A look inside filmmaker Van Neistat's creative process

Van Neistat, the creator of The Spirited Man video essay series, details the contours of his creative process, from writing scripts to final edits, and the tinkering and puzzle-building that happens in between. He discusses the difficulties of delegating, his storytelling philosophies, and the pure joy of finding an all-consuming, time-melding flow state. “To me, creativity is that trance,” Van says. “You are not really conscious. You are just the thing that you're making.”

Transcript:

Van Neistat:

To me, creativity is that trance. You are not really conscious. You are just the thing that you're making.

Jack Conte:

What you're describing is my favorite fuckin' thing in the world.

Van Neistat:

How many hours of my labor will it take to save me 500 bucks? I kinda think I'm in it for the edit. Like, that's the part where I get in a flow. That's the part where it just, the time ... The pace makes you better. The quantity makes you better.

Jack Conte:

Van Neistat is an artist, filmmaker, and creator of the YouTube channel, The Spirited Man, which has gained almost half a million YouTube subscribers since he started the channel a little over a year ago. He is also the brother of the one and only Casey Neistat, and he and Casey made a TV show for HBO in 2010 called The Neistat Brothers.

Clip of Casey Neistat:

This show is about my brother and me, but this is not a reality show.

Jack Conte:

Casey originally went the YouTube route, and Van went on to make TV commercials and work with artists like Tom Sachs, exhibiting his work around the world. Van's YouTube videos are unlike any other videos on YouTube.

Clip of Van Neistat:

He wondered if his detail fetish was harming others.

Jack Conte:

And I was so excited to sit down with him and talk about what makes his voice so unique.

Okay, I want to start with something you said in an interview earlier this year. You were talking about wanting your own kingdom. And I very much feel like you now have your own kingdom. And so my first question for you is, how's your kingdom? How does it feel?

Van Neistat:

It's good. The court has not revolted. The kingdom is good. I need more subjects, I think, because, as you know, when you're like a DIY person, you take on the whole operation. And I have a very extreme weakness of not being able to delegate. And so there's so much going on. There's the family and then, no, there's two things going on. There's a personal life and then get a video made every week. But they're so complicated, these videos, and yet I don't feel like I can delegate any part of the process, including taking out the garbage, because I'm like, well, nobody wants to do it, they're going to be insulted. These kids all went to USC Film School. You know?

Jack Conte:

Yeah.

Van Neistat:

So, the kingdom's great. And Tom Sachs, we're working on a project together and we're doing these 6:00 AM phone calls, 9:00 AM for him. And he brought up the kingdom thing the other day and he's like, you're doing it man. And it's real and it's good. And I was so happy. But the reason I said that is because I had been a collaborator for so long, so late into my life. And then finally, I don't know how, but somehow I was like, this will be my own thing.

Jack Conte:

Is the delegation thing because you care about the details so much? And so if somebody does the details differently, you don't like that? Or is the delegation thing something else? Why?

Van Neistat:

Yeah, it's a great question. I think it has something to do with, it's my disposition. I'm a maniac. I'll be all nice and sweet in my professional life, but I'm like a crazy maniac so I don't want to unleash that guy. And delegating is a skill that I've never really developed.

In the edit. So I'm very careful to usually write everything ahead of time and then I just shoot a shot list. Shooting to me is like, I don't really take it that seriously.

Jack Conte:

Really?

Van Neistat:

The fastest way to do it is essentially the way I want to do it.

Jack Conte:

So, you script the video first, basically.

Van Neistat:

Basically not 100% of them, but almost all.

Jack Conte:

And then you speak it through, you hold up a mic and you basically monologue the video.

Van Neistat:

Yes. And I try not to start unless I have the breakthrough. Like, oh, this is the thing, this is the little hook that people are going to like.

Jack Conte:

It seems to me like you couldn't delegate the scripting. I can't delegate scripting.

Van Neistat:

No.

Jack Conte:

The scripting is what I have to say.

Van Neistat:

Yes.

Jack Conte:

That is me as an artist.

Van Neistat:

Yes.

Jack Conte:

I can't go to somebody else and say, hey, write a script for me about what I believe. Doesn't work.

Van Neistat:

No.

Jack Conte:

It never comes back, I've tried a thousand times.

Van Neistat:

Yes.

Jack Conte:

And I can't. Scripting, I can't delegate. But after that? Shooting, post production, anything else?

Van Neistat:

Shooting, I don't care. Just shoot it. I don't care. But editing sometimes there's a breakthrough in the editing. Sometimes it's like, oh, because you're so far into it, you've been sleeping on it, sleeping on it, sleeping on it, whatever you're making, that in the editing sometimes just a turn that, I'm sorry, no one's going to get. And my brother made me feel very good about this because he said he was giving some gigantic lecture in front of 10,000 people and someone said, after you hire an editor, who's the first employee you hired? And he's like, who said I hired an editor? And I also on the Colin and Samir Show, I heard them talking about Emma Chamberlain, how she said I could delegate editing, but that's what I'm in it for. And I think that that's true too. I think I'm in it for the edit. That's the part where I get in a flow. That's the part where, just the time…

Jack Conte:

Yeah.

