Using AI to Live More Analog: Long-Form Ep. 1

About This Video

The inaugural flagship episode. Thirty-one minutes that contain the entire thesis of the channel's 2026 pivot. Van builds a multicam switcher cart using ChatGPT to configure an ATEM Mini Pro, six cameras, and a sound mixer into a single-SSD, button-driven production rig. The paradox is the point: the most powerful AI tools available were used to eliminate screens and menus from his filmmaking workflow.

Interleaved with the build are Van's five favorite computers (Leica Q2, Atari 2600 with a 1983 cartridge hack, iPod Nano 3rd gen, Game Boy Color, Franklin Language Master), a detailed prosecution of Apple's planned obsolescence, the Apple Pencil as Apple's worst product, and a Wispr Flow integration that replaces typewriter transcription with voice-to-text. Isabel and Bower get a direct mention as proof that AI enables non-engineers to build serious platforms.

The episode closes with Adam Curtis: AI is not the beginning of the future but the final end of the past. This is the parent video for all clips in the series. Thirty-one minutes. No filler.

Transcript

Long Form episode 1. In this episode, I pull the trigger on an idea I've been afraid of for 4 years. And in doing so, question whether or not I actually do hate computers. 20 short videos. I'm going to clip them. About going to see if I can't use AI to live more analog. And some are just random videos of me making stuff.

This is the current way I do multicam and cutaway production. This is not the correct way. This is not the efficient way. This is my way. The stupid way. Camera one, camera two, camera three, audio recorder. each with their own individual SD cards which have to be filed in their own separate folders imported into Final Cut. Mroot clip like why don't you bury it deeper Sony and to do screen recording I have to open QuickTime make a QuickTime video and I got to copy and put it in the thing. I start at about 1:30. Oh my god. import the QuickTime video onto a media drive, then import it into Final Cut and sync that up. So, 2 hours. 2 hours I've been working on this. I'm like this far. Your own individual SD cards, which have to be filed.

I'm so psyched. I'm building this new thing. For the closing credits of Tom Sax's space program, now available on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber, we made this beautiful machine that scrolled a sheet of seamless paper with all the credits handwritten out and white out penned. And at the end of the credits, if you watch them all the way through, you'll see this. It says, "Edited on Final Cut 10. [__] you, Apple for making our lives a living hell." This movie was written with the Pentel P209.

Apple used to be cool. They made the first consumer computers where you didn't need to write code. They stole the idea from Xerox. But fine, kids like me who think in pictures could use computers. I bought my first iMac in 2000. It was the birth of my video making hobby. Eventually, it became my career. I've edited with iMacs ever since. And what I've learned that Apple is what they do is they're a company that makes ever more complicated software that requires ever more complicated hardware that self-destructs in an unreasonably short duration of time.

That's what they do. I've been using Apple computers for 44 years and every day something is broken within their OS. They've been making digital video editing software for 27 years. We've been editing movies since the 19th century and yet Final Cut Pro is still broken.

I'll give one example to the 11 of you who still use Final Cut Pro because why would you use it unless you're being held for ransom by a 13-year archive of Final Cut Pro projects. So, for those massochists like me who still use it, I'm not even sure if this is a bug or if this is just Apple think different. But when I make a change to a compound clip, if I've used that compound clip anywhere else in that project or in any other project, the change I make to one of the compound clips is made to all of them. Even compound clips in different projects. The opening title card of this video is a compound clip. And if I were to change that compound clip, it would change all of the compound clips, all of the opening titles on all of the movies that are on this hard drive. It's like if you were to change a word in this book, it would also change in this book. Dozens and dozens of these bugs designs.

