to care more about the outcome than the craft you got to watch Che how you say that [ __ ] now yeah but but but right but that's like and I'm saying me as as uh part of this group too we it's natural we are now in an outcome based creative environment sure and that is like really hard to do but I'm curious about those outcomes in the business of advertising like were you making good money as an advertising director when you get one of those bids like how much money are we talking about to make advertisements yeah it gets it gets big so back to gift um I so I made this foil and at the time it cost 7,000 Rand okay okay what is that in dollars $300 300 us yeah and uh my friend who's a very very successful DP now who shot it Fabian um he's very hectic guy he uh he like put down I think most of the money so and but we we could win I think it was like $440,000 worth of gear a road gear that's like money I'd never heard of I thought wow you know we didn't even know how to work that back into RS we just knew it was like a shitload of money um and we ended up winning and then that film went to KH to the young director's Awards and it won that and then also another film a production house that entered another form of mine into uh K that year as well and it one at one there as well the other film uh about rats bomb sniffing rats was interesting I'm hooked yeah yeah bro she go watch it yeah why these they sniff out the rat the bums that's wild yeah they make them so this isn't fiction this is real this is real [ __ ] it's funny if you type in my name on on Google and you see like the films I've made it say like bum sniffing rats yeah it's the weirdest thing but it's like cool clickbait I reckon but yeah it's anyway so I made that film and that one as alongside gift um and then from there everything changed like my entire career I I was just I used to sell jams like that was my job like peanut butter and jelly jams yeah like jam like strawberry jam strawberry apricot jam oh dude out the boot of my car what do you call it boot here trunk a trunk yeah yeah out my trunk where were you getting the jams from this guy called odette's kitchen okay yeah I found it in the newspaper yeah so I'll do anything for my you back then oh I mean jeez okay not anything but iose I'll do anything Jam related you know you haven't come that far if we're just being honest you're still speaking bars out of the we know not supposed to say what they are sorry sorry we're going to get to that lat this is the evolution of jam but yeah so back then I was I mean I was a j i was a jams salesman I mean I was so into selling Jam that um I would sometimes leave the jam in the back of my car cuz in case you get like a a a a spontaneous buy sure you know yeah course you never know when that's going to happen you never know and some's like I'm out of jam boom I got what what flavor you so but what would happen if the jam got too hot in the trunk it would [ __ ] explode you know what it's like driving down and next minute gunshots start firing off and your trunk B Jesus and you look back and there's just red up there and you think [ __ ] when just got shot in the trunk of my car you know that's the life of a j that was life before the young director's award yeah yeah life of a jam salesman dude life of a jam salesman is deep dude luckily before I like went completely broke and I was I mean I I had no idea I I was just trying to make films like that's that's it like I know it sounds like funny back then it was it was gnarly um and I'd made gift I'd pour everything into these films back then not that I don't now but like I mean then I had nothing you know so I'd put every scent that I had um and to get the call from from one from my road re to say that we had won that was insane and then a month later to get the call to say they flying me to can I was like what um and then I came back home and and these young director's Awards is all these uh producers from production companies Global production companies that want to sign young directors in like 20145 it was very trendy to use young film directors for big Brands because the big Brands wanted to try and this whole like gen Z kind of thing and started coming out people were looking into the future like what the next generation of advertising was going to look like so I went from Jam salesman to winning single beds and a single bed is when you bypass the whole bedding process you just get the job so my the production company that represented me they were really wise and really good and they were like we got down he doesn't [ __ ] bid like give us a job he doesn't want it I'll be like gez I'll bid I [ __ ] drive down the highway [ __ ] exploding like no I'll bid so I did like 6 months of of single beds my very first job I did was for a a beer called tusker um which is probably like the most renowned kind of ad that I've done it's a more one of the more famous ones because that also then went into winning a a bunch of awards and I remember the executive creative director then looking at me and saying this is the biggest blessing and curse you'll ever have as a director because this is the it's your first job where you've got unlimited creative license the agency does not know what you're talking about here because I was the the brief was there's massive segregation in Kenya there 42 different tribes um we are the number one uh selling beer we don't have any competition so our our whole idea is or identity is pretty much trying to bring people together so how do we bring 42 different people together without it being like you know he has a beer that's all come together and party so use the same concept as gift uh where we went around where we went around Kenya and uh collected diagetic sounds diagetic sounds are like sounds that happen in front of camera much like this bar if you had to chew into it now and you'd hear that delicious crunch that would be uh a diagetic sound a non- diagetic is something outside of what we see of the film School overs mean inductive deductive you can go whatever um so yeah I I then I said to them look the the way we're going to do this is we'll go and record all these sounds and I will make an Anthem for Kenya for 2016 or whatever it was the new Anthem and the brown was like geez [ __ ] um okay I mean if if you can pull it off and the the budget just kept on increasing and they were cool with it because they could see that the thing was starting to transform and we're flying around this little plane throughout Kenya and these little tribes capturing all this beautiful music and we made the most incredible short film and and TV ad um and for that job I think that was probably around uh $3 million oh wow US dollar yeah oh wow the budget yeah the budget where a director should make 10% of that oh that's really significant yeah but I didn't get that [ __ ] I didn't know that [ __ ] back then I got [ __ ] okay but back no I still got paid from Jam today dude I got paid got it in my mind um and yeah I and from there the rest was history I I I went from that to it took me to the next success the next one and and I got very complacent very quickly um and then I started to become a complete impostor like I think about a year in um that's when I took to drinking and and dragging um I RAR I just didn't believe in myself I was dealing with subject matter that I didn't know anything about like you make a spot about a father and a son from the from the father's perspective and I I I don't know if it's if it's just that or it's also the pressure and um people were expecting so much of me and also um there were certain people in certain fields that knew what was going down and they were okay with it happening regarding me uh drinking and using drugs and that sort of thing as long as I got things over the line um and that's when KC came into the picture um he he had come down to Cape Town to visit uh his wife's parents that have a house in in um camps Bay near the beach and Ben Brown an old uh not old but like a old veteran of an OG YouTuber so I would watch him and I was often my own thing and um with the film dirting I completely lost touch with YouTube but I would still hang with Ben and then Ben wasn't here and he was like my friend Casey's coming down do you want to go up the mountain with him for a run whatever and uh I was so unhealthy and unfit and I was like sure and I knew who Casey was but back then I think Casey was still doing Snapchat videos and maybe he had like a couple hundred thousand followers on YouTube and to be honest like I it wasn't something that there was no like stard him or or anything I I was like cool it would be you know I'm just going to meet some guy and he was awesome we we got on really well I I he was like very intense from the beginning he made me like walk much faster than I could up the mountain and I was thinking to myself like [ __ ] and uh a year went by um and we kept in touch and uh he then saw the tuska ad that I had done um and we we had been speaking a lot and I opened up to him and I told him i' I'd just come out of rehab um and I said to him like you know this is I I want to do something else with my film making career like I'm I feel like I'm trapped in this place and it's it's dark um and he just like offered me a job straight away he was like well why don't you move to New York and work with me and I was like yeah that sounds cool you know and then I like dropped him off at his house and he was like yeah text you later about everything and I was like that's never going to happen but it was like cool it's cool to romanticize about something like that and then he text me I think he flew back to New York and he texted me he's like are you still Keen to to come to New York and I was like [ __ ] yeah I'm Keen he's like okay cool I'll see what I can make happen and then I had to continue in the um film indust in the uh traditional world and then I was doing my biggest commercial yet I was doing the IPL ad um that budget must have been like 4 and a half mil or something and there was like 500 people on set and it was just everything that I hated about where I wanted to go I was this glorified director I had my own trailer that they would driving me around and had a B in it do you know what I mean yeah I'm like what am I doing this is those feel very funny to experience some of that yeah I was just like this is such a waste of money but like also at the same time I just come out of rehab um and I was really trying to practice uh like a lot of humility um and um try and find some form of Serenity and like that just wasn't helping that was just amplifying yeah that was just being just just making everything seem so intense there's a lot of cravings and things involved in that and I I phoned Casey then I was like is this thing going to happen I need out he was like we fly that must have been at the end of March and he was like fly to New York on the 1st of April and from there the rest was history and uh I I didn't know what to expect but I I the one thing that I just thought would be the case is that I wouldn't be the guy running down the road with a camera being shouted at yeah um going from like here where people would would call me sir or boss like a big thing on said is to be called boss yeah uh it's just like a thing what do you want boss whatever um Casey would never call you boss and this was a joke you know yeah right but like he'd be like take this throw the camera why is it out of focus why is this and I I remember just feeling going from feeling like I was up here to feeling like I'm way down here like my impostor syndrome makes sense now you know it suddenly put me down it the greatest thing that could have ever happened to me um there was a lot of times that I wanted to give up when I was with Casey um there was a lot of times where I looked at