May 3, 2000
Published · 16:41 · 2,597 views
About This Video
Van is pretty sure this is his 125th YouTube video. It is not a significant number. He knows what he is making next week but has to wait on a ladder to come in the mail. So: what the hell should he make for a video? The honest biggest conflict in his life, week to week, is figuring that out. Casey estimated Van's YouTube output has eclipsed everything they made together before. Six weeks per HBO episode to produce 13 minutes. The YouTube machine moves faster. That is both the problem and the engine.
Transcript
foreign I'm pretty sure this is like my 125th YouTube video
but it's not a significant number I know what I'm making next week but I have to wait on this ladder to come in the mail before I can make it and then this week
my question to you what the hell should I make for a video
[Music] all right here it is [Music] [Music] if I was to make a YouTube video about the honest like biggest conflict in my life from week to week almost every week
it would be what am I going to make for a video and then the conflict of making that video and then the video would be about
nothing so this week I am indulging in that conflict that arises every week and
this is what you're seeing right here okay I don't know but I do think that um 125 videos as ambiguous as that number is I think that's got to be like what is the relationship between that
number and your total Canon of work prior to YouTube
because even like maybe you've made more than 125 videos before you started YouTube but there's no way you made that many
more than that he says I don't like I don't know what my number was but like you know say I've
been doing YouTube seriously for like seven years I've made about a thousand videos or something like that and I
think that that Canon eclipses everything that I've done before that which just seems insane because the
breadth of work that I did and we did together back in the day seemed so much more um deep and vast than just what I've
done YouTube it's actually not the case because you just get caught up in the [ __ ] momentum and tidal wave that is uploading on YouTube and then like the
profundity that did that I think is like a great story you've probably already told that story I've made that video like 50.
[Music] I did a tally of the number of YouTube minutes I've produced since launching the channel two years ago
and a rough estimate of how many pre-youtube minutes I produced over the
prior 20 years and I think what Casey was getting at is that I've probably surpassed with the
last two years work I've probably surpassed the amount of content I made in the previous 20 years
just take HBO for instance I had six weeks to produce 13 minutes of content
for each episode so our production schedule was uh six weeks per episode and in those six weeks I had to have 13
minutes of edited polished content I'm doing 10 minutes a week on average on YouTube
foreign I've done 1169 minutes of YouTube content which is like 10 feature films length of content hello okay
yeah I'll come down and get it right now okay all right see you then thank you bye
tapes done from the lab and on patreon I have like an exchange
between my audience and myself I got a message from a patron a few weeks ago saying that he was he had a
good solid career working on YouTube videos for other people but his he felt
compelled to make videos on his own and at what age
I think he asked me I have his I have his he said um how do you put your age in perspective as an artist as a young
person I've found my thing I do it professionally at a very high level but I often feel down about myself because I
have not pursued this thing personally and what he means is he hasn't
made YouTube videos for himself he helps other people produce their YouTube videos and he has a good career and he
makes money and in my response I said it took me until I was 45 years old
before I had a solo career and 45 is too late I think it's too late
do you feel this is like a totally different subject but kind of on kind of not do you feel and I've said this like
publicly a responsibility to discourage people from becoming YouTubers and professional creators
I do all the time ever basically every chance I get go ahead sorry sorry go ahead when people hit once one piece of advice
you can give me to become a YouTuber I say to them don't
no it's hard not to just be like a a hard ass like um football dad
yeah didn't get it yeah you're gonna have much blood you've shed to build your a
career on YouTube it's absurd what you had to do is repeat ridiculous and insane
[Music] [Music] it's like in Indiana Jones where he like has to just step off the edge of that cliff [Music]
believe and then it turns out that there was a bridge there it was just invisible but like the test was his test of faith
foreign [Music] and I don't know what the connection was but Casey when he was talking about what I went through the blood I spilled and he was talking like you know he's
talking vicariously he went through the same thing probably to a higher degree something clicked in my mind this idea
I've had for a long time of showing the first tape I ever shot before any of this I think I was just
