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When entering Olin 014 to see Casey Neistat, a filmmaker who was visiting as part of C@T’s New Media Colloquia Series, those in the audience noticed something different about him. Instead of sitting in the front row, politely and quietly biding his time until he was properly introduced, Neistat was already at the podium. However, he wasn’t talking or answering questions. He was DJing. He had his iTunes open to Gorillaz’s Plastic Beach and he would quickly skip to the next song when he felt that the sound wasn’t fitting his mood. “Nice fade out, right?” he asked the crowd, turning the music off as the event was starting. He continued to stand on stage even while he was being introduced, peering over the speaker’s shoulder and correcting her when necessary. Without saying a single word about why he was here at Conn, Neistat was already proving himself different from the average guest lecturer.
Neistat and his brother Van are members of the unofficial do-it-yourself filmmakers club which include similar non-film-school-educated directors like Quentin Tarantino and Kevin Smith. Unlike Tarantino and Smith, however, the Neistat brothers have never sought to make feature length films for theaters. Instead, they make shorts.
The brothers’ films usually consist of science experiment films (such as electrocuting a pickle), PSAs about things they find important and movies about their family. They got their start before YouTube was created. Since there wasn’t yet a home for self-made videos, their shorts often found circulation in the art scene. Neistat is iMovie-educated and he often shoots his films on cheap, low-quality cameras commonly found at Walmart.
One PSA, titled “iPod’s Dirty Secret,” was about how Apple won’t replace iPod batteries. Since YouTube wasn’t an option yet, they created their own website for the video and sent the link to a dozen friends. A few days later, Neistat received a call from his internet service asking him why an enormous amount of bandwidth was coming from his server. “I told him, ‘I’ll call you back in twenty minutes. I have no idea what you’re talking about,’” Neistat said. Apparently, their little video had been shared so many times that it was draining bandwidth from their server. In order to find a proper home for the video, they ultimately settled for an Apple website which allowed users to post their own videos without any bandwidth confinements; their little PSA was now being hosted by the same people it was bashing.
Another of their PSAs, titled “Bike Thief,” featured Van showing how easy it is to steal a bicycle in New York, which is a common occurrence in the city. No matter how intense his method of breaking the bike chain got, from simple bolt cutters to a steel saw spewing sparks, no one passing him on the street ever questioned what he was doing. The one person who even bothered to notice that Van was trying to break a bike chain in half actually gave him helpful advice. Meanwhile, a police cruiser completely passed by Van, instead instructing Casey, who was filming, to move out of the designated parking area.
The science experiment movies are especially fun to watch. Besides the pickle short, there is also one showing a candle burning at both ends teetering like a seesaw when balanced in the middle and one with mothballs dancing in a jar of settled baking soda and vinegar. The films are fun, informative, short enough for the average YouTube viewer’s attention span and they cost practically nothing to make, which Neistat made very clear.
Raised in Gales Ferry, Neistat has close ties to the New London area. When the brothers were offered the chance to have their own HBO show (consisting of shorts about their lives), Neistat proceeded to film a section of the pilot at Ocean Beach. Before showing the audience the rough cut of the pilot, he apologized, “I’m going to hit play and then go to the bathroom. I’m not leaving you.”
In the pilot’s intro, Neistat’s voiceover told the viewers that everything they were about to see – from the brothers building a new studio to Van meeting his birth father for the first time – was filmed within the past six weeks. That is what sets their films apart from those of other filmmakers: they are not worried about making their films look attractive with extensive post-production sessions. They just want their films to be available.
Neistat is an adamant supporter of sharing work. One of his biggest pet peeves was the fact that HBO didn’t allow episodes to be seen on the Internet. “I started making movies for companies to get money,” he said. “Now that I have money, I post my movies so everyone can see them.”
Neistat’s visit was a unique experience. Despite his excited storytelling style, he didn’t seem to want to say very much. His appearance consisted mostly of introducing the next video and including some interesting backstory about its creation, but he didn’t lecture the crowd or try to seem like he was smarter than anyone else there. If anything, he’s just a guy who found something he loves doing and a cheap way to do it – a way of life which needs no accompanying lecture. •