all the stuff that he had in his studio and like all the successes and all the trophies and all this this like this iconography that you would attach to somebody that just is so important and I would think to myself there's absolutely no way I'm ever going to get to where this person is and I would constantly compare age Casey's 10 years my senior so I'd be like I got 10 years to become as successful as Casey became like very fixated on that um and the more and more the days went on the the less and less I could keep up with his schedule with his uh I was like he he also has a family and he has time for his kids he all the stuff um and he's still able to work and he's putting out a daily Vlog and I'm here to help him and I can't even help myself you know um and I really really struggled uh and then we we were doing a a shoot with Sean Mendes um we were in London at the time and I remember that's when I had like my first proper kind of breakdown I've never spoken about this before actually um I'm G have to send this to Casey first and see what he no but I had my first breakdown um and I said to Casey um I need to go back to New York like I can't I can't work like this like I don't know like I'm freaking out and um he was like just book yourself a ticket back and we'll discuss it when we get back to New York and when I got back then I decided to make my first like kind of YouTube video since uh I made a video called like getting to 36 days or something and I made this like video to like me doing some poem and I was like where I like fell off a building in the beginning and it's like very sad the whole poem is about like having like depression and stuff um and that that that was when I was like in my peak of going through having like the the real feelings of mental health and and that cuz I couldn't uh hide behind drugs and alcohol and stuff I had to feel like the rawness of it and I was in this unfamiliar territory and I wasn't feeling good at what I was doing it was like all of this stuff and that's not what you see in front of camera at all you know behind the camera I was suffering um and it wasn't Casey's fault at all that was my like unresolved [ __ ] with myself um and the the main part was the fact that I thought that I'd made the wrong decision yeah and um I was like I've I've I would phone Gabby who's now my wife um she was my girlfriend back then and I kept on saying to her I've made the wrong choice um you know I should have stayed at home he even like phoned my um old production company just told me to [ __ ] off cuz I'd left them high and dry pretty much um and I just decided to continue there was this like weird thing and it's almost this is like a platitude but I it was like a [ __ ] cliff that's shaped like that and I'm like here and I'm like trying to get up it and then there's like a cloud and then I knew that there was going to be like this peak I just didn't know where in the cloud I was you know I was definitely in that in that cloud and I reached this point where I was like if I'm burning if I'm like I'm working so hard that it's I'm actually like in pain I must be progressing forwards now this is terrible for those that's that hustle anti-h hustle culture [ __ ] which we can get into because I I don't like those people okay you got to work hard which we'll speak about just that's why you got to eat a brew B yeah but um plug number four yeah yeah but uh yeah I I I to I I nearly gave up a bunch of times um and I pushed through till the point where Casey and I uh said look you know I'm gonna I'm myself I'm GNA go and start my own YouTube channel I'm going to go back to South Africa and propose to gabs yeah um he was like that's awesome and he he was also going to slow down on the 368 Vlogs um and because of that and I stuck it through uh I think that's why Casey uh has respect for me now you know I stuck it through with him and he know he well knows like how much had to go into every day to get that [ __ ] done um and I didn't give up and I think he saw there was a lot of times where I wanted to give up you know I was on on the edge of like just going like I can't do this anymore um I also don't want to paint Casey out to be like a really terrible person to work with cuz he's not he's just a he's just exceptionally hardworking he's a one of one M yeah he's someone and like I was saying I I it was a comparison that was killing me I I I was going like I need to be as successful as Casey because I've given up this other thing yeah there's a couple comparisons happening which is like comparison to Casey but it's also comparison to the unbelievable elevated status you had as a director yeah right like sitting on that set for the IPL like you are almost like a Godlike figure on that set and it's like this is the young again like you were positioned as this young wonderin director whereas the dynamic when you're in London on the shoot with Shawn Mendes is that I imagine you're like sort of bottom billing oh way at the bottom yeah yeah like you're carrying the camera yeah yeah yeah is that what in that moment is that like part of what's eating at you definitely like that that's not the and maybe I haven't even thought that through and thanks now I can cancel my session with my psychiatrist cuz he broken through I think like there is that that maybe it's that the weight of of it being like there's a jealousy element in that too where it's like um I should be the person that's here like directing this thing or I I should at least have a bigger role or doing this and now I'm this guy carrying a camera bag and that's like fatiguing in itself um and maybe that's what [ __ ] me up a lot uh yeah of course cuz you had experience being on a Dan mace production yeah and now you're on a Casey neistat production right yeah those Productions look very different yeah and those are also also they Casey with Shawn Mendes and you in London looks very different but Casey probably had a trailer with a bed in it right on that shoot he had a good a nice room he had a good a good room like the way that he does things yeah drastically different than the advertising business with a $4 million budget oh yeah yeah yeah and that that's why his fils are so great because they that that film itself um it had you know he filmed Shan and like Aras like in the dressing room like trying to prepare his voice and like it was very intimate and he's good at like uh building these friendships and then CU he's such a likable guy and then he just whips out a small small camera nothing intimidating where other film directors may have gone a different route and said too much [ __ ] up and it would have made them feel a bit hesitant to say what they're really feeling um the uh the comparison thing is interesting because even for us at the time that that you're working with Casey we're really struggling to figure out what we're doing on YouTube and we're watching you and we're watching Casey and even you getting to work with him getting the shout out his channel was this incredibly aspirational thing like we looked at it from a perspective of that's success and that's potentially what we that's the validation we need so that everyone will go oh yeah those guys like those are the guys right like we were looking at that scenario being like how do we get the Dan mace job with someone right like how do we do that with a Creator um I'm curious like what was the impact of the Casey neistat uh stamp of approval and the influx of people that now followed you oh I mean every s single person would be like I know you from Casey night like I've been following you the whole way back since Casey so I guess you were on like a hit show you really like a daily show that had the viewership of a hit TV show every single day and you were on that show yeah so the the shout out itself that in as much as grateful as I am for that shout out and and I think it grew Me by 300,000 subscribers something ridiculous like that huge amount um like it was also it had the downside because those followers trickled off so as soon as I started to create my own content and gain momentum I was losing the follows that I had gained from Casey but gaining my own ones so I I plateaued at around like 500,000 Subs I think 550 I was constantly uploading but you would see I'll be dropping off 50,000 but gaining 50,000 dropping off 50,000 gaining 50,000 for a long time and uh that was really really tough yeah mentally that's confusing to even try and uh comprehend what it means that you know 50,000 people have decided they're not interested in you anymore yeah they think I suck like where's the cool guy with the glasses with the paint on this guy is not meeting my expectations yeah yeah how was your mental health though at this point cuz you you essentially go from you know supporting Casey on his videos to making your own YouTube videos but you're also going through this time like are you still regretting the decision are you still confused about the decision that's good yeah because we never really bridged that cap um yeah so when Casey and I came to the decision I'm going to go back home I'm going to get married or or I'm going to propose to gabs and he's going to slow down on the Vlog I um mentally I wanted to then take on YouTube and um not go back into I wanted to see where this thing went because I got the shout out now as well so I had all these people I got a phone call from can I say brand names yeah yeah I got a phone call from SeatGeek and they offered me from yeah uh and they offered me $115,000 to do a brand deal I was like what 15,000 Fu no way cuz I would see Casey doing brand deals but I would never get to hear them um I was like [ __ ] that's a good amount of money because I mean from an ad a TV ad I would you know you'll do one every month or two I get like 20 grand 30 sometimes 40 Grand yeah that it's like a lot more work right um a lot more that goes into it a lot more people actually come to think about it it's not as much that's [ __ ] strange to think about there's more people which makes it seem like more sure but it's much of a matchless I'm like you're going to pay me $115,000 and you don't even know what I'm going to do in this video like you're going to just pay me the money and I'm going to do um so I made a video um surprising my ex boss that fired me um I remember that video yeah yeah and I spent the $155,000 that I got paid for by seed GE to make the video I got like a helicopter and the whole the works you know stupid um but it made a cool video and uh then from there I just started getting brand deals I got a manager who phoned me he was like I can get this person and that I can't remember like honey and all the the Norms um must have been a VPN vpn's back then just backtack VPN just maybe a music library oh you know what I mean just the goto dude just endless just stack them up like go through a portfolio be like which one do you want yeah and uh I couldn't believe it I was like [ __ ] this is actually like you're speaking about money and I immediately changed to this thing of going like what is the point of making a video for YouTube if I'm not going to put a brand deal in it because then I'm going to be putting all this time and effort into it and I'm not going to be speaking of if you oh that's that's a good one for your guys yeah um no like I I started to think along that mentality because I was like this is this can turn into an actual business um but my mental health is still uh then it was the there was a lot more weight on course me now having to perform underneath my own name and um the dip of of followers every time I'd upload because these people couldn't remember why they subscribed but some guy told him to subscribe you know like Casey now this guy's playing flute with a brick you know like what the [ __ ] is this and uh there was so much