Kel, take a look at this!
My Casey Neistat style YouTube video's got over a million views!
I'm a big fan of YouTube superstar Casey Neistat.
He creates a new YouTube video every single day
about his travels around the world
and his life in New York City.
My YouTube channel's count of 61,000 subscribers pales in comparison
to his channel's 5.3 million subscribers.
He's kind of a big deal!
This video is a salute to Casey
for being a great example for me in my efforts here on YouTube.
I've learned some things from Casey
and I thought it would be interesting
to show you the Casey Neistat influence
on the latest of my four viral YouTube videos.
My first two YouTube videos that went viral
were about water slides on cruise ships.
Cruise ships have had water slides for quite a few years now, but...
up until just a few years ago, they were all pretty lame.
Then in 2012, Carnival did something
no other cruise line had ever done before.
They installed a really cool type of vertical-drop water slide
that had become very popular in water parks on land
but no one had ever put one on a cruise ship up until that point.
I shot that video of Carnival's "Green Thunder" waterslide
shortly after they first installed it back in 2012
and much to my surprise
the video really caught on for some reason.
By the end of that year, my little video
had been viewed over 12 million times.
And ever since then, it's continued to be very popular on YouTube for some reason
I don't exactly know why!
As of today, it's been viewed over 85 million times.
That's CRAZY!!!
My second YouTube video to go viral,
also about a water slide on a cruise ship
has now been viewed over 8 million times.
Honestly, it involved very little creativity on my part...
It was just pretty much styled after what had worked so well for my first viral video.
I figured I'd just stick with a winning formula.
But my third video that went viral took me off in a whole new direction.
It was about a new hobby that I got into just a couple of years ago:
G-scale model trains.
There's a whole lot of videos on YouTube about model trains.
If you do a search on YouTube for that phrase, "model trains"
there's 385,000 results.
It's weird to think that out of all those videos
385,000 videos!
That a guy who is fairly new to the hobby:
Me!
would have the fifth most-viewed video of all.
#5 on a list of 385,000 videos sorted by the number of views.
That's crazy!
And at the current pace,
about a month from now, my video should be #4 on that list, and...
a few months later, it may very well be #3.
After that model train video went viral,
I was thinking about how to top it
and I started thinking about Casey Neistat
and what makes his YouTube videos so interesting.
What is it about Casey's video style
that keeps me so entertained
that I subscribe to his channel
and make it a daily habit of watching every new video that he creates?
First off, there's something he's discussed in a few of his Q&A sessions
that really rang true with me.
People have asked him for advice on how to make a great YouTube video, and...
He advises them of the importance of having a story to tell...
and using the video as a way to tell that story.
Every video should have some kind of story to tell
and you lay out the structure of the video to advance that story.
That whole perspective helped me in planning my next model train video.
The story I wanted to tell is how absurd it is for someone who lives in a pretty small house
to get involved with the very largest scale of model trains.
Really, if you don't have a lot of room, and you're interested in model trains,
you should buy HO-scale trains. The little ones.
But I went and bought G-scale trains. The big ones.
So when I decide to set them up for a few days or a few weeks
they take over the whole house.
There's no way you could have them set up like this forever, but...
It's kind of fun for a few weeks!
But then again, any normal person visiting my house when the trains are set up
would think that this was crazy!
Or maybe delightful, depending on the person!
But the oddity of having these big model trains running all over my little house
was the story that I wanted to tell.
Now, in watching Casey Neistat's videos...
there was a very specific style thing that I noticed which...
I thought I'd like to incorporate in my next model train video.
You see, in most of my previous videos,
I didn't appear in the video at all!
If I was making a video about a cruise ship waterslide
all the shots would be of that water slide
or that cruise ship
or of other passengers on the waterslide.
You'd never see me. It wasn't about me.
If there was something that I needed to explain
I would explain it with a graphic or maybe with a voice-over
But one thing that makes Casey Neistat's videos so interesting
is that he talks to the camera a lot.
It makes you feel like you're his friend and he's talking right to you.
Over time, as you watch his videos day after day
you just start to feel like you know him
because he's in every video, talking you through the events of the day.