Van Neistat:

And it's also the sculptural parts, it's what everything's leading up to.

Jack Conte:

It feels like the same thing as the crafting of a Toyota logo or whatever it is.

Van Neistat:

I feel the same.

Jack Conte:

That's what editing is.

Van Neistat:

Yeah.

Jack Conte:

It's the detail orientation, the polishing, the maneuvering to get it just right. And I definitely feel that from your edits. So you don't work with an editor at all. Have you ever worked with an editor for your channel?

Van Neistat:

Sometimes I work with a guy named Braxton Haugen who's great, you should check out his channel. But sometimes I'll have the pre-editing stuff, like save all this in a different folder, in the folders according to what camera it was shot on. And then load it all into the timeline and cut it down, cut obvious stuff out. And a few things I've done, like eight things I've done that way. But no.

Jack Conte:

Yeah. Not like narrative cut.

Van Neistat:

I waste a lot of time in a bad way and I want to —

Jack Conte:

Do you feel it's actually a bad way?

Van Neistat:

Yes.

Jack Conte:

Is it actually a bad way? Really?

Van Neistat:

Yes.

Jack Conte:

It reminds me of that video about detail orientation.

Van Neistat:

Yeah.

Jack Conte:

Where you basically said, I think I forgot the exact quote, but you said something like, I'm willing to suffer the consequences of my obsession with details because I want them to be right. And so, is it a bad way if you get it just the way, is it bad? Is it a waste of time if it's just the way you want it?

Van Neistat:

But that's not what I waste time on.

Jack Conte:

What do you waste time on?

Van Neistat:

Wasting time on things that a 16-year-old intern could do. And the reason I do it is because I enjoy it. So like, I don't know, washing the truck, vacuuming the studio floor. One thing I would love to have a professional do, but you'd have to be so smart to do this, that this person doesn't exist, put my tools away. Put my stuff away. Because, I don't know, when you're working, I think this is what creativity is. And I think this is why people want to be creative people, is because to me creativity is that trance, it's like being on drugs. You are not really conscious. You are just the thing that you're making and blah blah blah. And oh wait, I know. I'll use the soldering iron. And then a whole mess and stuff. But everything has to be exactly where it always is because you won't be able to be in that trance if you have to stop: Where is the resin? Where is it a toothpick to stir the resin?

Jack Conte:

How much of your time do you spend in that state? Because what you're describing is my favorite fuckin' thing in the world.

Van Neistat:

Yeah.

Jack Conte:

It's the best feeling in the world. What does it for me is also editing.

Van Neistat:

Yeah.

Jack Conte:

It's post-production. Storytelling through post-production.

Van Neistat:

Yeah.

Jack Conte:

The jigsaw puzzle of assembling a story and revealing the thing. It just —

Van Neistat:

It is a puzzle. It is a puzzle.

Jack Conte:

It's a puzzle.

Van Neistat:

It's a puzzle.

Jack Conte:

It's a puzzle.

Van Neistat:

That's what we're doing.

Jack Conte:

And sometimes there's a missing piece and I just love searching for that missing piece and putting that in the right place and it connects the things and it's just, I love that. So when I'm in that moment, literally, I will not eat, I will not go to the bathroom. I will wake up and it's fucking 3:00 in the morning, and it feels like waking up from a dream.

Van Neistat:

Yes.

Jack Conte:

Obviously is what it feels like.

Van Neistat:

Yeah.

Jack Conte:

That's my favorite state to be in. How much of your time do you spend in that state as an artist?

Van Neistat:

This is a great question. Okay. Do you have kids?

Jack Conte:

I don't.

Van Neistat:

Okay. Obviously that changes everything.

Jack Conte:

Yeah.

Van Neistat:

But let's see, I would say it's maybe four hours a day, if I'm lucky. And then on an editing day or if I'm at the finish line, and it's like, if I can just go hard and I'll be done today and then tomorrow it is for everybody else, which sometimes happens on Thursdays, which is the greatest.

Jack Conte:

Why Thursdays?

Van Neistat:

Because I post on Fridays.

Jack Conte:

Okay.

Van Neistat:

And so, I would say on those days I might get eight, but my precious time is, I wake up at 4:00 in the morning, five days a week. And then my precious time is 4:00 till my son has to go to school, which is around 8:00 something. And that's like zero distractions.

Jack Conte:

Yeah.

