You can subscribe to my YouTube channel here.

Thanks for reading and watching guys!

-Ryan Lamont

Now for the last two years I’ve made goal videos on the 1st of January, detailing my aims for the year, and then later on in the year I report back with how well I did with these goals. I did alright with my goals for 2011, completing a few of the more important goals. But this year I’m hoping to do very well with all my goals since I only have two.

Yes, this year I’m focusing on doing well at film school, and on producing more videos. Both goals are centered around my future career, something that’s very important to me, and my whole year is going to be devoted to trying to excel in film school and improving my video making skills. 2012 is going to be a year full of intense, focused work for me, and I’m really looking forward to the year’s conclusion to see how well I do with my goals. Wish me luck!

-Ryan Lamont

If you’d like to receive my YouTube videos direct to your YouTube account you can subscribe here.

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 7,600 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 6 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

I turned 18, thus seeing my cherished childhood come to an end, which coincided with the end of the Harry Potter films that have constantly embellished my childhood and have been a constant source of inspiration and entertainment for me. Also my time in the family home has come to an end, as I move to Auckland next year for film school, and of course my five years at high school have ended too. All of these constant things that have cradled my life thus far have suddenly been striped away, and it’s both scary, sad and exciting. Next year I’m going to be thrust into a whole new world, taking on so much responsibility and experiencing so many new things. It’s a tad daunting.

To highlight some of the more positive things that occurred this year, I travelled to Los Angeles for the fifth time and visited Disneyland, Disney California Adventure and Six Flags Magic Mountain – all places I really enjoy visiting in the Los Angeles area. I also toured Hollywood in detail for the first time this year, venturing through Beverly Hills, Rodeo Drive and visiting the Kodak Theatre, Walk of Fame and Chinese Theatre. It was so cool seeing all these things up close for the first time!  I also asked out my girlfriend and had my first kiss. Things I was not expecting to happen in 2011. I helped motivate and reunite the New Zealand YouTube community back into existence. I visited and then got accepted into film school for 2012, and gained another possible career aim.  I also gained some really great friends that have given me so many laughs over the year.

So amongst the sadness of seeing so many good things come to an end, there are those joyous moments that have made 2011 enjoyable. But as I sit here in my room, Skyping with friends and hearing the fireworks outside, I can’t help but focus on the endings. 2011 is over. But 2012 is here, and that’s even more daunting than the end of 2011. This year is going to be intense and so void of anything familiar. I’m moving to a new city, joining a new school and living with new people. So many elements of life that I’ve enjoyed throughout 2011 aren’t going to be there in 2012. It’s scary, it’s sad. But most of all, it’s exciting.

Ryan Lamont

Here’s my video depicting my time at the Disneyland park during this brilliant event:

Thanks for reading and watching guys!

-Ryan Lamont

I started on YouTube back in 2008 with my channel TheNewZealandishBrit. I was welcomed straight into the community and got 100 subscribers within my first week! It was an awesome way to start my YouTube career. Then over the following months I attended gatherings, meet-ups and stayed at various Youtubers houses, as we all became friends. The community was awesome back then, full of support and such. Then I made a few other channels as my subscribers on TheNewZealandishBrit became less interested in my videos. Then the NZYT Community took a dive and I lost those friends I had made.

Then on my birthday in 2009 I made my main channel TheRyanLamont. I wanted to start building an audience for my future filming endeavors, getting my name out there. So, I started afresh on TheRyanLamont. I uploaded my short film, which sat at 3,385 views before I removed it, and then made my first vlog on that channel on December 14th 2009. But NZYT was still reasonably dead at this point (in fact it was for most of 2010) After a few videos in January I then took a 5 month break from youtube, leaving my channel abandoned. I blame school, but really I was just lazy.