Well, in the new update of Final Cut Pro, we fix them. You just have to get the new update. Download the new update. It doesn't work on your machine. You buy a new machine and it has some different version of broken for 26 years. This is what Apple Inc. does. This is what Apple Inc. is designed to do. And this is how you become the second richest company on planet Earth by holding your loyalists hostage with the promise of unbreaking yourself. And how do you become the first richest company in the world, Nvidia? Well, as far as I'm concerned, it's by breaking Apple's paradigm. Every time I have a problem with these garbage machines, I pray and bask in the glory of the possibility that the AI revolution will eat Apple and [__] out Kodak. Ever heard of Kodak? When was the last time you bought yourself a Kodak product? So, I think that that's what this episode is about. The dream of the death of Apple. I used to think I hated computers. I don't think I hate computers. I hate Apple. Apple is the nightmare.

I am being held hostage by Apple, Inc. I cannot escape, but I can send this communicate.

Toy company Apple is best known for its planned obsolescence and well-designed garbage. But did you know they make a product even worse than their computers? And it's not the $4,000 ski goggles. Believe it or not, it's not the iPad either. I keep mine here to hide it from thieves like Chris Rock recommends. As if a thief would bother. Apple's worst product is the Apple Pencil. It's basically a $100 finger that requires batteries and configuring. Theoretically, the iPad charges the pencil, but that's not true, and you have to turn the [__] thing on, double tap or something, or maybe set it up in preferences or settings, which are not in alphabetical order for some reason. I like to handwrite titles in the notes app. Well, I don't like to do it. always shows me the keyboard, though I never ever use it. So, here you go. Isn't that amazing? Just like a real pencil. And if I make a mistake, I just flip it over. And hang on. No. How about this? Guess I got to go through the app. I'll just use my finger. Thank you very much. Select the eraser and boom. Huh? Why don't my finger work? It took Chat GPT a minute and 38 seconds to figure it out. And I have chat GPT Pro. It's this many instructions. Four instructions. Well, you get the idea. 79 to 179 bucks. But before you buy, remember Apple makes toys, not tools.

I still write voiceovers on my manual typewriter, but I used to use this rig to transcribe them into the computer. Typing takes forever, so now I use Whisper Flow. Whisper Flow, this episode's sponsor for all of my computer typing work, everything. It's a voice-to-text tool that works on all of my devices. I swear by Whisper Flow and I started using Whisper Flow before we even got the sponsorship. Took me 3 minutes 14 and 12 seconds to type out this bit about Abner J. But watch this.

Do you know about Abner J? He was literally a one-man band, but it didn't matter. I love his music and I don't give a care that he used a machine instrument in real time. 35 seconds to read and Whisper Flow transcribes it perfectly. Whisper Flow is way, way, way better than built-in dictation software, which is like rental skates. Whisper Flow is much faster, more accurate, and works seamlessly across all my devices and my apps. And Whisper Flow gently corrects your mistakes. Watch this.

My um treasure wall uh has um on it the following uh items. One, uh a model of my bike. Two, uh um a model of the SUV. Three. Um, what is it? A model of Van Go. And, uh, four, um, a model of me. Van Neistad. Removes all the ums and a's, composes the list properly, and spells the strange names correctly. Neistad. Somehow, this state-of-the-art technology lets me live more analog. Use the promo code spirited man to get one month of Whisper Flow Pro for free. The link is in the description. Thank you, Whisper Flow.

I can't find it anywhere, but I think it was Mammoth who said something like, "We create because we are annoyed." Cords don't fit. Power buttons lame. Nowhere to put the mic. I can't spell. Where's the bee? Stay put. Stay put. Stay put. Where are they? Where are they? Ouch. Ain't got no tripod threads, no lens filter, no self-timer. But to rectify the annoyances contained herein will take the assistance of the most powerful technology that man hath wrought. I'll get you my pretty and your little dog too.

My favorite word is avuncular. A v u n c u l a r. Do you know what avuncular means? The 's are the clues. How about if we pronounce it of uncle-er? Someone who loved me bought me a Franklin language master in 1988. And the Franklin language master is my favorite computer. AA batteries because we believe a power greater than the dictionary can restore us to sanity. Powers on instantly. I gotta do it again. Fantastic. In seventh grade, we had a vocabulary curriculum called Wordly Wise. And I loved Wordly Wise. There it is. But hated looking up the words in the dictionary. Let's race. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Language Master 7.2 seconds. Avuncular suggestive of an uncle especially in kindliness 18 19 21 dictionary 21.4 Four seconds. Avuncular of or relating to an uncle. In other words, uncle-like. In other words, funcle. I love to give my nieces candy and my nephew weapons because I'm an avuncular giftgiver.