Van Neistat:

And then each day is different and they overlap. So there's a full writing day. Then there's a writing, overlapping with shooting day. Then there's a shooting, overlapping with editing day, which is today. And then there's a full editing day. And then there's a posting day that might overlap with a little tiny bit of editing or just a go-through. And so the shooting, editing days is when I'm indulging in the flow state. But the building is what, oh, there's also the building though. And you build stuff too.

Jack Conte:

Yeah.

Van Neistat:

I hate shooting when I'm building and I know that I'm getting the right to spend five hours on this thing I'm making this week is like, I smelted lead fishing sinkers to make a heavy base for my new camera so I can put on the dashboard of my car without it sliding around. And I know that I can indulge in melting these fishing weights because I'm shooting it. And sometimes when I'm really indulging, I don't shoot. And I'm just making beautiful da da da. And then sometimes I go back and fake it or sometimes it just doesn't make it in the thing. And people are like, if money was no object, what would you do? I was like, same thing, but I wouldn't shoot it. But also I think the truth is, if money was no object, I would just spend money. That's all I would do.

Jack Conte:

So the shooting is the enabling mechanism that for you makes it universal. It's the thing that is the value-generating portion of what you do.

Van Neistat:

Yes. It's what allows me to do it. Because that's what people will support.

Jack Conte:

Right. So it's almost like the business model of your detail obsession is storytelling.

Van Neistat:

Yeah. Or it's like, the making is the advertising budget for my video making or the other way around.

Jack Conte:

The other way around.

Van Neistat:

Yeah.

Jack Conte:

The video making is the advertising.

Van Neistat:

The video making is the advertising budget for my hand making.

Jack Conte:

That's so funny. Because what's interesting about that is, I started from there as well. Where it sounds like for you, the product, the thing that lights you up is the making of the stuff and the smelting and the repair and that is your purpose on Earth. And then the video-making is a way to make that work, which for me as a musician —

Van Neistat:

But it used to be the video making! It used to be!

Jack Conte:

Oh, so that's different.

Van Neistat:

In the beginning of the video making, in the first 10 years of the video making —

Jack Conte:

Yeah like Neistat Brothers —

Van Neistat:

Everything was feeding the video making.

Jack Conte:

So when did that change for you?

Van Neistat:

I think it was when it was like, the overhead started to get high and I really had to have money. It couldn't just be reckless anymore. It had to just be a last, it had to be focused. And especially having the kid and all this stuff. And then with YouTube, the schedule of it, boom. The faster you get them up, the more the algorithm's going to promote you. And I don't know, the system I'm trying to develop is how do I have both?

Jack Conte:

Can we talk about the schedule for a minute? There are some artists who really love that. On one end of the spectrum. There's artists on the other end of the spectrum who, for them it's this oppressive clock of doom to have to put something out, to serialize the creation of art. I think for some people that's a constraint. That's exciting. And it creates more artistry in themselves and they enjoy living up to that challenge. And for other folks they're like, look, I want time and I want space. I don't want a fucking algorithm telling me when to upload. If the video's not ready Friday, fuck it. The video's not ready Friday and I'm going to take my bloody time. I've seen folks on the full spectrum. Is that how you think about it? Or where are you on that spectrum? Do you like being —

Van Neistat:

About a year ago, maybe I was like six months into the channel and it was very successful. It was insanely successful for the amount of time it had been up. Faster than my brother. I mean, I had my brother's help, because he could promote me. I got to 400,000 subscribers faster than he did. But I was working really hard and doing two a week and I was just becoming a total maniac. And my mental health was just unwinding. And when my mental health goes, I get very angry, very full of rage. And I'm like tapping into that war gene or whatever. And so my psychiatrist said to me, "Take a break. Take a break from the schedule.Can you take a break from the schedule? And I said, okay. And so for my first video of 2022, I said, take as long as you want to make this, to myself. And that was my schedule. And it ended up taking like a month. It was like a month. Granted it was like the Christmas, New Year's da-da-da-da month where you're getting interrupted all the time. And it was pretty good. It that one with the Kurt Vonnegut thumbnail. But I still felt the same weird pressure. I still felt the same time constraint. And there's a great, I think it's Revisionist History podcast with Malcolm Gladwell. And Gladwell talks about slow artists versus fast artists. And Picasso did 65,000 works of art, which is three pieces a day for 60 years. And then I think the other one was like Cézanne or somebody like this, somebody really super slow. Do you remember the Director's Label DVDs that came out?

Jack Conte:

This is our thing that we've got —

Van Neistat:

Okay. Okay.

Jack Conte:

I fucking watched those videos frame by frame a hundred times. I studied Michel Gondry.

Van Neistat:

This is the one I'm going to talk about.

Jack Conte:

Until my brain exploded.

Van Neistat:

Yes.

Jack Conte:

Yes.

Van Neistat:

And in the beginning he says, for this DVD, it was a collection of his short films, I had to decide between going for quality and going for quantity. And I went for quantity because quantity lasts, which is so antithetical to my thinking and I still don't have my head around it. Because quality lasts! The pyramids last because they're well made.