doubt I I would think to myself maybe it's because I'm South African maybe it's I've got a weird accent maybe um you know maybe they don't like the way that I look you know there's so so much that you can attach to that how many people were watching the videos at this time though because it's not it's like a 100 plus thousand right then I was doing at least like 800,000 isn't it strange that we live in a world where you're like nobody likes me but 800,000 people are watching you yeah there would be like three comments saying like bad [ __ ] about me you know which three you can Times by a thousand because that's what it feels like right like one bad comment is like a thousand there's this time with a lot of creators where all of a sudden your understanding of what nobody is meaning like nobody is watching is really skewed right you go like 50,000 people watch this video nobody watched it right or 100,000 people watch this video that means nobody watched it well now with take Beast philanthropy Matrix like if if if a beast philanthropy video performed like one of my highest performing videos i' be like oh this is the biggest tank in history that mean if a million people watched a beast philanthropy video you'd be like zero that that actually means zero people watched it massive fade isn't that strange whatever the highest viewership is becomes the expectation so if you hit it again it's not this is amazing it's oh yeah well that's what's supposed to happen yeah let's try something else to make it higher yeah yeah but that's that's fascinating you know of like yeah the followers were fluctuating but the real metric is like how many people are watching your work and again the joy of a creative when you showed someone your work as a young kid was like if one person liked it you were like stoked that all went away that that from making gift that the fil going way back to the beginning and the intention behind that was to utilize uh film making to escape the burdens of my conscious mind I guess somewhat transcend through this feeling of depression which fluctuates I don't know for other people that that deal with depression and anxiety but you understand that it it comes and it goes and um when it's when it's bad um generally I create my best work and that's I found an outlet for that and that that is film making and I I lost touch with that um when I got into the commercial space especially with with drinking and dragging and yeah um then uh when I came out of that and then the the followers thing and chasing the the trying to to better each video not regarding the creative elements of each video but bettering the viewership bettering the comments bettering what people would say about me I wanted to be known as this like super cre ative guy like that that was my thing okay you know um and that had [ __ ] me up like really bad uh and um then after that I I I had to keep going because that that's your job yeah paying the bills now it became a thing where it was like [ __ ] I have to keep going but I'm not going to lie in 2019 um I it was just before the pandemic had hit um I just wanted to give up but I had no other option I knew that if I had to go to um back into the traditional world I would need like three or four months money to float me um to build my portfolio again you know what and um I just I couldn't I had to I had to to continue with YouTube so that's what I did that's probably the hardest Creative Energy though dude to turn the camera on and start speaking to it and you feel like [ __ ] you don't believe it start repeating lines you know today so true dude oh man I can only just laugh because yeah you click yeah and he's just said you turn it back on and you're like do you need protection from unsafe Wi-Fi yeah dude oh cuz I've got a VPN for you bro there's been such like it's been times where I've and then it's like okay this breakthrough idea I'm going to make a [ __ ] song from a brick yeah you know I really liked that video I also liked it but back then yeah when coming up with that [ __ ] like I had no belief I ID have these crazy ideas and then I would start filming it and I'd get halfway through and those [ __ ] videos take like a month to make D you know how long they take to edit and at the same time I'm making other videos so that I can sit and edit that for a bit and it's like each and every single plinky plunk and uh then I'd look at that and look at the timeline and go like I'm G to give up anyway what the [ __ ] is the point yeah and then I put that video out and then it that video got like one and a half million views or did well I don't know um and then I was back on top you know yeah and then your your emotions are swaying I don't have depression anymore dude I'm I've beat that [ __ ] and uh it's my life has been as a creator has been really crazy like that just before I've wanted to give up Something's Happened and in 2019 a guy called Tom loftas from Discovery the Discovery Channel phoned and uh he had watched a YouTube I'll call it show that I done that year called the not normal show remember made the seed map I asked people to plant seeds which were unfinished ideas all around the world um and he phoned and and that was that was like three days before I was about to literally just go like I give up like really like i' made the film I think I actually put the video out to say like I'm quitting YouTube and uh the yeah he pH he was like I I love what you're doing I want to um I don't know what it is but there's something here like I want to do a show with you so you pitch me ideas and we'll come up with something and we spent uh that then gave me the you know I guess confidence to be like what I'm doing is okay so I'm gonna keep doing YouTube for now well until I go over and move on to TV I guess so that took about like a year to develop the Brew show um I had like I had more than 12 ideas I had like maybe 15 or 16 incomplete ideas I think Discovery could only afford to pay for 12 episodes but uh we were like we're going to finish every single idea in this book and then that's going to be the end of my chapter on YouTube that was the plan um because in in an amongst all of that was the development of these two feature films that had going um and Discovery was going to be the develop they were going to develop one and then Warner was going to develop one um and was like the perfect kind of ending to YouTube because they were going to let me upload those to YouTube as well these these um it had to go on Discovery like two weeks before three weeks before so pretty good deal that's a lot of belief in you after what seems like a tough year on YouTube where you feel like no one's watching you're struggling and then all a sudden tell me Corner Discovery like hey how about two feature films on a 12 episode TV show I thought someone my mom had come into money and she was paying this you know what I mean to keep me going um no I I couldn't believe that he had reached out and said that he believed in me it's always been like a person that's believed in me weird a it's always been like Casey it's been Tom it's been this guy Tim that gave me the chance on on the tuska ad and um then uh yeah I I did the discovery show and that was awesome because they just gave me the free reign to I worked with this guy Tom um and taking his job is to like sign off on everything and make sure and usually I guess the client in that regard would be the red tape and someone to be like no I hate that hate that he was just such a big fan of what we were doing he was like he would literally watch reviews and God love it that's it yeah did you have to do like a bunch of like the thing that freaks me out there's this really interesting concept that uh we were talking about before you came in um like if if we got an email from Netflix saying let's let's take this talk show and let's let's put on Netflix let's make something like David Letterman's my next guest but for creators um there's no possible way I would say no like I would be like that sounds amazing let's do it but I also know in my head that working with a streamer is really challenging and it's like nothing like what we do here is that accurate in your experience with Discovery like when I hear about that I'm like okay there's going to be a ton of legal review we're going to have to blur out a ton of logo logos we're gonna have to get location releases everywhere like for me my mind gets overwhelmed by that concept and that you know the notes from the stream and that's also been our experience when we have made things for TV sure before is that it's it's becomes quickly a nightmare scenario where you've lost complete control yeah definitely over everything you see yeah what's interesting is I came from there um so I built my company Joe based off of that U so we we do a lot of service work service work meaning um a production companies that want to come and work in Cape Town and we'll service the job for them so we organize all the bits and Bobs and um so I've got really smart producers and people that do all that you know content buyers and whatever and people product placement and continuity and so we did like when we started with the discovery stuff we had to do a bunch of training um on like what to and what not to say with regards to just how how to conduct ourselves on set and then also what to say with inside of the films and I pushed back on most of it because I had been developing this thing alongside with Tom so like a lot of the things in the beginning they didn't want me to say [ __ ] you know and I was like but I always say that you know but it's my favorite work yeah yeah people are going to be like that that's not not authentic does doesn't sound right and they like okay well beep it out and then I I think I got to keep it on my YouTube channel the stuff I uploaded but they had to beep it out on Discover on Discovery I think something like that then there's certain things like my cuts are too fast so they could give somebody um an epileptic fit whoa but I was like why the [ __ ] does YouTube not have that thing in it yeah interesting you know what I mean that sounds like a problem yeah cuz you would run stuff through um H it's called like Tech something it's like a tech check you run it through there and then it gets a sign off it's just a like a computer that looks at it wow so the pace of the cuts was too fast yeah on all of my videos yeah comes back and it's like epilepsy warning I'm like jeez and then we have to go back and really slow the cuts down so that's something they won't put it out on TV if that's the case they can't just like so so there's that there like red tape I would say if you didn't have a relationship with somebody like I really developed a strong relationship with Tom um before going ahead uh if it was like you were working with a bunch of exx then you would lose complete control of your show yeah and you just become something purely for views for that streer and you're just a porn you don't even know how it performs and they selling your content they become they content buyers and then they own your stuff in perpetuity and they selling it off in different territories you even know what's going on yeah so that show was pretty YouTube focused like I remember Logan Paul was in an episode there was an episode with Logan there was episode with Casey yeah um yeah season one Logan yeah uh what was some of I'm just curious like during this time of like ups and downs on YouTube and then going to Discovery um what was Casey's advice to you um did you turn to him for advice I always do yeah yeah because I know you wrote you wrote a blog post about 10 things you learned from Casey which I have those 10 things written out here but I'm curious about like what I right there you I'll read it to you I think it's really funny but first