Review of Vlogumentary (2016) by Michael J — 27 Oct 2016

After much delay and mystery of what was happening to the movie, Vlogumentary is finally out - on YouTube Red for non-backers. Shay Carl Butler - notorious to many for starting many projects and either abandoning them or leaving them to start another put this documentary about year or so late. Yes, filming, producing, editing etc. takes time but when you are producing content that is for the Internet, you cannot work at traditional paces - Internet time flies. Shay claims the delays were to film updates and Morgan Spurlock had joined the production crew. Things are always changing and you cannot always keep filming. At the time of release, you already feel it is outdated - despite their delays. Compared to the original trailers, the final product is a completely different thing.

The documentary focuses on Shay Carl (Shaytards) and Charles Trippy (CTFXC) who are presented as pioneers of YouTube vlogging. It looks at the rise of Shay and Charles and follows a few other YouTubers - of which I personally have never heard of but made the documentary more interesting than Shay and Charles. The documentary touches on things here and there but do not go into much detail - it talks about things most already know. For example: Shay, again, says they didn't take all the money from the sale of Maker Studios - only a fraction. The topic of a YouTuber salary is controversial and we thought it would be touched on, since Shay said he would talk about it. However, Shay, Charles, and other YouTubers all danced around it - nothing new came out of it. Shay delayed the documentary to talk about the divorce of Charles Trippy and Alli Speed - again, nothing new came out of it. Recently, Jesse and Jeana of BFvsGF took a break from each other - not mentioned in the documentary.

In the time of Roman Atwood and Casey Neistat as big YouTube celebrity vloggers, Shay and Charles are no longer relevant. Viewers of Shay and Charles will not take anything new from it and those who may have never heard of them may not care or get the complete picture due to a very simplified storyline. Ultimately, it felt as if Shay lost his vision for what he wanted this to be, put together some clips and released it to be done and over with.