Jack Conte:

But quantity —

Van Neistat:

But quantity lasts.

Jack Conte:

No, no, quantity yields better quality.

Van Neistat:

I agree.

Jack Conte:

This is the part that I can't quite get.

Van Neistat:

Yeah.

Jack Conte:

I see videos like yours and your just insane detail orientation.

Van Neistat:

Can you see that? I just feel like I'm cutting corners the whole time. I'm like, I'll just let this slide, you're the only one who is going to see this.

Jack Conte:

I mean the pacing, even the meticulousness of your labeling, the studio, the fucking date on your pencil, everything. It's insanely meticulous.

Van Neistat:

Okay.

Jack Conte:

And there's a piece of me that respects that so much that I want to be that guy. But then at the same time, I have this deeply held belief that I will only improve as an artist after making 5,000 versions of the thing that I'm making. In the Picasso spectrum versus Cézanne spectrum, I see Picasso, I'm like, of those 60,000 works that Picasso made, 200 years later, a hundred years later, people are talking about 20 of them. And he didn't know which 20.

Van Neistat:

Correct.

Jack Conte:

When he was making them.

Van Neistat:

This is how I think about it.

Jack Conte:

So yeah, I could spend six months working on one and put it out and hope that, that's the one. Or I could make 60,000 and 20 of them are probably going to stick. And if I make 60,000, I'm going to be pretty good, by the time I'm at like 30,500, I'm going to be pretty good at it. And so I just try to make a lot. But it's not because I don't care about quality, it's because I care about quality.

Van Neistat:

Yeah. Yeah.

Jack Conte:

And I think that this is the lever to quality. Does that make sense?

Van Neistat:

Yeah. And that's ultimately, I think, why I do it. Because I'm just like, no, the pace makes you better. The quantity makes you better. You learn a little bit. Every time you do something again, you learn a little teeny little tweak. And there's like a zen saying that the wheel smith cannot explain what he spent 20 years learning. He can't teach you how to make the wheel because there's so many tiny little teeny, teeny, teeny detail, including where the chisel goes in the chisel holder.

Jack Conte:

Maybe that's why it's hard to delegate.

Van Neistat:

Thank you. Yes.

Jack Conte:

Right? Because you're forced to explain.

Van Neistat:

Yes.

Jack Conte:

What you want and how you would make something which, you're a wheel maker after 20 years. And it's in your blood, in your eyeballs, in your hands and you can't explain it.

Van Neistat:

Yeah.

Jack Conte:

Okay. Can we talk about Michel Gondry for a second?

Van Neistat:

Yes.

Jack Conte:

Well, I wanted to draw a difference between your videos and Michel Gondry videos.

Van Neistat:

Okay.

Jack Conte:

Because Michel Gondry's videos, I think the main difference is pacing. Michel Gondry's videos are, it's like every two seconds something is happening. Whereas what I admire about your videos, and what I think is, separates your videos from literally everybody else's on YouTube...

Van Neistat:

Oh, that's very sweet. Thank you.

Jack Conte:

15 seconds of silence.

Video plays with voiceover:

Cloudy today. The clouds are good in these parts.

Jack Conte:

Your videos are more like watching a movie or listening to a podcast than it is like watching a Michel Gondry video. Don't get me wrong, I love Michel Gondry videos. But you use silence, it seems, I don't know why you're doing it, but it seems like you're giving the viewer a chance to reflect on themselves as they're learning from you in your videos. And so there'll be some dialogue, and then there'll be 15 seconds of silence with a little beautiful pad, some beautiful ethereal kind of music playing, and then some beautiful shots. And you give me time, as a viewer, to think about what this video means to me. And I so appreciate that generosity in your videos. How are you thinking about silence in your videos? And I guess, why are you using silence so much? Why are you giving us... Does that come natural to you?

Van Neistat:

Okay. No, it's two reasons. Or it might be three, but it's two primary reasons. And one of them is Andrei Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time. Have you read that book?

Jack Conte:

No, I haven't.

Van Neistat:

Okay. You have to read it.

Jack Conte:

Okay.

Van Neistat:

Okay. It's an assignment for you.

Jack Conte:

Okay.

Van Neistat:

And he wrote it, I think it's the last thing he ever wrote. And he was dying when he wrote it. And he talks about all of the... He talks about it in such non-woo-woo terms, just the job of filmmaking. And so I read that book, and then I immediately, of course, watched all of his movies. And his movies, he's making them behind the Iron Curtain, almost all of them. And they're slow, but you are drawn in, your subconscious is drawn in. They're like Lynch movies in that way. And they're slow. And slow means there's less work you have to do. There's less shooting. There's like less moving the camera. It's less editing.

