The Burden of Starting From Scratch

About This Video

At eighteen minutes, this is one of the channel's longest episodes, and it earns the runtime by doing something Van rarely does: reaching into his own archives to examine the gap between early work and current ability. The burden of starting from scratch is the recognition that two years of effort doesn't automatically compound into twenty: that there are plateaus, regressions, and long periods where improvement is invisible to the person doing the work.

A message from a patron and a phone call to a friend provide the structural hinges. The responsibility to discourage: Van's phrase for the honest assessment a mentor owes. Sits uncomfortably next to the leap of faith that every creative career requires. Watching the tape of early work is positioned as a guide to looking back on life: the footage doesn't lie, and the distance between what you intended and what you produced is the most accurate measure of growth available.

Transcript

undefined undefined this episode is sponsored by betterhelp sometimes our best thinking gets us into situations that our best

thinking can't get us out of that's when it's time to call in a pro at better

help recently I found myself in a conflict where I was sure I was right I

ran it by my therapist at betterhelp he related to my situation and he suggested that though I may in fact have been

right might I consider the concept of Justice me being right versus piety my

fidelity to Natural obligations obligations that may surpass

the significance of the Justice I felt entitled to this New Perspective from my better

help therapist allowed me to stay calm not do anything stupid consider the conflict in a new light and things got

better the signup process for better help is straightforward you fill out a comfortable questionnaire 24 to 48 hours

later in most cases a therapist will contact you you can switch to a different therapist for free

betterhelp.com vanan niat for 10% off your first month of therapy Link in the description

thank you better help I'm pretty sure this is like my undefined undefined

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] here it [Music] is 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 undefined undefined

here what should you make for a video um 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 25 videos before you

started YouTube but there's no way you made that many more than that because I don't like I don't know my number was

but like you know say I've been doing YouTube seriously for like 201 like seven years I've made I've uploaded 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 seems so much

more um deep and vast than just what I've done on YouTube it's actually not the case because you just get caught up in theing momentum and Title Wave that

is uploading on YouTube and then like the profundity that is that I think is like a great story you've probably

already told that story I've made that video like 55 times undefined undefined

[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 6

weeks to produce 13 minutes of content for each episode so our 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

[Music] YouTube and in the last two years 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 tape's done from from the

lab and on patreon I have like an exchange between my audience and myself I got a message from a patron a undefined undefined

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 have 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

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 undefined undefined

publicly a responsibility to discourage people from becoming YouTubers and pre professional creators

yes I do all the time every basically every chance I get go ahead sorry sorry go ahead when people say once one piece

of advice you can give me to become a YouTuber I say to them don't like that's what I say I

discourage it no it's hard not to just be like a a hard ass like um football

Dad yeah well because youing did it yeah think how much blood you've shed to build your a career on YouTube it's

absurd what you had to do is ridiculous and insane

[Music] [Music] undefined undefined path of God it's like in Indiana Jones where he like has to just step off the edge of that Cliff it's a leap of

[Music] faith You Must Believe [Music] [Music] boy and then it turns out that there was a bridge there it was just in invisible but like the test was his test of

[Music] [Music] faith 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's talking by 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 undefined undefined [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 degra Street on the border

of Carol Gardens in 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 nah Millan 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 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

[Music] Brooklin and this is I had this camera to transfer the videotapes from our childhood that that's Jesse these are college friends of mine we all live together in this big communal house called the hippie house in um 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 at Sax's studio so that's Scholastic while they

were Rel 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 over come 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 [Music] ambition and so I don't know I felt for some reason that's me with hair let's go we got we have tons of stuff we got to

do yeah we're busy we're busy all right guys this is the fun

family vacation does it cuz you married my mom though B does it make you my father you can't

boss around the whole time 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 Soho 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

holy oh my God a Triumph Bicycle holy crap 150 I don't have that

on me $150 for that beautiful British Triumph Bicycle

so that's a bolu super eight 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 a 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 but this is me

buying the 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 nah Jesse and I when we lived at the hippie house at William and Mary we had

a two very similar SIDS like that so this is pre-september 11th New

York just goofy 25 year olds it's the Metropolitan Museum of Art uper east side and there's a man on the

street see all the cameras she has oh 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 Halland tunnel where I rode my bicycle through the Halland

tunnel 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 undefined undefined

hate theing 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 on this week's patreon only video when people ask me why do I always wear boots I say you never know when you undefined undefined

have to kick it in a door 17 or so years of repairs and now it's time to retire my Swiss boots and start from scratch [Music]

Products & Tools Mentioned

• BetterHelp uses
• Canon SD870 uses
• iMac uses
• Final Cut Pro uses
• Dremel uses
• Bolex Super 8 camera uses
• Fisher Price Movie Viewer mentions
• Triumph Bicycle uses
• Scholastic mentions

People Referenced

Casey Neistat, Tom Sachs, Joe Walsh

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