Are You REALLY a Film Maker?
Published May 16, 2024 · 22:58 · 75,223 views
About This Video
Van probably has the most sought-after job in the world. There are 30 million YouTube channels. He makes a good living at this. No one that he knows of has ever been paid to make little movies like the ones he makes. The Patreon DMs have become an advice column, and he enjoys it, but the credibility to give advice comes from the pursuit itself: the freedom to make things for a living and sell them on his own terms.
Three pieces of advice. One: don't do it. Two: get out of your parents' house immediately and pay your own rent. Three: if you are trying to figure it out, go to trade school, not college. Nine months, a fraction of the cost, and you will have money and a job. Van wanted to be a writer at 17 after reading Hunter Thompson, but discovered he did not have the focus for sitting at a desk. His friend Mike, a photographer and filmmaker who built his company from scratch, calls himself a problem solver, not a filmmaker. Twenty-two minutes on the distinction between what you call yourself and what you actually do.
Transcript
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help this dehumidifier sounds funny and I want to procrastinate so I'm going to take it apart and fix it but I should be
writing this episode this just fing with me [Music] I probably have the most sought after job in the world there are 30 million YouTube channels and I make a good living at
this life's been good to me so far cheese nice I can't complain but sometimes I still do it's fun taking pictures of that big camera
right don't take pictures of rocks no no seems kind of fine get
dust no one that I know of has ever been paid to make little movies like this
like the movies I make nope did not fix it it's a kind of Miracle for one and all alone in My Kingdom grumpy but happy deep
within that light sucks 2700 Kelvin 3,000 Kelvin 2700
Kelvin it is the direct messages on my patreon channel are sort of a an advice
column at times and I very much enjoy it I sort of wish that I was paid the same
amount of money for this career just to answer the advice column but then I
wouldn't really have any thing to talk from I wouldn't have a position to talk from I think the position that kind of
gives me credibility to give advice to young people who are mostly trying to make a career in some kind of creative
business what gives me that is well my whole career has been this pursuit of
I think of the sort of Freedom that allows me to make things for a living and sell them on my own
terms and sort of have this my own kingdom and I want to talk to the millions and millions of people who want
to be filmmakers or YouTubers or I don't even know what this is called I called a
friend yesterday to get advice on what to say in this video and he's a filmmaker and he owns a company that he
built from scratch and he's a photographer and he's successful and he makes money and he has a good living and he has a wife and he has a
daughter and his name is Mike and Mike said he's a problem solver that's how he that's how he
categorized himself he's not a filmmaker he's not an entrepreneur he's a problem solver you know I my tendency is to narrow it down is like I'm a story maker
but I also make other things and I think my Mike's right about it being a kind of a problem solving business
and you know I say to people who are like how do I get started how do I blah blah how do I get started
in being a filmmaker I say three things I say one don't do it the second thing I say
is get out of your parents house immediately if you're living with your parents your top priority is not to be a filmmaker your top PR prity is to get
out of your parents house and pay your own rent you can have roommates or whatever but live on your own with your own
money and the third thing I've been saying lately is if you if you're trying to figure it
out don't go to college go to trade school because trade school in nine months or a year or whatever at a
fraction of the cost of college you will have money you will have a job you have people who we call
Geniuses and they discover their thing early they discover their talent their super focused interest they discover it
very early in life and I have friends like in this category Josh safy and Ben
safy I've known since Ben was 19 years old and these guys were just focused on they were going to be filmmakers no
matter what they went to Boston University for film School they were going to be filmmakers no matter what they're not in the realm of what I'm
talking they're not me they're they're not Casey neistat they were always going to be filmmakers and they grew up in
Manhattan you know they grew up there were fathers and mothers of of kids they went to school with or knew that were
like filmmakers there was a there was a connection with it but you know people like my brother and myself we had no
connection to out the outside world of people making things for a living artists or whatever you want to call
them it's really hard to come up with the name for what all they say Creator but I find that I found all the names pretentious they're all cringy but the
point I'm making is that I just knew I wanted to make something make things I I I went to school I wanted to be a writer
I started reading I think in high school I started reading Hunter Thompson and I was like my God this guy has his own
Farm in Aspen Colorado which is one of the wonderful places in America and he
makes a good living and he has this wild crazy life the kind of life that I'm interested in living you know I was 17
when I read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and I read and read and read all of everything I could get my hands on that he wrote I got a job an internship
as a writer and I discovered that I just didn't have the focus I didn't have like the genius or