But, and this is the chief thing that I got from him, he said something like, you're not experimenting with the camera. You are getting the job done. You have the confidence in that shot. You know what the shot is and that's what's going to go in there. You know how long it's going to be. And the experimentation might be with the performance or so forth or some little tiny tweaks in there." And I think it was the, just be confident this is what the shot is. Be confident what this movie is, and be confident that you're hooking the audience so that they care. All that we're doing is getting them to watch the end. That's what all this trouble is for.

And the second thing, I made a feature film with Tom Sachs. We co-wrote it. I directed it and it was, we shot it live. And then I went back and shot all this little stuff that's called A Space Program. And I worked with a composer named Grey Gersten, who did a lot the first, all the videos of my first year. And then he got so many offers that I couldn't afford to work with him anymore. And he's unbelievable. He's such a great artist on every level. But he just got composition. And one of the things, when we were editing, and I'd take his music and put it into scenes, he'd say, "You need to put breaths in. So that people can digest what you just fed them."

Jack Conte:

A thousand percent.

Van Neistat:

That was the thing. Grey GerstenI. It's not about speed. It's not about, "Hey look at this, look at this thing."

Jack Conte:

I literally use the word breath when I'm talking about those moments. It's like a trumpet player. They output this incredible creative musical phrase, and then they take a breath, and there's a little bit of silence. Miles does this really well. And then it's the next one.

Van Neistat:

And dumps the spit out.

Jack Conte:

And you know who does this really well? Podcasters. I think podcasters do this really well, which is why I compared your filmmaking to watching a podcast because —

Van Neistat:

Now hold on. I want to interrupt you just for clarification. So podcasting, you have the Joe Rogan where it's just a conversation like this. But then you have —

Jack Conte:

Narrative podcasting.

Van Neistat:

This American Life.

Jack Conte:

That's what I'm talking about.

Van Neistat:

Okay. Okay. Yeah. Those guys are geniuses.

Jack Conte:

They are geniuses.

Van Neistat:

Another thing is I'm trying to do, to make my videos so that you don't have to watch them. That's part of it too.

Jack Conte:

Oh. That's really interesting.

Van Neistat:

They're so you don't have to watch them because while I'm making stuff... You see I always have the earbuds in when I'm making stuff, I'm listening to podcasts and stories and books on tape. It's like Ritalin for me or something. It quiets the noise.

Jack Conte:

Yeah. I love that. I love that. Okay.

Van Neistat:

But I interrupted you.

Jack Conte:

No, no, no. Well I was just going to say, I think podcasters are almost like — the narrative podcasters. They're like the modern creator generation of filmmakers.

Van Neistat:

Yes.

Jack Conte:

Because the way they tell stories is more like filmmaking stories. More so than the way YouTubers tell stories. Which is again, what separates, I think, your videos on YouTube from most other people's videos. Is, yeah, the podcasters are making stories that have these breaths, that have moments of silence. They give us a space to reflect. It's that, I think in one video you called it, we're tricking you with the conflict and the resolution. We're tricking you to watch the middle is what you said.

Van Neistat:

Yeah. That's what we want to tell you. That's our propaganda's in the middle. But we got to trick you with a little treat at the end.

Jack Conte:

You got to set it up.

Van Neistat:

Yeah.

Jack Conte:

Okay. So this takes you into my question about storytelling, which is how do you get people to watch the middle? How do you get people to care enough to keep going? This is what—

Van Neistat:

You have to ask a question in the beginning, that they, while they're watching, they get a little bit hypnotized with. But then they also have to be like, "Yeah, but what about the? What about the?"

Jack Conte:

And then you don't resolve it until the end.

Van Neistat:

No. That's right. And that's their reward. And then you resolve it. And this is what Mamet, I think David Mamet said this. Is that the ending has to be both a surprise and inevitable. And that's the trick. And that's what you have to suffer for. And that's why most people quit. Is because that wall of where is that? That's why you also do it in the beginning with the writing. Because you don't want to get da da da, and they're like, "Oh no, it's this. I'm going to go back and shoot." Which is how I used to work. That's how Casey and I used to work when we were doing the TV series.

Jack Conte:

Wait. Where you wouldn't come up with the whole plot beforehand?

Van Neistat:

I would have a... I wouldn't have the hook at the end. I wouldn't have the irony at the end, that's like the plot point too, that brings you to the conclusion. And it just wasted so much time. And it's less disciplined than sitting at that... I use a manual typewriter, sitting at the typewriter. And justdoo-doo-doo. Also it's not as pleasant. Because when you get that hook, you're on vacation at that point. You're just putting it down. You're just putting it down. And then when somebody, in the comments, I don't read the comments, but I read all and respond to all the Patreon comments that come to me. Like, Patreon is how you communicate with me. It's like my office hours.

And when someone specific, a patron, who's paying me, specifically mentioned something that was like, "Well that's where it was." To me that's like the heartbeat. It's like, "Okay, the whole thing worked. I'm just going to keep going." Or when someone says, "That's my favorite one."