testing the camera out I was like playing with the camera
[Music] so with the exception of setting up this Final Cut Pro project I haven't watched any of this tape
in I I don't know how long okay it's in my Brooklyn apartment okay so that shot of me with the helmet cam
was taped over the beginning of this opening footage this is Carol Gardens Brooklyn on Degraw
Street on the border of Carroll Gardens and Cobble Hill and this was an old like mob neighborhood
if you look this way there's a famous funeral home that's like a mafia Funeral Home Mafia please don't kill me for
saying that and this is just my little like it's not a bodega it's just like one of
these Brooklyn stores these have all been wiped out by Dwayne Reed now
and this is just me I mean this is 23 years ago and that's Nina Millen she's an actress
here in Los Angeles she was in bad moms she's like a working
actress on TV and in movies and that went away Off Track Betting I
think Giuliani maybe shut those down Maybe not maybe I'm wrong but that particular one disappeared and this is President Street
in Brooklyn [Music] and this is I had this camera to transfer the videotapes from our childhood that's Jesse these
are college friends of mine we all live together in this big communal house called the hippie house in Williamsburg Virginia at William and Mary and so I
had transferred using this camera from which we're watching the footage I had transferred the VHS tapes from my
childhood and edited using an iMac edited uh the family VHS tapes together
that's the F train New York City Broadway Lafayette that was my stop when I started working it Sax's Studio
so that's Scholastic while they were renovating it oh such a quick shot so I was asked in one of these live streams
that I do on patreon someone asked me if there were any obstacles I had to overcome or hardships I had to overcome
and I thought about it and really the only one I could think of is my ambition
that's been the hardship it's just my ambition [Music] and so I don't know I felt for some reason that's me with hair let's go we got some we have tons of stuff we gotta
do yeah all right guys this is a fun family vacation
just because he married my mom though man does it make you my father you can't boss him around the whole time and this
is just the very very beginning no one had video cameras back then look you won't see another video camera
and this is the Chelsea flea markets and I'm not sure they exist I don't think they exist anymore I think
Craigslist and eBay just wipe these things out those are old movie cameras and movie projectors from the days of
old from before video oh no I might have to buy every single one of
these bikes for all my friends a Triumph Bicycle holy crap 150 I don't have that on you look at this 150 for that beautiful British Triumph Bicycle
look at that so that's it ingenue Super 8 camera so
that's the home movie camera from the generation before VHS
and see that I bought the helmet so you see me in the very beginning of
this footage that we're watching now wearing this helmet with it with a camera mounted to the side of it and that's because I taped over on this tape
this footage I taped over this footage with me wearing the helmet cam for like two seconds this is me buying the the helmet and
then I took a Dremel and I cut a hole and hose clamped my video camera to the side of it so that I could make a video
of me riding my bicycle to work look at that and we had a dog like this Nina Jesse and I when we lived at the hippie house at William and Mary we had of two
very similar Samoyeds like that so this is pre-september 11th New York
just goofy 25 year olds it's the Metropolitan Museum of Art Upper East Side and there's a man on this street see all
the cameras she has no there's a woman on the street with a whole bunch of cameras Oh taking all the pictures for all these people
because you couldn't just take a digital picture with your phone and then text it to everyone so she had all of those
cameras at her feet let's rock so I'm going to take a ride on Clinton
Street this footage is not as bad as I remember it I remember it being terrible and after seeing this I built this bike mount where the camera mounted on the
handlebars of the bicycle and then I made the movie called the Holland Tunnel where I rode my bicycle through the Holland Tunnel
and that was sort of my first real Internet movie that was the first movie I ever uploaded to the internet
I watched this Eagles documentary and I hate the [ __ ] Eagles man but they're so successful that I wanted to see it
and the documentary opens up with Joe Walsh who I think was the guitarist for the Eagles and he quotes this
philosopher and the philosopher says something like
while you're living your life properly it feels like a disaster
but when you look back on it it looks like a masterpiece
Products & Tools Mentioned
- iMac uses — computer used in 2000
- Dremel uses — rotary tool used
- Triumph Bicycle uses — bicycle shown
- Final Cut Pro uses — editing software
People Referenced
Casey Neistat, Nina Millen, Jesse
Films & Media Referenced
- cultural reference
- music documentary referenced