Martijn Doolaard – YouTube – If Vincent van Gogh had been a YouTuber

The man above is Dutch. He lives alone in the secluded countryside. He’s an artist. He spends much of every day creating truly authentic content. However, unlike his doppelganger, his art of choice isn’t oil painting. This man's art is a serious penchant for breathtaking craftsmanship and videography. His name is, Martijn Doolaard.

YouTube continues its digital canter towards replacing antiquated terrestrial and subscription-based TV in many of our lives.  As this shift continues towards a gallop, it’s becoming ever more important that the gallopers are able to find regular content to keep them engrossed of an evening, or lazy weekend.

Large corporate production studios continue to pay NFL-sized teams huge amounts of money to create weekly episodes of something or other. This ‘something or other’ generally requires a monthly subscription fee, is frequently not of the highest quality, and is almost always interspersed with lengthy ads that are more often than not from the world’s least ethical companies. This all results in many of us wondering why we’re watching it and, why on earth we’re paying the subscription fee. These old terrestrial and subscription-based TV companies feel more woolworthian by the day, boy have they missed a trick and, boy am I glad they did. They’ve all failed to realise that their vast network of global production studios can actually all be replaced by a Dutchman, with no script, mostly alone on a hill, and wearing a yellow woollen hat.

Now, of course, this is no average Dutchman, this is Martijn Doolaard we’re talking about here, a genius content creator. His plan was beautifully simple: buy a plot of land in the Italian Alps with two old ruins for buildings for comparatively little money, then film himself as he restores the buildings and the plot around them. But, it’s not the beautifully simple plan of his that’s so darn authentic and clever (thousands of YouTubers have attempted this exact channel plot and not succeeded) it’s all about the way he goes about it.  His spoken English is awesome, all content is in English. He’s a man of few but carefully chosen words, always saying enough to let you know what he’s up to but, never too much to make it all predictably obvious. He often says nothing at all, these glorious silences are generally when he’s building stuff. This Dutch guy is a serious builder of stuff, even the handiest of people will struggle to not be envious at times. He’s also a fanatical tweaker of his daily routines, like all perfectionists. An example of this constant tweaking is his daily baking of fresh bread, he uses a Dutch oven, of course. Baking mishaps are now a rarity indeed due to his ever evolving technique but, when he does sometimes slightly burn his bread, I think I’m more upset than he is. His seeming ability to not be fazed about things is, I think, one of the many reasons why his videos are so therapeutic. The Dutch have a word, gezellig. It’s one of the only words in the world that can’t be translated into any other language with a single word. The best I can do for gezellig into English is: a cozy and warm feeling. Being brilliantly unique, and exuding a cozy and warm feeling, is Martijn's content all over.

All this authentic content is shown to us via his mesmerizing videography style, often teasing you with what he does and doesn’t include in his edit. As his popularity has grown, he’s had an increasing number of guests come to stay with him and help him with various jobs that he’d struggle to do by himself. These guests will suddenly be there in the video…and then they’ll suddenly have left. He doesn’t dabble with the cliché style of guests being introduced and waved goodbye...it’s done Martijn style, a style that's so refreshing and unique. Another example of his vast array of videographic talents is his ability to capture himself doing almost everything from the most beautiful of angles – fixed camera, drone, and even drone footage where the drone is clearly set to follow him from above or behind. How on earth he manages to get all his work done (his work rate is off the charts) and get all the shots and editing finished I have no idea. This ability to clearly multitask with the best of them must surely have been honed (and tweaked) during his two-year bicycle trip which he captured on film and also as a series of books.

His plot of land and its constituent parts continue to flourish before our eyes once a week (he usually uploads on Saturday evening). His channel is growing at a rate of knots as subscribers are very clearly waiting in anticipation for the next installment.

Statistically, his channel is super interesting too. Each of his videos basically receives the same amount of views as he has subscribers. Logic must thus surely dictate that he has very active and engaged followers. There are many well-known 1M + subscriber channels out there that get circa 30K views per video. This means that only 3% of their subscribers actually watch their videos. Martijn certainly does not have this issue - his videos generally get more views than he has subscribers within 7 to 14 days of upload.

He also shuns the common obsession with multiple video uploads each week. He’s all about quality over quantity, with one video per week which is often over 35 minutes in duration. His clear success with a reduced number of videos of a longer length shows that quality, authentic, long-format content is what discerning YouTube viewers are craving. Hey, many of us are now watching YouTube rather than TV – we thus have time to fill in our evenings and weekends – this awesome content in long-format is just what we want.

Pre YouTube, Martijn would have been a man living alone on a hill, albeit an exceptional man, doing outstanding things on the most beautiful of hills but, a man on a hill nonetheless. YouTube, and Martijn's ability to utilise this medium so brilliantly, now gives us an insight into his creative ways as they happen. Imagine if Van Gogh had had the same ability to utilise this medium. I, for one, would seriously hope that I’d have been an early subscriber to Van Gogh’s channel and, that I'd been observant enough to have noticed that rather snazzy little sunflower painting he was working on in the background.

Key Information

Channel: @MartijnDoolaard

Channel Started: 2020

Number of Videos: 35

Average uploads per month: 4

Channel Style

Beautiful videography. Minimalist editing/production. Consistent story flows. Therapeutic content. Truly authentic.

Martijn Doolaard interesting facts:

He has a passion for photography, cycling and writing. He’s a freelance graphic designer, and has written two books.

His book, ’One Year On A Bike’, can be purchased here: buy book