Jack Conte:

Yeah.

Van Neistat:

"This is my favorite one." Then you're like, "Okay." The numbers matter. The numbers fucking matter. But that stuff matters more. And that stuff encourages you. And to me, it's like, well the numbers are going to come. Because if you can do this, the numbers are going to come. And my channel hasn't, it hasn't caught on yet. As much as it's very popular. I do about a hundred thousand views per video. But still, it hasn't caught on, you know.

Jack Conte:

This reason to keep going that you're talking about right now. For me, again, it calls back to the video that you made, "The Crisis," where you talk about Tolstoy's definition of art as being the transmission of a feeling that the artist once felt to another person.

Video clip:

The author's simple definition of art was that it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experience.

Van Neistat:

That's the only definition I'll accept.

Jack Conte:

Yeah.

Van Neistat:

That's hard.

[Sarcasm] Artists just don't know, because then the modernists came along. And Deschamps, he just wrote R. Mutt on a toilet. And it's like, okay, now that's what everyone's trying to do. Cause that's easy. And no, what Tolstoy said, which puts to me, that puts the comedians at the top of the artist food chain. Highest. Because Andrew Schultz says, he's like, "You can fake sad. You can fake angry. Can't fake funny." And those people can transmit funny. And funny is the best one of all the emotions. And that's why they get paid and that's why they're so successful. Especially now, the good ones.

Jack Conte:

And that's congruent though with what you're talking about in terms of the reason to keep going. What you're saying is, when I hear from somebody who watches my shit, that this was moving to them, that is the resolution of the transmission of the feeling to that person.That's the feedback that you're getting. Is I gave a feeling to another human. I spent all this time and energy, and shot it, and scripted it, and did the whole thing, and this person felt the thing I wanted them to feel. And that makes it worth it to you.

Van Neistat:

Or is it, they felt what you wanted them to feel or they felt the feeling that you felt. I think that is the... That's what Tolstoy says.

Jack Conte:

Yes. Right.

Van Neistat:

He says it's a feeling. You're trying to translate this feeling. I mean, there are some things that... Have you seen, I think it's called The Worst Person in the World.

Jack Conte:

Oh, I wanted to see that. And I still haven't seen it.

Van Neistat:

Watch it tonight.

Jack Conte:

Okay.

Van Neistat:

I mean, Americans don't make these movies anymore. And this is what they made in the seventies. But it's one of these... And even if it's unpleasant, it's still good. It's the feeling. I don't know. The indulgence and feeling. That's why we love art.

Jack Conte:

I was talking about this last night with some friends, two musicians that I love dearly. We were talking about 10 out of 10 experiences in life. And we all agreed that, actually, a lot of our 10 out of 10 experiences were not positive.

Van Neistat:

Yeah.

Jack Conte:

The 10 out of 10s were that moment where you finished the album, and you're like, "Fuck this person." The first time I heard of Kendrick Lamar record, and I listened to the whole thing while reading the lyrics. And I was just like, "This tragedy of a human being." 10 out of 10, but not like positive 10 out of 10. Just the deepest feeling of sorrow and loss. But that is the 10 out of 10 experiences that I think we all crave. And the great artists are able to give us those experiences, which is why they're the great artists.

Van Neistat:

And the great, great, great ones, they do it over and over and over again. I don't know how that... Yeah.

Jack Conte:

So, there's a tension that I feel, and I know a lot of artists feel this and I have a feeling you think about this. On the one hand, artistry is the transmission of a feeling to another person. And the power, the purpose, the joy comes from getting feedback around that success. It's like, "I gave this person that thing that I was feeling. Now I feel more understood. I know they get me a little bit more. I connect with them." And yet making art for other people is a dangerous path. How much do you think about audience when you're making stories? How much are you thinking about the successful transmission of the feeling versus enjoying being in the flow and doing your thing and making art for yourself?

Van Neistat:

It's kind of like your conscience voice. It's very quiet and it just tickles you. I think about it like that. And it's very detailed little things. It's not big picture stuff. Big picture it's just like, "Well if they don't like this, it won't get enough views and I'll go poor and now that'll be the end of it." But for little things, I'm very cognizant of, okay, if this two seconds doesn't need to be in here and a million people watch it, that's two million seconds I've wasted of human beings' time.

And so for this last video I did where I drove up to Montana to get the engine switched out of my truck, which was two weeks ago but feels like a year ago, there was one shot where I'm introducing that the engine overheats and that's why I'm getting a new engine. One of the reasons. And I opened that sequence with a shot of the thermostat and then I go back to the thermostat. It just bothered me a little, little bit every time I was editing it. But you're editing so fast that you just leave things. And then I slept on it, went back, and then the day I was going to upload it right before that uploaded I pulled it out. Because I'm like, "No, they don't need that." I do think about the audience's time.