i'm I'm curious like during this time did you turn to him for advice on how to grow your YouTube channel cuz your guys' styles are very different you know what he said he was like you should create a product out of macademia nuts that has caffeine in them tastes really good and will'll fuel you so is this the point in the show where we're going to find out about the Brew bars no no it's still going to be in there okay that's a separate thing I mean cuz I actually do want to like I I would love to eat one AV you're right right you want everyone to stop ASMR we going have to take these things off and really get into make a song out of it yeah oh dude don't get me stuck okay all right will be here for three weeks Dan just lives here making a song he arrived tomorrow morning and got shirts off from like hitting the wall like can't get him to leave no you won't record the next interview with the next guest and he's like still here dude I will be he's getting diagetic sound from the other guest in see C we're just like sorry he won't we can't get him to leave he lives he's been here since we recorded the answer to the question where is Dan Ma you know he's on our gou we have still making like never ending song's still capturing diagenic sound [ __ ] dude [ __ ] hell BR so casy's advice to you at that time before going over to Discovery yeah just like during that ups and downs of YouTube like obviously with the seasoned YouTube vet or someone who had like really found success on YouTube I'm sure given your relationship he was like hey Dan try this or if you asked him what should I do the weirdest thing that ever happened with Casey was um I this is in 2019 I came to LA to come visit him and um the K the only Casey that I knew was the guy that would be like if he came to pick me up there would be like a camera in the front there would be a camera on the seat and we would be going somewhere we out of no idea but I just have to get ready to shoot and he comes and picks me up I'm like ready bro I'm like I'll do anything I got my helmet on like the whole thing get in the car and I'm like what are we doing he's like we're going surfing I'm like okay cool bro like where what do we what is it about he's like no we're going surfing I'm like what he's like yeah bro it's Thursday that's what I do here and go surf I'm like you being serious what happened to my old friend yeah um so I think at that time Casey had just completely stopped uploading um he moved here he's his whole like he's changed since then as well so he before he was like super Non-Stop and then Al change he was like very chill just like Sur a lot now he's back New York grind hustle back to the other casc version but um his advice I I remember um speaking to him about the the thing about I was like there's this thing that's going to happen with Discovery and he was like hesitant about it he was like are you sure that it's going to happen though kind of thing and he was like if it does [ __ ] and that that sounds amazing you should definitely do it Casey's always um supported me much more as a filmmaker than a YouTuber um he would just be like dude your videos are [ __ ] great you know just keep making them like you just got to keep making them like [ __ ] the views and then I would want to be like [ __ ] you like you you doing you making great videos and you're getting views yeah like how did you figure that one out you know um so a lot of yeah his comments always like just keep on making great videos and stop worrying about the views then I was always like yeah but you still getting views so what are you what are youing yeah if you weren't getting views and you're in my boat what's your like you know so if you're if you're sort of struggling to be creatively validated by YouTube you move to Discovery do you finally at the end of that get a sense of creative validation or or an alignment of purpose no no it never end I I wrote it in in my blog recently it's I think I described it as like the um Mirage of a Finish Line just like keeps on getting further and further away like um the anticipation of something happening is is what makes it exciting that's why it's so hard to finish a film I I find it so difficult to finish a Fone because one I'm scared shitless to put it live and two it's also very difficult to say goodbye to something that you've been doing so like I find the last 5% of the film taking the longest to do so with your editor you need to be like remember what Dan said just [ __ ] get through that [ __ ] at last 5% it's probably what's what's bottlenecking you guys right now but yeah I I um it's it's um I think that I try and hold on to that anticipation a lot more and then when it finally gets there and it gets to the point and the film's finally done it's never good enough you know and then you release it and people could celebrate that one but I'm already worried about the next one yeah I read something the other day it was like my film would never be complete if I didn't have a deadline you know like as a filmmaker that is inevitable if if the client didn't say it had to be done on this day like it would just forever be in this constant Loop of trying to better it for sure um so yeah with Discovery I I got through the show and I knew that that I was going to move to Al and uh make this feature film called the afronauts about these four guys uh um that from Uganda um it it was based off of a Times magazine article about the worst 100 ideas of the century and one of them was about the Ugandan Space Program which is very funny um and in the 80s or the late 70s early 80s ID aain who was a terrible dictator decided he wanted to join the Space Race So he created this Space Academy where people would wear like tinfoil hats and [ __ ] it's insane you would roll them down the hills in barrels and everything and I thought that was a really interesting story and um anyways we slowly got this thing developed and one of the Brew show episodes was a development piece for Warner Brothers Discovery where we went out to go find out the realities of the situation in Uganda and they bought it and they were like cool this is a done deal that's happening so off I go I say [ __ ] you YouTube I'm going to Hollywood I'm going to be a direct to now I'm gonna make this feature were you like prepared to make a future film like I don't even know what how that works to make like a a long you feel like you felt very prepared to do that oh yeah yeah yeah I I mean back from where I'd come from that that that was always the goal got it also when here in in Hollywood as a first time director you usually get paired with um a production company that that would guide you really well through the process they can't hedge a bet so yeah and and and the fact that we had gotten it over the line which is the hardest part especially here in Al there's a lot of yeses and all of them mean no yeah like for 10 yeses you here like you know maybe um one is a real yes so what happened is when I came to Los Angeles um and I said you YouTube which now I feel like really weird about that's I'm back here thanks guys welcome welcome back thanks for me always having my back like always accepting me every time have you in your bars here um so yeah I the merger happened at the worst time possible between one of brothers and Discovery and um we had just read an article about uh batg girl getting [ __ ] canned so what was happening is David zoff was just [ __ ] canning a whole bunch of things for tax ride offs um and we were so scared our FM was going to get made and never see the light of day um so we bought it back from from Discovery and now we like shopping around uh Hollywood to try and get this thing bought and there was a lot of different buyers that were Keen like I said everyone's saying yes yes yes we'll get back to you in a week we'll get back to you now this is in like August last year 20122 and then I was like no I'm [ __ ] like I've I'm starting to dig into my savings I haven't uploaded a YouTube video I've said [ __ ] you YouTube you know what am I going to do now vpns yeah about yeah VPN numbers have gone down like everyone's already got one dude you know the emails that you usually just immediately delete and click archive I'm going through those hi influencer yeah want to see hi Dan Channel and like go dude and uh yeah that's a dark place if you're reading those emails oh dude and then if you respond way he may be getting scammed oh bro at that point I'm not going back to the Gams dude yeah so yeah I um I came to New York and my intent was I was going to start youtubing again for like the fifth time and I spoke to Casey um and he was like dude what are you doing you know like you're just bouncing back and forth and I was in a room that was way too expensive in Downtown New York um and I I was just extending my time waiting for something to happen cuz I like life is what were you waiting to happen in New York I don't know you don't know just this this thing and what is your wife saying to you at this time is she she's like come back to South Africa and I'm like no I'm going to make it I'm waiting no I was waiting for a phone call to come through from a buyer okay for the film and I needed to be in in the state so I could fly to LA but I couldn't make content in La I could only make it in New York cuz it's ult for me to make the kinds of films that I make in in Los Angeles um so yeah and and I also felt that I just needed to be around a mentor and Casey was very open to to helping me like figure things out and uh Jimmy phones out of the blue dude at like I don't even know one o'clock in the morning two o'clock in the morning I see on my phone it just says Jimmy Beast because that's I saved his number like that and um he's like yo uh I want to speak to you about an opportunity and I was like okay and then I remember thinking like [ __ ] maybe I should film this this would be cool for a video but I think it's like illegal to do that I don't know right but I still did but you did I still filmed it but I I I don't have that footage anymore I don't think it's in a YouTube video yeah yeah [ __ ] guilty sign off on it okay I'm pretty sure no no yeah I still have that footage nothing bad was said um I don't think uh yeah so I I I got a camera I was like oh my gosh Jimmy phone me at least if nothing comes out of that song I could say Jimmy phoned me and put in a video and maybe get 10,000 views I don't know what the thought back then was but uh yeah he phoned me and he said um do you like the Beast forby channel is lacking a little bit and um we want to try you out on a video what do you think about that and I thought [ __ ] well I went over and looked at the current state of the Beast philanthropy videos and um they were just really bad the way that they had been done um and then again now back at that thing where like the phone could ring at any point and I could sell my feature or Jimmy's like give me an answer so we spoke for a while and he was like look you know I I want to try out on this thing and it wasn't a done deal um and uh he said you know let me know like tomorrow or the next day or whatever and I was like [ __ ] then Renee zwier and myself were going to make a film and that was going to be a short film different film this is a different film okay um which had just then gone over the line so like in one day I have these two opportunities the Rene zwier was just it was a short film but it would have led to a huge thing in my career um and it was a short film called umbrella um and we just didn't have a shoot date yet because she was being blocked off for another phone that she's currently working on now but we knew that it had to happen in the first block of 2023 so at the beginning of this year kind of the the first quarter like it would have to happen in maybe JN February um so that