So, I thought I would try to emulate that a bit
when I set out to create my
video about how my little house is crammed full of big model trains.
Basically, I thought of it as my "Casey Neistat style" video.
That helped me to set the whole tone.
So, let me show you my "Casey Neistat style" model train video
which officially is known as "this little house is crammed FULL of model trains"
It just recently passed the 1,000,000 view mark,
making it my fourth YouTube video to go viral.
Here it is...
This is my house
and it looks, from the outside, like a pretty normal house.
But when I take you inside the house
you're going to see that there's something very unusual!
At least there is today!
(Sounds of a steam train)
You see, this is a really small house
and I've got it full of some really big model trains.
(Steam train sounds)
Now it's not like this everyday at our house, only now and then, but...
when we do have the trains out, it sure is a lot of fun!
Things get kind of crazy here in the hallway
because I've got four tracks crammed in here side-by-side.
I don't think I can fit any more than four in here!
It's really fun when all four happen to be in the hall at the same time
and you just have to wait for them to pass if you want to walk by.
Down at this end of the hallway the two sets of tracks split up.
One goes this way into the spare bedroom
and the other goes this way, briefly, into the master bedroom.
But our bed sits too low for the train to go under the bed, so there's not a lot of room in there!
It has to do a quick loop and come right back out.
Here in the dining room, the trains do a little loop past the dog crate and
around the dining room table.
This train that's just about to come through...
the long one with the green locomotive.
You gotta watch out for that one.
It's got a very loud horn.
That'll scare you if you're not expecting it!
(Sound of loud train horn)
See what I mean?
The real fun is right here in the living room
where I've got the trains doing three laps around the living room
just to maximize all the space I've got here.
I know that's not a very realistic layout.
You never see a real train do that, but it's just for fun.
And then the whole thing is controlled by this remote control.
Like if i want to toot the horn on the steam train...
(Sound of steam train whistle)
I can individually control each of the trains on the layout independently.
Now, let's do a little Q&A session.
Because I read the comments that people post to my YouTube train videos
and it seems like people ask the same kind of questions over and over again.
At least certain ones. One of which would be:
"Why don't you just take the trains outside and set them up in the garden?"
You know, a garden railway... that's what the G in "G-scale" stands for.
Well, my problem with that is that
one of the most fun parts of model trains for me
is picking new layouts and
getting new ideas about how to make it better.
And so, I just like to change the layout each and every time I set them up.
I don't want to get locked into one static layout out in my garden.
But I do understand that there is more room outside then there is inside
and so, sometimes, I do set the trains up outside
and sometimes I set 'em up inside.
Another question that I get asked over and over again is:
Since i have such a small house,
why didn't I just get HO-scale trains instead of the big G-scale trains?
I could set up a real nice HO layout
just in the spare bedroom or in the garage.
Well, it's a pretty easy question to answer, actually.
Here's a HO caboose.
Here's a G-scale caboose. OK?
This is cute, but it does not interest me!
This is massive and impressive. This I like a lot!
Another question that I get a lot is:
"How much did all this stuff cost?!?"
Well, the joke answer is... if you have to ask that, then you can't afford it!
But the real answer is: it costs a lot.
This is not something that you want to get in to in your twenties or thirties
or probably even your forties.
This is something that 50, 60, and 70 year old guys get in to
Because you want to have the kids through college and all that financial stuff taken care of
BEFORE you start wasting your money on trains.
Because it can add up really fast...
especially G scale... that's the most expensive kind of model trains.
So, if the money is a problem, definitely look at HO instead of G.
And don't even think about it until your kids are through college.
Really!
Seriously!
Final question: people have asked...
What does our dog think about the trains?
(laughing)
Well, let me just say that
she has learned the hard way to look both ways before coming out into the hallway!
So, a big thank you to Casey Neistat for setting a good example...
Inspiring me to tell a story...
helping me to come out from behind the camera...
And giving me a few specific video style ideas which I could
shamelessly steal and incorporate into my "Casey Neistat style" video.
Thanks in part to you, Casey, I'm at 1 million views and...
hopefully, just getting started to be discovered by a vast YouTube audience!