But there's this book called The YouTube Formula. It's basically how to optimize the algorithm on YouTube. And I read this book maybe six months into having my channel on my brother's recommendation, I believe because the guy who wrote this book is an expert in optimizing views and everything. He works with Mr. Beast. And I read this and it was the exact opposite that I've ever been taught by all of people that I know that have artistic integrity. It was the opposite of that. It was like, go back to your analytics a month later and watch the views and watch where the people drop off and find the videos that have the highest number of views and then just keep making those videos over and over again. I'm like the whole reason I'm in this is because I want to keep doing all the weird stuff and I want to go through the woods with it. I want to cut the stuff down and I don't know.

But you're trying to find where's the balance, where's the balance? I'm trying to discover new genres, little sub-genres within my work. And so one of the things with this Montana movie, one of the things is like, "Oh I fucking love talking while I'm driving the car." And the sound's pretty good. And I mean in my Land Cruiser, because it's an old engine and da, da, da. But I have a Tacoma and it's like a sound studio in there. Or if you're driving a Lexus or something? They did an ad where they record Pablo Casals or something playing cello in the back of one of those Lexuses going 50 miles an hour because they're so quiet.

This week's video is about me building that rig so that I can do that. But I've discovered a new — But that's just a little tiny little tweak. Oh, he's talking in his car instead of talking in his studio. Oh, and I listen to the Patreon patrons. Sometimes I think you should make a video about something and I make it. There's a lot on there. A lot of videos I've made came from the ideas from patrons.

Jack Conte:

Is that because you want to serve that community more? Or is it because you think the ideas are better?

Van Neistat:

I think it's both. But also you got to come up with a new thing every week. For me Patreon is like I'm taking advantage of my patrons. And I made an episode about this. Before Patreon, on my Mondays which is solely writing, a lot of my Mondays were just spent on what's the big picture idea? And that could be immediate. You should have just file folders full of those that you can't get to. And I didn't have that.

And so with the patrons it's like, "Oh, I had an idea like this and then this patron said to do this. I'm just going to do it." Like "Forbidden Practices in the Shop." That was a patron's idea.

Video clip:

Number 7. No trip wires. It's connected to a sledge hammer. It goes around the leg of a tripod.

Jack Conte:

So, this book that you read —

Van Neistat:

I think it's called The YouTube Formula.

Jack Conte:

I'm not surprised you didn't like this book because I'm not exactly sure how to frame this, but for me, I'm a very outcome-oriented person, which isn't to say that I don't love processes and making things and details. I do. And I think in order to be an artist, you have to get lost in the grind. And I don't know. There is also a very large piece of me, just as a person. I really think about five years from now, 10 years now, and I'm trying to get there.

Van Neistat:

Yes.

Jack Conte:

And sometimes, if I'm being really honest, it makes me feel like less of an artist.

Van Neistat:

Hold on, let me get my head around it.

Jack Conte:

Because I see someone like you.

Van Neistat:

Oka, let me get my head around this. So you're seeing a goal... Or no, you're conceiving some goal that's probably arbitrary and you're like, "Okay, in five years, I want to... I don't know, sell out Madison Square Garden." And then as you are working towards this…

Jack Conte:

How do I get there? What choices do I need to make?

Van Neistat:

You're thinking, "Oh, that's not what an artist does."

Jack Conte:

Because I see someone like you and I hear even your response to that question... I don't know. And look, I'm not saying I hate this about myself. I actually think a lot of the good things in my life are because I'm outcome-oriented and because I set goals and try to hit them. And also, maybe it's just a inferiority complex or something, but I struggle seeing people who don't have that at all just fucking make the greatest, most exploratory art and find interesting things. Like, I love vlogging in the car. I think a lot of outcome oriented people don't wander as much. And so much artistry happens in the wandering, it happens in the experimentation, in the trial.

Van Neistat:

But you did that. You did do that at some point.

Jack Conte:

And I still do to some extent. But I do it because I know that that's where I can find artistry.

Van Neistat:

Okay. I'm going to tell you a couple things that'll make you feel a lot better about this.

Jack Conte:

Okay.

Van Neistat:

Okay. I don't know if you've seen it, but rewatch the Ken Burns documentary about Mark Twain.

Jack Conte:

Okay. I haven't seen it.

Van Neistat:

The only reason, not the only reason, but a major reason why we still read his books and a lot of those monster books that he wrote. He was in trouble. And the only way to get out of it was to write his way out of it. He lost a fortune on some stupid gadget that he invented. He invested all of his money and he lived like a king. He was super, super rich. But my point is, he could make writing. That's where he could make money. And he knew his money-making skill was writing. And in the end, we got his great books because he had debts and because he needed money for stuff.

Jack Conte:

Oh my god.

Van Neistat:

You know what I mean?

Jack Conte:

Yes.

