"Created in LA" From a Creator's POV: Weston Van Soest Shares His Eye-Opening Experience
Weston Van Soest arrived at Created in LA having already made a significant bet on himself. After finding an audience through comedy videos and a college dorm door-knocking series, he had left school to pursue content creation full-time. Yet he had never attended a creator event before. Over two days at the El Capitan Theatre and the Walt Disney Studios lot, he found a community that helped him imagine where that decision could lead, while reminding him that the difficult parts of a creative career do not disappear when the audience gets bigger. We had a chance to talk to him about his experience and what he took away from it.
“When you spend enough time working on your own things, you kind of put boxes around what you can and can’t do,” Van Soest told Laughing Place. Hearing from people working on a larger scale challenged those boundaries. For him, the value of Created in LA was in discovering possibilities he had not considered and meeting people whose experiences made those possibilities feel more attainable.
Presented by Disney in collaboration with creator Jon Youshaei, the September 17 and 18 event brought digital storytellers into two places closely associated with Disney filmmaking. Its first evening featured creator films at the El Capitan, followed by a day of presentations and conversations on the studio lot. For Van Soest, that combination offered both an introduction to his peers and a chance to consider how his own approach to storytelling might fit within a company whose films he had grown up watching.
His interest in making videos began well before he considered it a career. He started posting in high school, motivated by a love of funny videos and the excitement of finally being allowed to use social media. He wanted to make something that would go viral and see what happened next. Even after reaching roughly 100,000 followers, he still regarded the work primarily as something he did for fun.
An unexpected experience helped change that outlook. Van Soest applied to the first season of Beast Games and was selected, putting him alongside contestants who were also content creators. Their enthusiasm for the work encouraged him to take his own videos more seriously. Returning home as he was preparing to leave for college, he saw the people and activity around him as an opportunity to try creating consistently.
He began posting every day, and his college dorm door-knocking series gained momentum. As the audience grew, so did his attachment to the process. “I kind of just carried with the momentum and kept going and really started to fall in love with content creation,” he recalled. By the time of our conversation, he had been pursuing it full-time for about six months.
That background made Created in LA particularly well timed. He first heard about it through a friend’s Instagram story, then became more interested after watching a promotional video from Youshaei that featured several creators. The prospect of meeting those people led him to research the event, submit an application, and ultimately attend. What he discovered at the El Capitan was a room where the size of someone’s audience did not seem to dictate who could approach them.
“It kind of amazed me how much everyone’s walls were down,” Van Soest said. “It felt like just this open space where everyone wanted to learn from each other.” He felt comfortable approaching people with the questions he had brought into the room, and he took advantage of that opportunity. The willingness to talk extended, in his experience, to both the most recognizable creators and those with much smaller audiences.
As we discussed the evening, I shared that the atmosphere had struck me similarly. There did not seem to be a separate social hierarchy marking who was just getting started and who had millions of followers. Van Soest agreed, explaining that an event built around their shared work created a different kind of interaction from approaching a recognizable creator in public. Here, conversation was part of the reason everyone had come.
The screenings offered another way to think about what that shared work could become. Van Soest was particularly inspired by Zach King’s film, which showed him how a creator’s ambitions could extend beyond the videos that first built an audience. Seeing that work presented at the El Capitan made the possibilities tangible. A career that began with short videos could develop into projects with a very different scope, and being in the theater gave him a chance to consider that progression firsthand.
The following day brought that sense of possibility into a setting with even more personal resonance. It was Van Soest’s first visit to the Walt Disney Studios, and his experience included seeing Walt Disney’s office. Having grown up with Disney films, he found the chance to walk through the place where the company’s storytelling takes shape deeply affecting. “I think the location of this event made all the difference,” he said.
The history mattered, but so did the welcome. Van Soest felt that Disney’s representatives were interested in what the creators could contribute, making the visit feel like an exchange between people with different experiences of the same creative pursuit. “They made us feel as though we were adding value to them,” he explained, “when we definitely knew that they were adding value to us as well.” That feeling gave the setting a significance beyond simply getting to visit somewhere he admired.
Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro’s opening appearance reinforced that impression. Van Soest had never seen him in person before and found him more approachable than he had expected someone leading Disney to be. “He was way more welcoming and inviting and kind than I ever would have thought,” he said. Learning about D’Amaro’s long history with the company also stood out to him, suggesting a personal connection to Disney that he appreciated as a newcomer.
Our conversation then turned to the possibilities outlined by Disney’s Chief Marketing and Brand Officer Asad Ayaz. We discussed several ways creators might work with Disney, including making content around its stories and events, developing projects for its platforms, and bringing their skills into the company’s productions and talent opportunities. For Van Soest, whose interests include scripted comedy, the event prompted ideas about both what he could do now and where he might want to go later.
One possibility was to give creators an early look at a film and the chance to make original content with its actors. He imagined developing a sketch or short film inspired by the movie, using his own storytelling style to help introduce it to an audience. Rather than recounting the film’s plot, the work would grow from an understanding of its story and the creative ideas it sparked. He described the appeal as “creating a story around a story to get more people to watch the movie.”
He presented that as an idea he would like to explore, rather than an announced collaboration. It reflected how he thinks about his own work, with the writing and construction of a piece at the center of its appeal. The same interest informed a longer-term ambition that became especially clear after hearing about Disney Animation’s creative process.
“I would love to see myself in the writing room,” Van Soest said. Hearing about the development of Zootopia connected with the part of his own process he enjoys most, working on scripts and shaping ideas. He could imagine bringing a creator’s perspective into those discussions, particularly an understanding of younger audiences that comes from being part of that generation himself. His interest was in contributing to the stories, their themes, and how audiences might receive them.
Yet the event’s most immediate benefit may have been less about a future opportunity than about how he felt returning to the work he was already doing. Van Soest described content creation as an emotional roller coaster, with strong weeks followed by difficult ones. Talking with people who had been doing it much longer helped him recognize that those fluctuations were not unique to his stage of the journey.
He particularly remembered Dude Perfect discussing disagreements within the group. Hearing successful creators speak openly about those challenges offered reassurance that a larger audience does not eliminate the need to work through problems. “To understand that no matter what level you’re at, there’s always going to be struggles and there’s always going to be hard times was extremely encouraging for me,” he said. He left feeling more confident than he had when he arrived.
That combination of ambition and reassurance gives Van Soest’s experience a significance beyond the venues or the guest list. Disney’s creative history can inspire someone to imagine a larger future, but the opportunity to speak openly with other storytellers can help them keep working toward it. At Created in LA, he found both, along with a sense that his own skills might have something to offer the company he had admired growing up.
For Disney, his perspective suggests why an exchange with creators can matter. Someone who began by making funny videos in high school now sees possibilities in film promotion, scripted storytelling, and an animation writing room. The relationships built during those two days may or may not lead to those particular opportunities, but they have already broadened his understanding of what he can create. Welcoming a new generation of storytellers into Disney’s creative spaces can give its history a continuing purpose, helping people imagine the work they might one day contribute to it.