was happening the the feature film we had bought back from dis recovery um and now I've got like 3 4 months and I don't really know what's happening yet we trying to sell the other feature the film with Renee we getting funding for but I'm not really going to make too much money out of it so I decid to move to New York and um at that time I didn't know for how long I just wanted to make a couple of videos and then see you know Circle through the old brand deal things phone up the yeah you know hey BR you have a deal for me hey seep geek remember n years ago I'm back yeah I'm back in this time for good yeah um and yeah so I I made a couple videos I was I was making enough money I mean I doing you know what the normal rate you would get for a brand deal um and I made I was doing like a couple hundred thousand views a video then still so that was fine um and then um I realized like it was getting toward the end um I just didn't know what to do I was going to fly back to South Africa um gabs my wife was like I'm out of here and uh she left she was with you in New York yeah she had she flew to New York um cuz I was at that point went again I'd hit like a another down yeah my feature wasn't happening this thing with Renee which sounded really exciting again like I said there's a lot of yeses so it's kind of like is it going to happen isn't it going to happen um but then then I get told on this day that um the Rene form is happening and it's happening on the end of November it's like the 25th of November there's this a time where we needed to be in Canada there was this a road that we needed to shoot on and she's free and that's when we're going to shoot it and that day and dead ass like this is probably 2 a.m. that morning Jimmy phones and offers me this opportunity to shoot a beast philanthropy video and um I'm like when is the video and he's like well it happens from middle of November till like the 5ifth or sixth of December so I'm like [ __ ] yeah you know uh this Old Situation again and um then and I also hadn't I didn't know if my the feature was going to sell yet um and there had been a lot of like the feature was sitting with everyone uh the other feat my my feature the afronauts and uh Jimmy was like we need the the the philanthropy videos are lacking um I went to go look at look at the videos I don't know if you saw the old Beast philanthropy videos I don't want to throw a shade on anyone but they were just really bad they were done in it was distasteful for the you subject matter yeah what what it was and it need it needs craft and and beauty and art it needs to transform the audience and have the correct emotion so I looked at and I was like oh and I I I spoke to Casey obviously as well about that and it it all came down to like if how much of my own uh style I'd be able to put into those videos because if I was just going to be making those same kinds of videos it would have been I I probably wouldn't have gone ahead and done it and Jimmy was like you got to let me know tomorrow and um I was like [ __ ] BR and in all honesty I wasn't going to do it you weren't going to do Beast FL you were going to do the Rene Z yeah yeah cuz I was like this is that's the only thing that makes sense it's because if I had to think about it also they it wasn't like going to be a long-term thing they were going to try me out on one job right and I was also like my thought at the time was this is really bad but I'll be honest with you um I I was like I'm just going to try and charge them a fuckload and they can always say no and if they say yes well then at least I've I've got enough money to like get through the next thing and I'll explain it to Renee or whatever I don't know like try and get through so I came in like so high for this video and Jimmy phoned me back and he was like dude you know maybe like let's pull it back for this one back of about day and um because as you know obviously for the philanthropy videos there's no Revenue like everything that's generated goes into back into the project so what what I get paid to make the films comes out of Jimmy's pocket comes out of their main Channel whatever it is U which I didn't know at the time you know um I I I didn't know much about Beast philanthropy at all um I'm I so safe to assume you didn't really sleep much that night no no not at all I put myself in your shoes like I was I was going back and forth and I was thinking like [ __ ] you know like my one chance also with someone like Renee and the the other people that were involved and the exx and all these people I'd been speaking to and what if I do a good job do I continue with them do I screw everything up do I it's fascinating that you've been faced with this multiple times in your career and that it's emblematic of the moment in time for you know filmmakers of like do I go this way and go to Hollywood or do I go this way and go to YouTube in the had one foot on each side of the fans for so long it's fascinating that you represent that and your story has so many of these Forks yeah and then I then Darren phoned me and if Darren hadn't phoned me there was like a Darren found me like much later um and he Darren's one sold me on it um wow hearing Darren's just passion sounds like a terrible word his devotion uh to wanting to utilize YouTube as a platform to generate one awareness to a younger generation and and just like our generation that to showcase said you don't have to start off a charity you can just become a part of one or donate to one or to create videos to raise money to help more people um and he explained this to me like Darren does in a very long winded way it was like a two hour long phone call but he got really emotional on the phone and um I was like geez this person really [ __ ] cares um and something in me was like [ __ ] this just feels right um what if I can make a film that's good as a film I'd look at it and I'll be like this is the same as like gift like it's a film that really makes me feel good but at the same time it's also doing good um and I'm getting paid to do it like I'm getting the the same amount of money that I would be doing if I was off doing a feature kind of thing that was the hope you know that was the the goal after my conversation with d and that's kind of what I thought if I said yes so I hedged my bet and I I said I'll do it and then it was remember only for that one film then I I phoned um the executive producer that was going to do the film with with Renee and they were like no it's not happening like you're not going to shoot that like you're shooting you have chosen something else yeah like your your chance is that's it's finished you know like that's that's it and I think that was just because of the fact that it was um that time span they weren't salty about the fact that yeah um it's just you get like one shot with these kinds of people someone of such high stature I've got major respect for Renee for even just spending some time with me yeah you know um so yeah I I'd given up on that and then did you feel okay about that no not at all I was [ __ ] yeah because it sounds kind of similar to when you you know yeah so that it comes up like because I would have thought in that moment you go shoot the thing with Renee and then you hop on the next Beast philanthropy video because it's still a test they needed the they needed this the film so what happens with peace philanthropy is a project happens on a certain date and like we can't fake it or it's not like a a film shoot um if we doing something like for this one it was building and orphanage the construction and stuff everything takes so long to set up to to the point so they they break ground and date X and then remember we we dealing with real people and real things so we can't have um a bunch of um kids that don't have homes and then be like oh just wait another two days because we need to film something else and then come in so like we the difficulties with with it is is is ensuring that we make a a really fantastic film but also that we don't hinder any of the process as it would happen if there wasn't cameras there um so with the orphanage it was these were the set dates that we would have had to make that firm and um they were going to roll into the new year with this new decision of if if you know things are going to change got it and then it got to then once I was making the film it was kind of like another film was coming up where they were giving away a bunch of shoes like 20,000 shoes um and they had another crew shooting that and then Darren was like maybe you would want to jump on the edit of this so then I started to think like oh maybe there is something that's going to happen here um and then Jimmy was like do you want to come to ant Artica I was like [ __ ] yeah dude like all of this is like now I'm going to Artica and there's like this whole like Beast thing that's happening I don't even know what's going on now so I did the orphanage job um and I went all out like I was like I'm if I'm going to do this I'm going to redesign the whole thing so I looked at the way that the animations had been done I even I went as far as just redesigning their logo for them as well I I just went Full Tilt I was like if I'm going to do this I'm going to try my hardest um and I remember finishing the film and and actually for the first time in maybe three or four years looking at a piece of my work and going like this is fantastic um actually [ __ ] I didn't say fantastic that makes me sound like such a dick I was like to me this is nice you liked it that's all that matter it was good you were proud of yourself be fantastic fantastic from someone else's eyes okay you say Exquisite maybe yeah Divine what is where's chat gbt at yeah um yeah know I said that I I I I really felt like that that moved me um we score all our own music um as well fully original music in all of those every single film yeah so yeah wasn't the end Artica video though this is now on the main Channel wasn't that Han Zimmer yeah that's Hanmer that's crazy yeah like when I remember when I saw at the end it's like so casual it's like music by Han Zimmer you're like wait what that's Sean Hendrick who hooks all that up yeah crazy like that yeah so everything that we do on peace philanthropy is is scored and we it's an amazing way to make foils the the kind of system we've set out but so we tried it with Edwin and I went to Greenville and and showed Jimmy the film and Darren was like don't worry you know like with Jimmy's super busy always and like he watches the film and there's nothing worse than when you play someone a foam and they press pause like well you're busy playing the foam I don't know if you've ever had that before I mean I I'm I'm guilty of doing that so yeah because you're like analyzing you helping someone else you know or you're giving feedback to your editors right um but if you dare do that to Casey you'll cut your finger off I reckon like he's playing you one of his and you speak or you like press pause like that and you go see right there that cut you can't do that you watch the thing through first without anything being said which is very it's the way that it used to be um it's just out of just appreciation of like someone spending so much time yeah but I remember getting like 5 seconds into the video and Jimmy like presses pause I'm like [ __ ] and he goes he goes back and he presses p go he's like he goes again I'm thinking Jesus Christ can can he say something and then he' stopped pressing pause and like maybe 2 minutes in he shed a tear watching this video and uh he was like I can't even remember what he said I was just so stoked then um he was like it's really beautiful or whatever um and he was like let's turn this into a long-term thing like right then and there um and then he said how much do you want right there right