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Every year I challenge filmmakers worldwide to shoot a movie instead of watching The Oscars. That's a 40+ minute feature length film shot in three hours. They then have a week to edit. It's the most insane film challenge ever conceived and it has resulted in hundreds of wonderful, bizarre, beautiful movies.

The awards for last year's submissions are now live on my second channel -  https://youtu.be/RSm7v0tAHdo?si=OA7Og... 

I hope you enjoy! And if you ever any desire to participate tomorrow, here's a video explaining the rules to the challenge -  https://youtu.be/tkg858APzFk?si=dW0Ew... 

Love, Joel Haver 

Yesterday I released my new movie "Anyone Else But Me"!
Check it out here -  https://youtu.be/lbZDX_J3nOE?si=aktEU... 

I'm so proud of what my friends and I made. Over the last 2+ years of living in Los Angeles I've found such a lovely group of creative and talented friends and it was so special to spend a month making something big with them.

Thank you so much to everyone who has given it their time so far, it's been so fun reading comments and seeing people enjoying it.

Hope you're all having a lovely weekend.

Love, Joel Haver

PS: The event to shoot a movie during The Oscars is happening again this year! I'll be making one for the fourth year in a row. Spread the word! It's such a ridiculous and fun challenge, give it a try! 

New movie is done! Spending today making the poster! It releases tomorrow, can't wait for you all to see it. Love y'all! 

"The Hero's Journey aka My Life aka The Caleb Johnston Story (I'm Caleb)" is out now!

 https://youtu.be/C-ZRRTsa5SY?si=f4hUL... 

It's the first feature film of my "12 Feature Films in 12 Months" project. 

It's been funny to see myself being lumped in with YouTubers who are quitting when I've been working harder than ever. I've been chipping away at this everyday since New Years. It's been lovely to spend proper time with a longer project.

I'm incredibly proud of this movie. It explores a general smalltown malaise that pervaded much of my childhood and the stifled feelings and aimlessness that would come with that. I imagine it'll take most people quite some time to dive into this movie, let alone all twelve by year's end. When/if you do find the time, thank you so much for watching.

Thanks to everyone who donated on Patreon to help make this project possible.

One down, eleven to go.

Love, Joel 

I just spent the last three weeks working nonstop on the biggest animation in my channel's history.

I couldn't have done it without  @alexmartens  who was working with alongside me, 7 days a week, 14 hours+ a day. Together we drew nearly 1,000 character frames. My previous most backgrounds in an animation was 40, this one had over 70 to draw. It's the sort of task that would be impossible to justify the exhaustion/backache had it not been sponsored. I am very grateful for CI Games and Lords of the Fallen for making it possible.

Whenever I take a sponsor I set the strictest terms of anyone on YouTube. I say let me do anything I want and that's that. No scripts, no notes, I don't want to waste my audience's time, I want the video to feel indistinguishable from any video I'd make on my own volition and that's cause it is. They actually only sponsored us to make a 5 minute animation and Alex and I got so carried away with the story we wanted to tell that we committed to making a 14 minute one on our own volition. I am very grateful to the companies that have agreed to these terms so far and hope it can continue to pave a new way for more artist forward sponsorships on YouTube. More than anything they've allowed me the financial safety net to be incredibly ambitious and make my most detailed and involved animations to date.

Here it is, hope you enjoy -  https://youtu.be/4RQv2ggEm0E?si=wDWhP... 

boys who dream together thrive together -  https://youtu.be/tgh-4PS89OA?si=_eUUJ... 

Got some big stuff in the works. Sometimes finding time to do a weekly upload on top of the uploads that take multiple weeks is a bit of a mad dash but I'm always happy with what I manage! This one feels like a classic Joel and  @nartharie  collab for the diehard fans. Thanks for watching, have a lovely weekend! 

Today's upload is done and I literally have no WiFi. I am posting this post using my 1 bar of LTE hotspot.
This matters to no one but me, but I've never missed a weekly upload in over 4 years, so for posterity's sake I am posting this here to let myself know I did it, it's just gonna be uploaded tomorrow instead. See ya tomorrow! Thanks for understanding, Joel! Love you, Joel! 

Today would've been my dad's 67th birthday. I would not be the same person I am today without both his parenting and his friendship.

I'm lucky to have so many films we made together, though at times it manages to feel like too little to capture how funny and special he truly was. It's easy to always wish for one more.

Here's a favorite of mine -  https://youtu.be/nnFmEL3Hc2Y?si=ePx0y... 

There's also a whole playlist of things we made together -  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list... 

It's been heartwarming to see his videos garner so many new viewers and fans over the last few years. When he passed away they only had a few hundred views each. In fact, just about every video on my channel had hundreds of views at the time. Nonetheless, all I ever heard from family and friends, his and mine alike, was him singing praises to them of how proud he was that I was doing what I loved. I could sit around and kick myself all day for him never getting to see my hard work pay off, but I like to remind myself that it's more beautiful that he didn't and yet his support never dwindled.

Love you dad<3 

A few months ago I put out a video talking about sponsors on YouTube ( https://youtu.be/29Hp4rThDRs ). In that video I said more sponsors need to let creators be creative. That week Larian Studios reached out to me, said they saw the video and wanted to let me be creative. They gave me no script, no stipulations and just trusted me to do my thing my way.

This week I released the product of that collaboration "Life but it's Baldur's Gate 3" -  https://youtu.be/tg0bGUdJ9hg 

I have received many comments stating it's one of the best sponsor integrations people have seen and I am so happy to hear that. Sponsorships are a fantastic way for creators to support themselves on YouTube but I have always avoided them because they try to make you do boring script reads that interrupt the video your audience came for. 

I hope this (and my Elden Ring video from last year) can be part of a push that paves the way for creators to do more meaningful, artful sponsor integrations. By all means, if you're navigating sponsorships, send brands my videos and be like "look what this guy did, throw your dang scripts in the garbo!" It's better for the creator, better for the audience, and (surprise surprise) better for the brand! 

When I do sponsors, I promise to always do creative, genuine work that feels like something you'd see on my channel anyways and only for products that are good and companies that I think offer people something worthwhile.

Thanks for watching!

Love, Joel

PS: This post is not sponsored. Just thankful! 

Last week I visited my grandparents in Nova Scotia. I shot a documentary about them while there.
It's one of my favorite things I've made, check it out if ya want -  https://youtu.be/syyi1As_Cj8