the talent or whatever it is to be solely a writer it's an insanely difficult sitting at a desk job that's essentially what it is it's sitting at a
desk job and it's really really hard I am a writer now but I'm a writer to facilitate these little videos that I
make so I write on a typewriter and I make I write right right right right but that's not solely what I'm doing this
thing that ended up being whatever this is didn't exist when I set out but I set out with full commitment I moved to New York I'm going to be a writer I'm going
to be a writer and then it just slowly dissolved it just slowly started like Maybe not maybe this isn't the right
thing I got a video camera just weird jacking the beanock stuff I wanted to make I wanted to take the VHS tapes from
when we were children that my mom shot and then edit them and you could do it with the iMac DV that had just come out
you needed a Sony video camera that you could plug into the VCR to digitize the tapes and then you could import the tape
from the Sony into the iMac DV and then you could edit that was 24 years ago and to this very day to this very second I
have not stopped and in the beginning it was a completely obsessive like drug addict can't get me away from it I can't
stop thinking about it like a conscience like it was like a frantic Obsession a very very important detail
about my brother and myself okay nobody else was doing
this there was no one else there was one guy nobody else was shooting home videos
and obsessively editing them every single day and putting out a video and by putting out I just mean exporting to
tape there was no uploading to internet there was but it was like what what would the equivalent be of it today the equivalent of it being
of it today would be for you to make one of those uh like a um insta 360 take an insta 360 camera and make videos that
you could put on your headphones and like have an experience doing I don't know how many people are doing that today there's probably not that many and
it's like I don't think it's a thing yet maybe I'm wrong but the machines aren't quite fast enough to do it blah blah blah you had to Casey and I were working for Tom
Sachs at the time and Tom Sachs paid us to make videos and Tom saaks was connected to
the media machine of New York City he was like beloved by all of the hip media magazines and it was magazines back in
the day that's what kind of broke you open back then was the magazines and um there was interview magazine which was
started by Andy Warhol and every year interview magazine did What's called the
crystal ball issue okay and it was the Super stars of tomorrow and Andy Warhol
coined the word Superstar so Tom saaks met with the
editor of interview magazine I can't remember her name and he was like he just he played it so beautifully he was
like you should put the niep brothers in and they did
and we went to this man's this photographer's Studio and the studio was in the West Village it was in like the
nicest neighborhood in Manhattan and what was his name Albert Watson we were in The Green Room we were in the waiting room waiting to get our picture taken
and in the waiting room was this guy named Jonathan kuet and he was the other
guy who did this and I believe I had heard of him and I believe I had seen his movie at Angelica Film Center his
movie was called tarnation extremely disturbing really he had an extremely horrible Life coming up and somehow he
had video cameras and he shot it and then with his iMac he edited this put together this insanely beautiful very
difficult video to watch movie movie Gus vanan saw it and Gus vant like championed this guy Jonathan kuet we
were the only ones that I knew of Casey and Jonathan kuet and you know eventually I evolved into wanting to
make I don't know how it happened I just evolved into making these like essay videos like this thing that we're watching now is like this kind of like
this essay video where I don't know why I like essays I think I like essays because of the
extreme point of view I love the the point of view like this book The Outlaw book of American
essays um is just like samples of of essays and this is what my videos have
evolved into and I because I have these devices I can make essays that don't ha
don't require people to read them in order for me to make a living I can make videos out of these essays I think that's what I've evolved into and I
think what my channel is about is shop class as soulcraft and people ask me what is my Channel about I think
that's what it is I think that's what it is so and so the point is like you've got
30 million competitors out there if you're just solely going to do your your your your your your YouTube channel to make a living and and so I I've been
having a lot of trouble with this just this era of this channel like
2024 so far has been very difficult because I the way I make these videos is
the way that nor McDonald said that he wrote Jokes which is he has a subject matter that he's obsessed with with and he just thinks about it and ruminates on
it and ruminates on it and tries to figure out get a get his handle on it and then he comes up with jokes about it
and his jokes are sort of the his understanding of the phenomenon and then he moves on to the next thing it's his processing of something he's thinking
about and my videos are this are very similar so the video about screws that I made I've been thinking about screws for
20 years you know and I've been thinking about what do I know about screws that other people don't know about screws
and for the past five months my personal life has been stormy so stormmy that I've only been able to really
concentrate on that stuff and my personal life this is just too private it's too private for me to make work out
of so I went to Texas I drove to Texas and thinking that okay that's that
would snap me out of it that would snap me out of this only you know i' have something new to think about and make