I then returned in June with ‘JUSTIN BIEBER SHOES’ which currently sits at 10,136 views [as of 22 July 2011]. I made a second video, ‘The lands of DISNEYLAND’ about my trip to Los Angeles and then left my channel until October again. I had a bad habit of abandoning my channel throughout 2010. I managed to keep weekly videos for a month or so in October, and my video views and subscribers grew steadily. But soon enough I failed at keeping my videos consistent and didn’t make my 2010 goal of getting 1,000 subscribers, instead remaining on 744 subscribers, 256 away from my 2010 goal. But I really didn’t deserve to after all that channel abandoning.

Then after I had finished my exams in November I was free from then till February when school started again, so I decided to start something I had been thinking about, planning and wanting to do for months! The NZYT Community blog! I was scared that no one would read it, that NZYT would remain dead, and that my time would be wasted. But look at us now! The blog has led to the discovery and promoting of various new kiwi vloggers, and a real growth and unity in the community. I spent a few hours a day writing blog posts for the site, in the early months, and even more time planning future posts and promoting the site and watching NZYT videos. I had put a lot of work into running this site, but it was all worth it! I’ve found so many awesome kiwi vloggers that I watch regularly now. And I feel as I’ve managed to revive the community a bit through this blog. I just hope it’ll continue and grow!

I’d struggled to stay consistent with my video posting throughout 2011 due to my busy final year of school. But of course, there’s always simple laziness to blame too. I generally got a month of weekly posting, before I became too busy to post. Then I was back again in a few months with promises of consistent posting, which always fail. Basically, I posted consistently a week or so before the holidays, then throughout the holidays, then I stopped till the next holidays. I’ve embellished this post with videos that represent key moments in my ‘YouTube life’, so above I posted video of me talking about my experience at a 4-day course at South Seas Film School, the school I intend to attend next year. It’s scary thinking about next year, especially from a YouTube point of view; Limited access to internet, huge workload, busy schedule. I doubt I’ll be posting on YouTube, or here, too regularly next year. But we’ll have to see what happens. As for now, I’ve got videos planned and I’m trying to make the most of the free time I have now.

Now as I add this final paragraph to this post I realise how far I’ve come on YouTube. I’m back to posting regularly, having managed to do so for the last few weeks, and I’ve got a new vlogging style and set up. I’ve even started using my second channel RyanLamontVideos, allowing me to pump out even more content. I’m really motivated to keep going with YouTube, even though I’ll soon be faced with my final school exams in November and then the move onto further education in 2012. It’s a time full of change and it’s exciting!

So that’s all my YouTube related history. If you want to know more about me as a person then feel free to read my ‘About me’ section.

Thanks for reading guys!

-Ryan Lamont

Twitter – YouTube – Tumblr – WordPress – Dailybooth - Formspring

Back in 2004, when I was still living in grimy ol’ London, my family and I took an exotic holiday on the other side of the world – Australia. It doesn’t sound as exotic now, considering Australia is a close neighbour to us here in New Zealand. But for an English person Australia was like a whole new world. We spent a night in Japan before we hit the tarmac of Brisbane, from which we travelled to the Gold Coast. I am a well-travelled individual, even when I was 10, so a sandy beach wasn’t a huge deal to me, I’d seen plenty before. But the whole Australian way of life just blew me away. Everyone was so chilled out! People wore shorts to school, didn’t wear shoes in the streets, surfed daily and looked super sexy. It was quite a difference from the grey rainy days that dominated the pasty white people of London. So after this great first impression Australia made on me, we went to our hotel and turned on the TV, and there I found The Sleepover Club. Australian kids were still in school when we were there, due to our different vacation times and seasons, so all the Aussie kids TV shows were on. So I sat there, with my fruit salad, looking out to the ocean through the glass door of the balcony and watched this show.

Now most guys would turn this soppy girl-orientated show off. But for some reason I enjoy that stuff, so I continued to watch. Then this particular scene struck me. The girls are walking to school along the beach, when Rosie, the English immigrant, steps out of her beachfront home and walks to school. I was like ‘I want to be Rosie’; not in a ‘Let’s get the sex change operation booked’ kind of way, but a ‘living on the beachfront in Australia would be awesome’ kind of way. I immediately connected with the character of Rosie, since I’m English and was a wannabe immigrant, and I continued to watch the show for the rest of the time I was in Australia.

