How to Make a DIY Zine
Published May 13, 2022 · 7:46 · 187,130 views
About This Video
The most successful video Van ever made with Tom Sachs was an adaptation of a zine called Ten Bullets, written by Sachs and John Ferguson. Ten Bullets is the ten commandments for working in Sachs's studio. Some labs at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory use it as an orientation video. There are people with Ten Bullets tattoos. As a graduate of the Tom Sachs educational vocation system, Van feels compelled to continue the tradition by ripping him off.
The zine is 24 pages, including front and back covers. Six sheets of 8.5-by-11-inch cardstock folded in half. Van wrote out what he wanted to say in four-inch-wide columns, five pages total of type. He drew and painted the cover on the cardstock (the first one was too big, the second was better), then bound the leaves by hammering holes with a small nail down the spine and sewing with heavy-duty leatherworking thread. The process is the product. The format is the argument.
Transcript
[Music] the most successful video i ever made with tom sachs was an adaptation of a zine called ten bullets written by tom
sachs and the great john ferguson [Music] ten bullets is basically the ten commandments for working in sax's studio
a very complicated place to work because tom sachs's studio is world class 10 bullets the video is a bit of a cult
classic it's sort of the fundamentals of how to work [Music] and some labs at nasa's jet propulsion laboratory use it as an orientation
video there's folks out there with 10 bullets tattoos 10 bullets is part of the sax studio's built-in sort of
vocational education system for his team members the studio's made dozens and dozens of zines sax is a great
teacher and inherent in probably all of these zines is an education in the tom sacks production system
and probably into tom sacks's brain if you dig deep enough [Music] this one's probably my favorite of sax's
zines it's the owner's manual for tom's impossibly complicated car and unmarked cop car [Music] as a graduate of the tom sachs
educational vocation system i feel compelled to continue his tradition in education by ripping him off and
producing my own zines about my production system this is how i made zine number one i'll tell you what it's about at the end of
the video and i'll tell you how to get one before binding the zine i wrote out what i wanted to say in
four inch wide columns five pages total of type i guess that 24 sides would be enough room once i added pictures
and i was right about that so the zine is 24 pages long including the front and back covers that's six sheets of eight and a half
inch by 11 inch cardstock folded in half [Music] i decided on a title and cover drew and painted it on the card stock
[Music] that one was too big and that one's better [Music] then i folded my six sheets of cardstock in half and bound them by hammering
holes with a small nail down the spine and then sewing the leaves into a little booklet with heavy duty leather working thread
i believe in publishing a pack of pages like this is called a registration we used one of these machines to lay out
the kernel my high school magazine and i bought this one on ebay it puts a really thin coat of adhesive
wax on the back of the page so that you can stick it and unstick it to your layout and it's purpose built for this exact
job [Music] the adhesive wax makes it so you can stick it and unstick it if you change your mind [Music]
once you've committed to the layout you like you rub the hell out of it with a spoon or a roller and basically it sticks permanently
so within the zine i sort of broke up the big ideas with imagery so the zine is easier to read and refer to
where can i find that coppola quote [Music] [Applause] this is my hard copy of the zine but i'm going to convert it to a pdf so
that members of the spirited man patreon can print out and bind their own copies of z number one [Music]
i published this scene on patreon in celebration of the first thousand patrons so thank you patrons the next scene comes out when we get 2
000 patrons then when we get 3 000 patrons a third zine 4 000 patrons a fourth zine and each time a new one comes out the
previous one gets retired retired from the patreon so the people who've been there from the beginning they stand to get the entire
set of zines so a thousand more patreon slots available for this one in closing yes this has been sort of a marketing
drive for my patreon page which is sort of evolving into a sort of film school or maker school it's five bucks a month it's only five
bucks and this scene is about why you should or maybe shouldn't find a talent and earn a living from it in the end there's
a little diagnostic to help you figure out if your thing is your thing and there's a link to the patreon right here
Products & Tools Mentioned
- wax layout machine mentions — used for applying adhesive wax to paper for zine layout
People Referenced
Tom Sachs, John Ferguson
Films & Media Referenced
- Tom Sachs/Van Neistat — Van's short film, referenced in zine-making context