I've always loved the dream of computers, but I've always hated the reality of computers. See, this is what I'm trying to get away from, Kevin. I'm trying to get away from all of this [__] hokey [__] that these teching made that they thought would be so cute. And these are [__] weapons, man. because computers are in a perpetual state of broken. And it's been that way since I started using computers in 1981. Apple computers still suck. They're still always broken and they have a terrible personality. But I do have my five favorite computers of all time. And by computer I mean digital machine. This microphone is a computer.

So the five best computers in love aological order. Least loved to most loved. We already know number one. The Franklin language master. So what's number two? Number five. My beloved Leica Q2. Designed for idiot artists not technicians. Go to hell Sony.

Digital analog German. Let me just show you something that I discovered yesterday. I find this incredible. You put it on interval shooting, which is like time lapse. It's set to take a photo every second. So, it's click click click click click. Okay, now watch this. This is mind-blowing. Okay, I'm going to take the SD card out. See if you can still hear it. Still taking photos, right? All right. Now, I'm gonna take the base off. I love the way the battery comes out. Ah, it's still shooting. No, I'm just kidding. It doesn't. All right. Now, I'm going to put the battery back in. Put the SD card back in. Turn it back on. All right. Now, watch this. And it asks me to create a video out of the stills that I've shot. So, I hit yes. And then it takes whatever, 10 seconds, 15 seconds. Boom. And now I push play. It just picks up where we left off. It's in the middle of shooting. I take the SD card out. I take the battery out. I put it back in. It doesn't erase anything. There's no error or anything. It just is like, "Well, we stopped at shot 500. Let's make a movie out of that." It works. It saves the files even though I interrupted it in the middle of its work. It saves the photos and converts them to video even though I interrupted it in the middle of its work. That's how everything should work. That's how every digital thing should work. I should be able to tear the cords out of this iMac and it just works perfectly the next time I turn it on.

Number four. I was walking by White Street and I heard this strange music coming from the end of the block. So, I went and checked it out. There was this crowd of people at the end of the street in some kind of impromptu concert. But the amazing thing is that the guy's musical instrument was two GameBoys that he had hacked and hooked up to a speaker system. The Game Boy screens were filled with computer code. This is a guy playing a [__] Game Boy. Number four, Game Boy Color.

This is the ugly black and green one that I made for the video. It's just paper. Number three. Congratulations, Apple. You made the cut. iPod Nano generation 3. It's got the hard buttons, plays video, and color. In my fascist dictatorship, there would be no iPhone. The iPhone would be a Blackberry. Okay, Blackberry is number seven because it's the best text, email, and phone thing, but it's not higher on the list because I hate text, phones, and emails. Also, in my fascist dictatorship, all of your portable entertainment would be on this little thing. No speakers to disturb other passengers, no stupid camera to selfie the world to death with. iPod Nano, third generation, best looking one, color screen, physical buttons. You can still get them for 100 bucks on eBay.

Number two, you know that number one is the Franklin Language Master. So, what is number two? Kim and Ben's Atari 2600 with a modified cartridge that Kim and Ben's dad made in 1983. Upon further reflection, I'd like to change my ranking. The Leica Q2 is number one. Number two, Kim and Ben's dad was an engineer at General Dynamics, or as we like to call it, electric boat. And he built nuclear submarines. And at work, I think, please government, don't throw him in jail if this is against the rules, cuz it probably is. But at work, he and his buddies engineered an Atari 2600 cartridge so that you could leave the cartridge in the console and switch the games by switching the specific chip. I think it was a chip. You'd carefully take, I don't know, the Raiders of the Lost Ark chip out of the hacked cartridge and carefully stick it onto a styrofoam holder. Then you'd take the Pac-Man chip out of the styrofoam holder and very carefully stick it into the hacked cartridge hole aperture so that the teeth on the little chip lined up with the holes on the board inside the cartridge. Clamped it down with this homemade clamp that the nuclear submarine engineers made probably at the General Dynamics factory in Groton. Then you turned on the Atari and it worked. Man, I was 8. My mind was completely blown. 1983.