This vacation had the same impact on my family, who also became obsessed with Australia and its laid-back way of life. My mum began watching all these shows about English people moving to Australia and places in Europe, and I began watching The Sleepover Club (since it soon came to British TV) and also started watching Neigbours (True Aussie drama, haha). We were both devouring Australian media quickly, and booked another holiday to Australia in 2005. This time we ventured to Cairns, Sydney and the Gold Coast. My mother and I shared the dream of living this Australian life, and we soon started the process that got us here in 2006… kind off…

We didn’t quite make it to Australia, instead moving to New Zealand; a country we had never been to, nor heard much about. There was a film with elves filmed here apparently, and some native people who had a scary dance? That’s what was communicated back to us by other English people who had moved to New Zealand recently. When we moved over here to New Zealand we soon found out that a lot of other English people had too. It seems everyone wanted this laid-back life, which New Zealand also possessed.

I’d say I wish I was born in Australia/New Zealand, since growing up in either country would have been amazing. But the truth is, I’m glad I was born in London. It allowed me to appreciate this awesome lifestyle, and motivated my family to travel lots, since no one wants to stay in dreary London too long. New Zealand is a great little country. But I still have this obsession with Australia. It still has this exotic, fun, beach-life appeal that New Zealand doesn’t have for me. Maybe it’s because I live in New Zealand and I still see Australia as a holiday location? Perhaps if I ever move to Australia it’d lose that magic is has? I don’t know. But what I do know is that I’m still obsessed with Australian culture and want to holiday there more often!

So thats why I had such a nostalgia boost from The Sleepover Club. Not only was it a show I enjoyed as a kid, but it was also linked to one of my big ambitions in life and a contributing factor in my love for Australia. This pro-Australia post will probably get me kicked out of New Zealand. But hopefully people will see this big dream of a Londoner as cute or something, haha!

Thanks for reading guys!

-Ryan Lamont

As I’m sure all my readers (yes, all three of you) know, I’m very passionate about YouTube and video-making, which is why I’m particularly happy about today’s achievement. Today I managed to shoot two videos in one-take (except for a slight interruption by my family) and I really like both of them. Usually when I upload videos to YouTube I don’t like them, or I think they’re okay. But I rather like today’s videos, and I hope you guys will too!

The first video I uploaded was on my second channel, RyanLamontVideos, in which I discussed the history project I’ve been procrastinating and what viewers can expect on that channel. This is the video in which I had to make a cut due to my parents interrupting, and was the second I filmed today. But it went very well apart from the interruption. Usually once I’ve made one good video I’m cursed for the rest of the day and can’t seem to make a decent video. But today saw the end of that tradition!

The first video I filmed today, and second I uploaded was for my main channel, TheRyanLamont. In the video I discussed the new sexy camera I persuaded the school to buy so I can make sexy videos for the school. ‘Sexy’ obviously describing the awesome quality of the camera, and not the content of it like some of my viewers may think, haha! This video I shot in one-take, with no script of bullet points to talk on. I simply set up the new camera in the background and said what was on my mind. I had a little celebration after I finished the video since it went so well!

Both videos are now live on YouTube on different channels, and have been gaining positive feedback so far. Both in ‘likes’ and comments. I think, after 3 years, I’ve finally found a vlogging style and format that I really enjoy and can successfully do. Now the next challenge is seeing how consistent I can be will uploads!

Thanks for reading and watching guys!

-Ryan Lamont

P.S. ‘Somebody That I Used To Know (feat. Kimbra)’ by Gotye is an awesome song. I’ve been listening to it whilst writing this post and thought I’d share my appreciation for it with you guys.

Thanks for reading and watching guys, I appreciate it.

-Ryan Lamont

Thanks for reading and watching guys!

-Ryan Lamont