videos about besides this turmoil that I can't make the videos about because it's too private and it's too personal and involves other people that I can't you
know I can't drag into the public and I love driving and I love driving my truck and I I love to a certain degree less so
now that I have children I love Solitude and I drive to Texas I do I do
the repair station and I'm like not appreciating my life I'm not getting joy
out of my life and I'm thinking about making this video
about you know so you you think are you really a filmmaker I brought
along this book which is the verer Herzog memoir I am so struggling with this I am so struggling to connect all these
ideas and this reminded me yes you van neistat you are this this you
yes yes this this is this is what you're supposed to be doing this is your thing this
is and Herzog in his master class he says that every single
filmmaker should read this book The paragr by Ja Baker this was written by an
amateur who was obser I think he was some kind of bureaucrat he worked in some kind of government office I'm pretty sure it was something like that
and uh he just would go out he loved observing paragr
and uh burner Herzog said every filmmaker must read this and the reason I think he said that is because of the
the focus of this man the love the intensity of the love of his observation the quality of his
recording and the insane level of detail the insane level of detail of his
observation this is a man for I I don't know years sitting in a field with binoculars and a maybe a notebook and a
pencil and a sandwich in England watching Birds and the and the book is a masterpiece it's very hard it's not it
doesn't have like an arcing story so it's it's kind of like strangely pornographic in that way and that it's
just it's super crafted detail and I say if you are trying to
diagnose yourself whether or not you are a filmmaker two books you should read okay
so the filmmaker that I think that the world needs isn't is is is the s s
successor to verer Herzog and I think you should read this book to sort of diagnose
yourself just read this book and say okay am I do I have what it takes to live the life that he has never mind that your talent and in film making
never mind how good you are at the camera that stuff doesn't matter do you have the guts and the will
to do these things and the uncertainty and the no money never money starving never and uh
and a film and and discovering film film making is what I'm
going to do and this guy to me he's the example of how to live if you have what I have what we
have and so you read this book I don't know do you connect do you have the guts
I mean I don't have this level of guts I don't have this level of faith and uh I am not this level of
artist but it's a he's he's kind of a conscience he's kind of you know fer did it look what he did
I mean just okay so that's one book all right if this is what I think we
need and I don't know that it's featurelength films I don't I don't know that it's it's probably not that's
probably not the medium we need it's probably not two hour sit in a movie theater
watch it's probably not just like it's not Opera anymore just like it's not the theater
anymore but who am I to say I don't know the other book you should read if you're thinking oh I want to make
those movies like um Pulp Fiction I want to make those movies like The Paul Thomas Anderson movies or the Wes
Anderson movies you know these masterpieces of the 90s these independent Gat masterpieces
with big stars in them not like Avengers Hollywood movies but like Boogie Nights
Hollywood movies right you should read this book by David
Mammoth everywhere in oink oink because that's what he made David Mammoth if you don't know who he is he is an American
treasur he's a legend he okay for instance uh that term Wag the Dog he invented that term that term always be
closing a always BB C closing always be closing always be
closing that's him coffee is for closers that whole closers thing coffee is for closers only that's from Glen Gary Glenn
Ross that's Mammoth he he wrote masterpieces Glen Gary Glenn Ross like I mentioned he he wrote the movie
Ronin he uh what else did he write Heist I mean you read this you learn all
the all the insane Masterpiece he was like a Hollywood like Jewel to me he sort of represents the end of the
Hollywood that we love and then he's sort of been blacklisted from that world because of
his political views probably but who knows why so this book is about the the Beloved Hollywood and the disgusting
mess that it's become today and I think before you commit your life and say oh that's what I want to go into you should have some knowledge as to what exactly
you're going into because it's not the Romantic I'm coming to Los Angeles with a dream or I'm going to write a screenplay it's a dis ing snake pit of
vile scumbags trying to exert power over and his record of it is insanely great
and hilarious and insightful Herzog is still making movies
and his foundation he gave away to his foundation all of the copyrights to his
Library okay and so all right I this movie this video here what's been killing me is I I I could not figure out the ending I couldn't figure out the surprise at the
end was just I and Herzog at the beginning of this book
tells us that he ended the book mids sentence when he was writing and
a hummingbird slammed into the window where he was writing the end
Products & Tools Mentioned
- BetterHelp mentions — sponsor
People Referenced
Werner Herzog, Josh Safdie, Ben Safdie, Casey Neistat, Tom Sachs, Jonathan Caouette, Gus Van Sant, Albert Watson, David Mamet, Norm MacDonald
Books Mentioned
- The Peregrine
- Bambi vs. Godzilla
Films & Media Referenced
- independent film discussed
- David Mamet play/film
- David Mamet-written film
- David Mamet film
- Tarantino film referenced
- PTA film referenced
- early digital camera film referenced