This is my first experience with an analog modification of the digital world, aka a hack. And I think with AI, I think I'm finally in the age of my digital modification of my analog world. I present to you. Presenting the switcher cart.

The switcher cart. First time I used chat GPT was March 2023. I asked it how to turn off the histogram on my Q2. It told me it was wrong. I asked it for a part number for a starter motor. It told me I ordered it. It was wrong. Hey, was it Bobby Neworth who said referring to yourself as an artist like referring to yourself as a genius? Sure was. Where? No Direction Home. Where in No Direction Home? Probably somewhere in the middle. No Direction Home is a 3 and 1/2 hour documentary. I scrubbed through the whole documentary. It weren't there. One of my Patreon subscribers told me it was Charles Eins. Found the clip, used AI to remove the music. It's a little embarrassing to hear people refer to themselves as artist. It's like referring to themselves as a genius.

Then Isabelle started using Claude to make these courses for children about money. This was a few months ago and they were brilliant. The courses were brilliant. She started building Bower which is a very sophisticated pod school platform and for teachers and parents basically LinkedIn plus Airbnb plus school. It's the future. Pod school is the correct concept and this thing that she built Bower I don't know how many hundreds of thousands of dollars and months of engineering it would have cost but certainly more than a few months at 200 bucks a month. So I thought maybe I can use chat GPT to solve my multicam problem that I've been avoiding quarter in for 4 years. Oh yeah. 1 2 3 4 years.

The A10 Mini Pro. I mean, building the cart is not the problem. Weight the base so it don't flip over.

I forgot to put the surge suppressor under here. Hey, don't fit.

Oh, script it. I screwed this on the stupid way. I should have done it like this and then done it like this. Sometimes you do things the stupid way. Ideally, the rig would be this wide because I'm using this mixer for the sound. It's going to be about 14. It looks terrible, but I'm going to clean it up. This is just all the wiring I need.

Configuring the switcher, the six or seven cameras, and the sound to all talk to each other and relying on the iMac to make it happen. That's my dream. It's my nightmare.

Configure six cameras, a sound mixer, a wired mic, a wireless mic, a wireless mic receiver, and an iMac to all talk to the Mini Pro video switcher so that it writes everything to this SSD drive. Configure the Mini Pro, too. Configure a keyboard shortcut to optimize the output from the iMac for the mixer, not the iMac. and then back again. Terminal, homebrew, GitHub. Create three QR codes and install firmware into the three GoPros to get a clean HDMI signal. And to sidestep the GoPro menus, configure the Ninja. The Ninja is your output. The Ninja is the truth. Hours and hours and days, you and Chat GPT, the Pro one, two bills a month. How many hours is this going to cost me? My god, how many hours is this going to save me? One, two, three cameras, four buttons, one SSD drive. No more menus. No more menus. Just cables and buttons. Just cables and buttons. One man band just like Abner J. I just want to work. I don't want to play with you. How many hours is this going to save me? I'll tell you in the end.

The mixer cart is mobile, so I can set it up anywhere in the studio. That's why the mounted cord reel. This box takes the buzz out of the mic, which is plugged into the mixer, which I can also plug a wireless mic into. monitor. Ceramic bowl for the cord caps. Small rig clamps keep the cords tidy. But the whole point is buttons over computer. Camera one, camera two, camera three, camera one, camera two, camera three. Just buttons and cords, real time, all written onto this teeny tiny solid-state drive with sync sound. No SD card, no syncing in post.

And there you have it. I've used AI to set up this process and now it's more analog.

The mixer cart has one fundamental flaw. Maybe not. See if you can figure it out as you watch, and I'll tell you the fundamental flaw, what it is at the end of the episode.