there at the table yeah yeah and I'm and Darren's looking at me and I don't know if you know steel Steel's looking at me and we're in his house dude yeah yeah and I'm like my head's going crazy bro I'm like [ __ ] what do I do and uh I come up with a a figure like very quickly like by doing all kind of MTH and I push it a little bit higher than I would and I drop the figure and he's like cool then and I'm like [ __ ] dude the figure yeah exactly like it could it just could have been done like but anyways I'm stoked for like for the fact that I'm able to be paid to be able to make these kinds of films is insane it's it's also a testament to uh Jimmy's authentic care for these types of films right and obviously like we all know Jimmy personally but the world looks at Jimmy and some of the the the charitable work that he does as purely for viewership right like you've I'm sure you've read the headlines and the the push back even like the most recent video which was an great video the wells video that was a great video he even tweeted preemptively he was like I just I know I know what you guys are G to I know what's going to be said and then it did get said yeah and then it did get said um what's your POV on that of like cuz again you're intimately involved in the process of making content that's philanthropic or around the the philanthropy that you guys are doing um where you know the world looks at it as oh you know this guy's just doing this for for attention and for views yeah I mean ultimately if you if you look at it we need to generate views in order to generate Revenue in order to do more right so there there is the discussion of going well um is this a once off is it something that's like also done as um a a seeking attention and and it's going to uh like we going and building a 100 walls that are just going to fall to pieces and there was no real effort put into the development behind and you know the longevity like Darren started building the first Wells two years ago so 2 and a half years ago but not to to beat on the on the well side of things I think that people misunderstand and that's why we keep on on at the end of the Beast philanthropy videos just saying um remember that uh if you can't donate if you can't um purchase maybe a piece of merchandise um just share or like because each and every dollar that we earn from this video goes back into the charity um so I mean at the end of the day like [ __ ] those people like you know no matter in which way you want to H and how you want to help we will always get some sort of negative Kickback and Darren gets Bleak about it every time yeah I love darant to bits he obviously he gets bummed about it and I I just kind of take it with with a pinch of Sal cuz it's I mean when you're reaching that many people you know yeah you're also funding the philanthropy in a way that the majority if not all the people in the industry really don't understand like it is a first ofit kind yeah sort of way to fund philanthropy on a really large scale I totally get where some people are coming from yeah you know that that's why we need to that's why at the end of the videos we keep on saying what we say but a lot of those kinds of people they don't get there to the end yeah um to hear that but eventually it will become more known and people like you know the we've got such a strong audience of people that are stand behind what we doing that um they sort of answer that for us if you go and look at like people that try and slam us for build helping people drink water okay like there's an army of people that that understand um what we we doing and why are we doing it and then you know they they stand up for us and have to yeah we don't have to go through and Darren doesn't have to read the comments and get oblique and so in that moment when Jimmy says cool done and you get the job what's the emotion there are you like this is my thing now like this is my ticket or are you kind of like are you like well I was going to go to Hollywood like are you mixed is your emotion mixed or is it like no this is great I'm happy the way that he said done to my me like asking for this amount of money um I was a little bit Bleak that I didn't ask for more but then I remember because Darren and I had driven there together and we got back in the car afterwards and we were both very silent cuz I mentioned to Darren on the way there like I wonder how this is going to go and Darren's like I'm very nervous cuz like Darren's like I really want this to work yeah but at the end of the day it's Jimmy's decision if you know we're going to move you forwards you're going to become Chief creative officer and take over at Beast philanthropy but he's like it might take some time you know um and I'm thinking [ __ ] or you know time that's not good and um I was hella nervous before showing Jimmy that like when I say when he was watching and pressing pause and stuff and then when I saw him like smiling and there was like a little tear and stuff watching I was like oh my gosh this is insane and when he said done to the deal and I'd gotten over the fact that I could have gotten more and we woke back to the car and it was silent we get in the car and like Darren gave out like a little squeak I'm not even lying he was like yes and I was like yes and we're like in the car like yeah yeah and I just so can you imagine like Jimmy's like standing guys you left your car your phone but yeah we we celebrated in the car we Darren and I have have this camaraderie that's like really special and uh yeah it's we were we were both just so happy I I knew that that's what I wanted to do um and then around March hit the first low again of when I got approached with the fact that the feature could have gone forwards the the you afronaut feature yeah and um that's when we we had made about three Beast philanthropy films and I was kind of on a on a film by film basis at that point I hadn't signed a a lengthly uh sort of um contract so I could have just walked away really if I I wanted to I think in America you can just I don't know how it works here in South Africa staff is different but I think yeah you can just get like fired like they can point you and be like Lee can't do that in South Africa um but yeah I I could have W walked away um and gone and done the feature and that was when and Darren and I had like we had we were three months into our working relationship so it was like trying to figure it out trying to figure out this be philanthropy thing and and going like we were getting more views than we thought we were and how long are we going to make the videos and it was like a little bit of conflict here and there and there was a moment we had our first ever fight outside the Studio C can I say Studio C I don't know if people know what that is yeah I think that's F yeah um we we were parked outside Studio C in the same car that we had celebrated in he's got this red Tesla and uh 3 months later we in there arguing and again it was my own internal debate of like [ __ ] I could go off and do this feature film or if I say no now this is the last time I probably could ever say no or this opportunity will come around and I just opened up to Darren and said that um [Music] and he said well I'm not going to hold you back I was like [ __ ] they he was going to offer me more money he's like yeah go yeah go he was like look I I you know this is a an amazing thing that's happening here and I can see what will happen down the line and um I love working with you but I can't hold you back which is such wise and like I hate him for it because it's just like the best thing to say you know I really wish that he would have gotten angry or something I didn't know easier it gives you it gives you permission to then go oh okay well yeah [ __ ] you go make a Hollywood movie uh so he made that decision so much harder I was like [ __ ] this guy's so nice um and then yeah once again peep beep Casey J again he's always I mean yeah he's ad I I don't think I have I've never not taken Casey's advice I've taken every blindly followed everything that Casey has has um advised me on actually and it's always irritates me to say it's turned out the right thing you know um cuz he's just always so godamn right e [ __ ] so what he say this how he does it what did he say in this context he told me to stick with it yeah he said this is a a sure thing and just you've never done something for a long period of time before and stick to it and see see what happens but like you got to stop bouncing all over the place and he was like this is a he's like he I I maybe send you the ual text but his words were something like you got a really really good thing going here um it's safe it's secure um you've got a son on the way cuz I knew that you know um so it was it was also job security um he's like you helping people and you you have a lot of creative freedom to make these films in the way in which you want to make them and they really [ __ ] good films um so that that made it pretty easy for me to go it's very uh it's great to have that sounding board that comes from yeah a really human rational point of view because as the creative it's easy to be irrational with the things you want to make and the things you think should be made and exist in the world but when you have a kid on the way and you're it's nice to have someone who knows you that well who's like hey gone through it you've been moving around a lot yeah and that's not helping you I also think as creatives at least I experienced this a lot and and still at times do where you look at opportunities as like your ticket to make it and you can never understand like you said the finish line is always getting pushed so you can never understand if you've made it like is this where you're supposed to arrive as a creative [ __ ] interesting right and you look at Opportunity as like oh there's my ticket to go and make it you know like making the Hollywood movie that's making it then what then what right and so when you get when you get tickets you need that sounding board of the person who has gotten a lot of tickets you know Casey's gotten a lot of opportunities yeah that sounding board to go what does this even mean you know like what does it even mean to get this ticket is this a ticket I should take or not and you have to like settle as a creative to recognize that you yourself are the ticket yeah it's not the external factors right yeah I think yeah great great advice I once got from Casey to he was like look you the kind of person who can get dropped off with nothing in the middle of a city with a camera and a computer to edit with and you'll find a way of making it and like thinking about it like that then I you know know and and hearing that from a a a filmmaker that's so well-renowned you know as a filmmaker and that that was a lot of validation for me and affirmation to realize like okay the there's a skill set and a talent here that I can invent something with a camera and a computer to edit with and I'll always be okay like no matter how badly I if I do make the wrong choice and I [ __ ] something up I can always reinvent myself yeah however like let's not waste our time yeah you know and try and make those wise decisions um you also never know who's watching if you know you think back to when Tim was his name from Discovery Tom Tom sorry sorry Tom Jesus man now we're definitely not getting a water deal yet oh God so you think back you think back to when Tom reached out yeah you had no idea right I'm Jing I'm Jing yeah you're saying yeah like you you just never know who's watching you may think there's a right decision a wrong decision but if you put yourself in a place where you're making work that you're proud of you don't even know at the tail end of this Beast philanthropy one if there will be a tail end maybe