Casey Neistat talked about how he started in filmmaking at the AIGA/NY Camera, Marker, Paper & Scissors = Casey Neistat event held at the Celeste Bartos Theater , MoMA, on Thursday, February 3, 2011.
Casey began by referencing a quote by Francis Ford Coppola,
To me the great hope is that people who normally wouldn’t make movies are going to be making them, and suddenly, one day, some little fat girl in Ohio is going to be the new Mozart and make a beautiful film with her little father’s camcorder, and for once the so-called professionalism about movies will be destroyed.
At age 19, Casey bought a camcorder and an iMac to start experimenting with filmmaking. At the time when video equipment was inaccessible, he made the most of the tools at hand. Fast forward to today, where we can shoot, edit and distribute movies from cell phones, Casey insists that his formula for meaningful work is “10% about resisting technology and 90% about embracing limitations. If I had to describe the work in my career, it’s always about embracing limitations,” he said.
“I like the most simple and primitive things,” he said, as he showed movies that followed career path from the first movies to where he is now.
The first movie he showed was from a film series called Science Experiments, which he started with his brother Van. Each 2-minute episode features a science experiment with “random stuff we found in the bodega,” said Casey.
The next movie, iPod Dirty Secrets, was shot as a response to a personal experience. Casey recalled buying an iPod when it first came out, “It was $500 bucks and it was a huge deal, and the battery died within a year,” so Casey responded by releasing this video. The film was downloaded over a million times in the first six weeks, and major several news sources noted that Apple changed their battery policy within a few weeks.
The irony is that Apple has hosted the video for the past 9 years without taking it down.
Casey described the importance of preserving imperfections as a big part of his and Van’s work and aesthetic. He described seeing imperfections as a way to humanize work, “It’s a continuation of embracing limitations. Nothing’s perfect, everything is full of imperfections,” he said.
One of the first commissioned projects was Mad Max, a video for Microsoft. “This was a first time we had opportunity to make it perfect, but we chose to let it be,” said Casey. They chose to leave the broomstick visible in the shots, despite raised eyebrows from Microsoft.
Next, he showed the video Yogurt vs. Gas, commissioned by Pepsi. Created in one day, this video was the first time the brothers decided to turn the cameras on themselves, as well as experiment with animation, “It’s pretty bad, but it worked,” admitted Casey.
Speaking on his growth as a filmmaker, Casey showed Chat Roulette, a recent piece where he sums up the basics of the popular random chat application.
Finally, Casey discussed the most recent project, the HBO series, The Neistat Brothers. The idea was to keep making short videos and package them as a television show. Each episode features short stories from the brothers’ lives. The brothers filmed themselves all day, every day, until they had a series of episodes. HBO bought a whole season in 2008, and The Neistat Brothers debuted on air in 2010.
“It’s a pretty abrupt jump in contrast to what we do,” said Casey of the series, “it opened up a door. [The series] is super, hyper auto-biographical—to the point of where I don’t know how to make a movie unless it’s from my perspective.”
A Q&A followed followed the talk.
For more information, visit
Neistat Brothers
HBO Series: The Neistat Brothers
Video: Jumping Mothballs
Video: Yogurt vs. Gasoline
Video: Mad Max
Video: iPhone 4’s Dirty Secret
Video: ChatRoulette
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AIGA/NY A Camera, Marker, Paper & Scissors = Casey Neistat
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