You got your GoPro. You got your tripod shoe. You got your media mod. Tripod shoe don't fit the media mod because this screw ain't long enough. Too short. Strip of dense cell rubber. Vice grip strip doesn't damage threads. Removing the bottom of the threads. Old worn out stopwasher from old tripod shoe. Damn it. Not quite deep enough. I got to dremel it more. Cleared more threads. Old way. New way. There's actually more to it that I'm skipping. This one sucked. So, I made this one. Stockman Froto tripod shoe don't fit. GoPro media mod because the screw is too short. Hackman Froto tripod shoe fits just fine. Tighten with a penny so I can shoot this.

I feel morally compelled to let you know when I've fallen in love with a piece of gear. This is a flat mountable version of this. So instead of this, I can just do this with this and this and this. 50 bucks for this. 18 bucks for this. Both are compatible with this and this if you do this to the expensive one.

A thought from Rick Rubin chosen at random. Something underlined years ago and here it is. Carl Rogers said, "The personal is the universal."

Oh, hi. If you didn't figure out the sacrifice I made in implementing the switcher cart, it is 4K. This thing only writes 1080. So 1080 resolution. 4K resolution. It's a little old-fashioned, but I think old-fashioned and dirty will be a good thing in the AI generated image age. And when I can scrape up the 8 grand, I'll switch to 4K.

An AI agent is a type of AI that can use the internet to do things for you in the material world. And I want one.

Still using AI to live more analog. The next episode is basically the opposite of this one. AI is the antichrist and it's going to kill us all. But not before I get myself an AI agent that will build me a footage crawler that will upon my prompts go through my 26-year archive and find me the choice footage for archive film making. Just like my favorite filmmaker Adam Curtis who tells us maybe AI is not the beginning of the future but the end of the past. AI is not the future. It's the final end of the past. It's the moment at which the past came for us. We will have to escape from it.

Join a paid tier of the Patreon to get in touch with me or to avail yourself of this channel's alternative universe. You can click this. It'll take you right there.

Products & Tools Mentioned

• Apple negative — primary antagonist — planned obsolescence, broken software, ecosystem hostage
• Final Cut Pro negative — 13-year archive hostage, compound clip bug, perpetually broken
• iMac love/hate — career tool since 2000, but perpetually broken
• Nvidia positive — "first richest company in the world," breaking Apple's paradigm
• Leica Q2 essential (#1 favorite computer) — interval shooting demo, resilient design, "digital analog German"
• Franklin Language Master essential (original #1, final #2) — 1988 gift, AA batteries, instant power-on, vocabulary races
• iPod Nano 3rd Gen positive (#3 favorite computer) — hard buttons, color screen, plays video, $100 on eBay
• Game Boy Color positive (#4 favorite computer) — hacked as musical instrument, chiptune street performance
• Atari 2600 legendary (#2 favorite computer) — Kim and Ben's dad's modified cartridge, swappable chips, 1983
• Apple Pencil negative — "$100 finger," Apple's worst product, batteries and configuring
• iPad negative — "hide from thieves," useless Apple Pencil companion
• Apple Vision Pro negative — "$4,000 ski goggles"
• Blackberry positive (#7) — best for text/email/phone
• ChatGPT mixed — wrong about histogram, wrong about part number, but solved multicam problem
• Claude positive — Isabel used it to build courses and Bower
• Wispr Flow sponsor/genuine — voice-to-text, promo code SPIRITEDMAN, "started using before sponsorship"
• ATEM Mini Pro essential — video switcher, heart of the multicam cart
• GoPro tool — firmware via QR codes, clean HDMI signal, media mod
• Ninja (Atomos) essential — "the Ninja is the truth," output recorder
• Pentel P209 essential — used to handwrite credits for A Space Program

People Referenced

Tom Sachs, Isabel (Isabelle), Chris Rock, Rick Rubin, Carl Rogers, Adam Curtis, Charles Eins, Bobby Neworth, Kim and Ben's dad, Abner J, Werner Herzog, Casey Neistat

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