you'll do this for years and years to come but two you don't know who's watching and who will reach out and and see the next chapter of your story I promise you that's the like where it's come from is like views are one thing um but if you're making work with substance and meaning like the stuff that you guys are doing and I hear like every time you bring on a Creator massive creators they all say I watch your guys show you guys aren't sitting with 25 million subscribers but yet your uh network is of 500 million subscribers because the people that you know the dots that you can connect because you ask you're sitting with intelligent people you're asking wise questions and you're teaching those other people that don't know about those different Avenues um and with say philanthropy um the upside is that the views are so high which is great but even if they weren't um the kinds of people that are watching those films are are really people that matter in the sense of uh they value um doing better [ __ ] for the Earth um you know and those are the people that you want in your corner especially the ones that that want to sponsor videos like that right you know even if for instance like which I don't see it happening and I hope it it didn't was uh you know the relationship split between beander and and myself um still the the right people would have seen the films that I made for Beast philanthropy and it's been a really great positioning Point um and then I would probably go off into documentries that are about um betterment of of the earth and that sort of thing yeah yeah Phil philanthropic based based stuff for sure I'm also curious just like functionally how it works because you're the chief creative officer of Beast philanthropy uh but you're also running a production called Joe films sure so is that like is Joe films the production company behind Beast philanthropy or is that separate it's separate so I hire Joe to help with the films to hire oh interesting interesting yeah how much of Joe's and maybe you can tell me this maybe you can't but how much of Joe film's business is Beast philanthropy 100% 100% got itting in the beginning we were trying to figure it out because um we didn't have and like the great thing with Jimmy and Darren is like we can be 100% transparent and open with the books I could be like look we need x amount of cover overhead for Joe but we don't need you know I'm not in a in a position where I'm money hungry whatever so we need x amount of profit and if you want Joe's full attention for these films we're going to need to be paid X so my salary is here Joe's Joe's service charge will be this and that's the amount that will get per FM so they've got the entirety of Joe which is great because I I also get to build um the culture of Joe right you have a list of things you learned from Casey which we'll talk about as we have Brew bars later if you were to make a list of things that you've learned from Jimmy uh whether that's in watching edits or storytelling or uh the way he operates and operates at such scale what have you learned now from working with with Mr Beast dude you didn't read blog post number two I don't have that printed out it's on the blog dude um I didn't print it out so I didn't know that that was there I have I'll try I'll try remember h no no no uh wow Jimmy Jimmy is complex as you know yeah um Jimmy like I mean it depends in which way you want to look at it like if you're looking at uh from just a YouTube growth standpoint or as a business scalability standpoint or as a a human being standpoint you know there's like three different things I think in the in the casy 10 parts it's like all three of those together Jimmy still I think um at what he's 25 now yeah so he is the without a doubt Genius of YouTube content creation so he has so much the there's countless to talk about on what to learn from that aspect I don't know from Jimmy on a mentorship angle um advice that one would possibly ask that's like life advice sure you know yeah I don't know him in in that way we spend a lot of time together but I've never actually and it's interesting to think that I've never just gone down that rout with him at all it's we always only purely speak business what about the like notes on videos like have you learned anything in his the way he it's what's what's crazy is with philanthropy is there's it's an overlap of what he's input and my input and we've kind of created a hybrid obviously he say goes always and I would I would never challenge what what he has to say like I mean it's just pointless it's like you know what what he says is going to work um but sometimes there's there's a couple of things where it'll be like it'll be like can can I make this change it'll be like but it'll take two days you know and then it's just not worth it maybe the but um what I've learned is when things are just like you get something called a knowy video it's like where you already know what's going to happen in the video how do you get through that and for example okay let's take a video called uh we gave away 20,000 shoes in Africa so now you already know like before you've even clicked on the video now how did to open up that so I wrote this line at the beginning of that film which was um the only thing standing in the way between education and 100,000 or 300,000 kids in Africa is a simple pair of shoes um now you go okay I'm now invested into finding out why they gave away these pairs of shoes and it's not so much about the shoes but it's more about the why so that's but prior that I I would never have known how to get over that Gap you know because the previous Beast philanthropy videos would have just start out from from the get-go um you know it's the same thing as you saw saw in the worlds video um once you saw one well they need they needed to be a whole whole bunch of other elements that happened in for you to be more and more excited to see more and more walls being built um but what I've learned from Jimmy I think number one is uh collaborate versus compete we speak about um you know this the idea of rather competing with with uh other creators he t to collaborate with like anyone that he can right and maybe that is because he is just so big but I think even prior to that he he was always just collaborating with people um whether it's he helps out on when he can he's always down to get onto a phone call with somebody he's always on the phone I was in that lineup i' I've gone in and out of that phone lineup based on how much I pick up but he you know he'll go on a walk and just go through a rotation of calling people yeah so and he so he's always either if it's helping someone out by putting them in a in a a short or a vertical or um you know platforming somebody on his main Channel he he does more so that than than try and compete with with anybody else um I think identifiable characters is a very big one for his main Channel videos that that helps you to be able to create more than just a singular character so now you've got like in friends or David do did it really well um you mean identifiable characters like repeat characters that have distinct personalities Yeah Carl can describe Tariq you can so Tariq you you defined as this camera operator who also then integrates himself as a friend and you know he's there Call's you can identify with Chris same thing um Chandler Nolan um and no I've watched Nolan's development right from the start when he came in and it's been very interesting to see so he's created these identifiable characters that stick to these certain marks arpes and and they people get to either like them or not and now now you're starting to develop a much an appeal to a much wider audience because interesting you've got a bunch of people someone be like I'm an Nolan fan you know like screw Cole or whatever someone's like no screw you I love Co and you actually want that like you want people to take sides of course it's interesting that you were kind of in that position with Casey yeah you know as being like somewhat of I was one being like who is this Dan guy get out [ __ ] yeah more Marlin L Dan oh yeah yeah yeah um so identifiable characters is key um and significant moments I think that there's constant explosions throughout Jimmy like literal explosions and also just as Film School EV would understand and beat explosions there a lot of diagetic sound yeah um yeah but if you go back prior to big explosions like everything's leading up to some significant moment in a Jimmy video and he's reminding you that there is about to be a significant moment or that you're waiting for a significant moment like in this like we're all waiting to try a Brew Bar a beep yeah yeah yeah um there's a quote that you have that I pulled I don't I don't know exactly where it's from oh God uh it just says the only person that can edit a film the way that I want it to be edited is myself I say that okay in case you say that I mean here's the thing where did I say that unclear where you said it I think in an interview with the heavy Chef oh wow yeah bro you guys do a research yes yes yes trying to start again so well no I mean that's fine um the only person that can edit a film the way I want it to be edited is myself um you know I experienced that a lot uh with Colin um I shed every time I edit something he's like move get up no no no I mean quite the inverse like for me the the way I want something to be edited Colin was the only one who could edit that I couldn't even edit it myself the way I wanted it to be edited but then when we started to grow I would you know start to bring in editors and basically we would make something with the editor and then Colin would just take the timeline undo what they did or just start fresh and just do it the way he he wanted to do it uh just trying to maximize efficiency yeah but I think that is I imagine that's what Casey's like I imagine that's what you're like right so are you editing all the Beast philanthropy stuff or has have you learned how to expand your storytelling DNA yeah so I'll I'll teach you something here this is a a first draft should be used as an example of what it should not look like and as soon as you start to look at a first draft like that you'll actually be excited to look at first drafts M first drafts are the worst things to ever look at because they're never the way that you want them to be you look at it and you go oh my [ __ ] I thought this form was going to be great right now I'm looking at this this is [ __ ] right cuz these films we go in like it's very interesting way of making a movie because you you as a writer you want to use like all 40 rhetorical devices in order to amplify absolutely everything you know um but you can't we dealing with real human life we dealing with real circumstances we dealing with real people's yeah problems and you know you got to you can be this like Renegade director and in the fiction realm and be like yes you know like more pain more sorrow and like bigger release at the end you can't do that yeah um so we have the romanticized version of the film how do we get from um explaining the problem so impact um communication and persuasion um so how do we create this impactful scenario up front and showcase the what the issue is and then how do we communicate that in a way that's not boring but rather a way that's going to release a lots of oxytocin when we get to that point and that's transformative when that happens um so we go in with this kind of like road map of of what we're looking for we we know who the characters are we know the story but we never pigeon hole ourselves to a script of being like this is exactly how we're going to tell the story so we go with this kind of like uh bird's eye view and then we come back with a bank of footage and then it's like oh [ __ ] it's probably so much footage yeah and you there's so many directions that's why I was saying in this first draft that you look at there's so much that you can toss out cuz you're like that's useless even though while we were there everybody looked at each other we like wow that's a magic moment that's a great thing in the grand scheme of things nobody's going to care it's not doesn't make any sense it's it's not like what we going to speak about um it's uh yeah so so when we get back my my office alone is covered in whiteboard and both uh post officers are covered in whiteboard and we just write scripts that's all we do for most of the for like if I say it's 15 days worth of post three or four full days is just writing so it's writing a line and we've got uh AI tools that we use that replicates voices and MH we then run those voices back then we can time them then we sort of know okay for vo it's going to be like this and we'll take that and we start to score music to it so we can get a a Feeling and we go and the whole film is is done without any b-roll nothing and it was the first time I ever started making films that way was this year was telling the entirety of the story with vo and then taking uh segments out of the voxes um and which I just throw away lines to camera for people who don't understand and then there's actual sit down interviews um and a lot of the time we would have have to do which is quite complicated would be to to get somebody to say something that they're trying to say in a short space of time yeah um as you guys would know said so then you're like we got it already um but yeah usually people take a minute to get the point across so we have to like really condense that so sometimes we have to add in words like and why how so we have to go through their whole interview and find those words find Stitch it together so once we've done all of that um the rest of it is easy once you've got the music and the narrative and you can Envision what you've been there we've shot it beautifully already there's these explosive moments I mean then it's like that's the most beautiful part of editing then that last like 20% of that 30% is so beautiful I get the best part of the job during the last like four to five days that so I'm just like adding in things that along with the music along with the sound a you know you watch it back it's like ecstasy every single time I I think I'm the opposite I think that first part is what I consider to be the best part of the job oh really the like writing and the story edit putting those puzzle pieces together that's where I feel really comfortable and what I enjoy like figuring out that puzzle and then once that happens I'm like all right let's give it to someone who knows visuals and like can do something can make it look nice yeah it's hard to for me to think about which part I enjoy the most uh feels like I've been doing this for so long yeah you know at some point it's just what you do yeah you know it's like what you do is you wake up you think about storytelling you sit in an office and whatever story it is like whether right now it's Beast philanthropy that could be the next 20 years of your life uh it could be the next 10 and you know in in 10 10 years after that it could be something totally different and the commonality will be that you wake up in the morning and you think about story structure think about how to how to communicate and articulate this emotional concept through the footage and storytelling tools you have and I think when you syn into that and recognize like I've just committed my life to this then no matter what the canvas is or the project is at the moment the commonality is just like this is what I do I'm a Storyteller do you ever think that maybe naturally you're just really [ __ ] good at something and you spend 10 years of your life trying to learn how to be better at it to just realize that you were already just as good as you could possibly be at doing that thing yeah but I think there's always something to experience and learn and and whether it's improving or not you're just learning new things about it you know and you're naturally just getting better at it should we should we eat a Brew Bar are we going to do that do this is the moment is this it yeah okay so so tell tell us yeah what what's going on here Dan because this all your entire career has been leading up to since the era of the jam salesman it's been leading up to this yes no so okay yeah so from jams I was like how do you create a product that's just so sweet that's not going to explode in the back of your car and look like murder okay and I met this guy who owns this company called House of macadamias uh incredible guy and uh there's 97 farms in South Africa um with macadamia nuts so there's a surplus of macadamia nuts with macadamias are the most expensive nuts in the world except in South Africa you can just pick up a bag on the side of the road for free because it's too many so he was like there's a clear like Supply demand issue here but like the wrong way around yeah so um how do we fix this um so he created a brand where he makes products out of me Academia nuts and then sells those products and in order to Market macademia so macademia is only 1% of the nut market now where it will grow into something much more yes I'm also part of Academia not just breba yeah got it understood um so yeah I'm I'm also I um I hope ham Academia is with the creative as well cool but I mean come on sh yeah recing it over you got so many we just want eat one no no these are all for you guys okay I even learned how to like thing couple feet away here yeah there you go oh there you go um okay while we bite into this though I did want to read the the 10 things you learned from Casey okay because I have some questions about them I don't understand all of them oh no um there's one that I really I like all of them but there's one that I really really resonate with on there okay I'll read all 10 and then we'll go back I made this what up Casey didn't say any of okay Casey didn't say so precursor this is just yeah all right oh I wrote into chat gbt should Casey probably would say uh a fo react dude number one a fool sleeps when he's tired a wise man sleeps every moment wait I just give a thumbs up of approval I think this is delicious it tastes kind of Jammy yeah the consistency you know what I love is the back half the back half has this incredible coffee taste but the front half is kind of crunchy soft at the same time and the back half you get hit with this really nice it's almost like a a flavored coffee like a cap a Frappuccino or something it's caramel Maca right is there like coconut in this there's no coconut no you're not picking up on I'm not you you clearly like if you guys have a split you should go the food I'm not the guy for this yeah okay he's the food guy number one a fool sleeps when he's TI TI a wise man sleeps every moment does it say that that should be when he can maybe maybe I did you like R down when you're TI a wise man sleeps when he can okay a fool sleeps when he's tired a wise man sleeps when he can yeah free is the most expensive yes that's a great one that's a great one family first yes unless in meeting why does family first come third cuz the other two no cuz I I thought about it and I was like for uh AV mhm that's a bit boring you know putting family of friends like that yeah yeah yeah yeah unless a meeting involves food don't attend here we are I think that's actually really funny yeah yeah yeah because it's uh that's really good you can never have enough Gaff tape that's so good yeah it's true shut up and make something views are not a metric for Success run exclamation point never Advance at the expense of someone else and share your fails those are great those are 10 great rules yeah no for sure there uh that's kind of what I what I took out of the time that I spent working with Casey and then being his friend for years after I kind of took took all of that and then wrote out those 10 things I would like to do a similar thing with with Jimmy yeah um in a more why did I want to use the word like human but in in like more cuz right right now I think Jimmy's very hyper work focused like that's that is like that that's the archetype that he is in right now and I think that for his age as well at 25 Casey's what 42 now um and I started working with case when he was 35 maybe 36 37 so yeah he had a lot more life experience so that's where all of those came from what didn't which ones were you um free is the most expensive for me it was one of my favorites I find that people try to give you all the time he yeah sometimes it's it's better to have like a transactional relationship yeah it's like look at us like we ask you know like Dan's on the show and comes at a heavy price for us you know we got Brew bars all over the table right now yeah yeah I think uh that one for me it's like clean lines of transaction are so important much better so important like some people are like I don't want this to be transactional you're like but it is but it is a transaction let's just make it let's just draw clean lines and boundaries um yeah yeah I also like shut up and make something I think I've I've connected with that throughout my career of like anytime I've felt down or like I'm not progressing it's just like don't let's not think so much let's just make something because everything we've made similar to your career you know like our career was saved uh by Paul lays at 368 well Paul connected us with Samsung and Samsung gave us a deal that saved us and so was this back in that in 201 2019 so like every every moment in our career has come from us just like putting our head down making something and then like Colin said you never know who's watching you never know and so like I didn't know that Casey neistat knew who we were when we had 3,000 subscribers that's a [ __ ] up that's crazy that M that's wild right so it's like if there's a thousand views on a video one of them could be that's a lot of people dude don't let ourselves believe don't let ourselves believe that I think that's that's what's incredibly uh important is like about that line of like shut up and make something it's like if you want to tick it out make make something shut up and make something I think that's what YouTube gives us the ability to do right now we could go live you know we have been live we've been live this whole time D oh [ __ ] um dude we could I could sit here and talk to you all day I really could um it's been amazing it's been really really fun thank you for for sharing and and being open and I'm excited to see uh you know I I love watching the your work with Beast philanthropy I love watching your work on your own channel I love every time a little piece of paper comes out of the screen you know on either channel it's just like there's there's Dan Ma's signature on this video you know and I I I think you've been a creative that has progressed the scene forward um thanks like the the YouTube scene you've you've put a care and attention into video that I think is uh is what's making us all remember that this is an art form and a craft wow sure means a lot yeah thank you so much yeah I'm excited to see whatever you do next you know whatever uh videos you make next and whatever the next chapter of Dan ma is yeah should have a YouTube video coming out on my channel like in the next four years okay between now the next two are I quit and I'm back yeah exactly oh my

Channel: Colin and Samir

Views: 423,884

Keywords: colin and samir, colin samir, Colin and Samir Videos, colin and samir show, Amazon FBA, Robinhood Stocks, Making money online, how much money on youtube, Protect The Lamborghini Keep It!

Id: 4OYzFaK4unU

Length: 147min 26sec (8846 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 11 2023