Van Neistat:

You take these romantic characters... No. They weren't like that. They were just like us. They were probably worse, Caravaggio or whatever. People writing themselves out of jail because…

Jack Conte:

You know what that reminds me of? It reminds me of the Beatles' time in Hamburg. Do you know about their time in Hamburg?

Van Neistat:

That's where they got their 10,000 hours.

Jack Conte:

They were a covers band. They played six nights a week and they were just grinding through covers for three years or something.

Van Neistat:

And three of those early years, which is like twenty 40-year-old years.

Jack Conte:

Yes, totally. Totally. And they were doing it because they needed the income, they needed the work, and they had to do it. And it was their treadmill. It was the version of the treadmill from the sixties. So this is the other reason, by the way, that I like the grind because I feel like the grind actually does output significance. It outputs meaning and purpose for me as an artist. Not every time, but one in fifty. And I'll take that. I'll take that. Okay. Okay. Wait, let's transition one more time. I do want to get to Michel Gondry. Can you tell me a little bit about, I guess, what works of his you enjoy, and how he's influenced your work in particular?

Van Neistat:

Okay. So I know old guys always talk about before the internet, but before the internet and before New York, before I lived in New York, I had zero access to any kind of art, any art that was being made today, besides pop music and music videos. And what I know now, what I didn't know back then, is that those videos were the art of the era and they were made by probably the best art in the era because there was a lot of money in there.

Jack Conte:

A hundred percent.

Van Neistat:

And I didn't know that that's what I was experiencing was art. And then I started making my own videos in 2000, bought a video camera, iMac, digitized the family home videos and edited them to a one-hour thing. And then after that, I had a camera so I was making videos every single day.

Jack Conte:

We have the same life.

Van Neistat:

And so I think those came out in '98, '99, those DVDs. And there was a Spike Jonze one, a Michel Gondry one, and then Chris Cunningham was the third one. And watching Michel Gondry, he was utilizing resources that I had access to. I mean, besides like okay, he's doing the White Stripes videos and stuff. I don't have the White Stripes. But technically, there wasn't anything… Like I could see how it was made. And it was made so ingeniously because he was considering the machinery of how it's being... The entire paradigm, like "Okay, I'm going to do animation, which is one frame at a time, but each frame is going to be Legos that has to be taken..." And he did it on graph paper. He directed Eternal Sunshine.

Jack Conte:

Yeah.

Van Neistat:

And that was just a monster. It's Charlie Kaufman and Michel Gondry. There should be a law.

Jack Conte:

I think it's the greatest movie of all time. I love that film so much. Talk about transmitting feelings.

Van Neistat:

And it's probably the sensitivity of those two people.

Jack Conte:

Totally. Because Charlie's a total softie.

Van Neistat:

And then he walked off of Green Hornet. They gave him his big, big Marvel movie, Michel Gondry, and he said, "Take my name off it." And wow. He suffered for that. He definitely suffered from that. He's probably the most talented guy of his generation and he's not the richest. And so those DVDs, we had access to all of this stuff that wasn't commercially viable. And it was so effing encouraging.

And we used to do these Lower Manhattan Cultural Council fundraiser videos because Tom Healy ran the LMCC and he'd hired Casey and me and he'd pay us really well. And that party was the party in New York that night. With security and everything. And one of the honorees was Michel Gondry, in one of the videos. And he was there and he watched it. And I remember Bjork was another one and she wasn't watching. She was just eating. She doesn't watch stuff. She doesn't watch movies or anything. So she was just eating her soup while this thing was playing. But Michel Gondry was glued to the thing. And I was just...

Jack Conte:

That must have felt incredible!

Van Neistat:

This is unbelievable.

Jack Conte:

Oh, how cool.

Let's close with your sense of mystery. Maybe you don't think of it like this, but we've talked a little bit about stories. We've talked about some surprise. We've talked about watching the middle and getting people to watch the middle by making them feel like it's going to be worth it at the beginning, and then making it worth it at the end. But the other thing that's interesting about your videos and the one that really comes to mind for me is there's a video. I think the title is something like "What to Do When Things are Hard" or "When Things Get Hard" or "What To Do About Hard Times."

Van Neistat:

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jack Conte:

And the video ends and you show this clip of you listening. You're going like this and you're listening to something and you're watching the best day of your life, where you took a plane after the plane crashed in the Hudson River.

Van Neistat:

Yeah, yeah.

Jack Conte:

And you're watching the best day of your life. And the video is called "What To Do About Hard Times." And the whole time, at least when I was watching this video, I was like, "Is he talking about what to do about hard times?" You're talking about looking at the best of your life, remember the best of your life. I was trying to figure out what was going on. I was doing a lot of work. My brain was working while watching this video. And then in the last maybe second and a half of the video, as you're watching this best day of your life, you crack and you start to cry.

Video clip:

And the truth will set me free. And I know someday, I'll find the key. But now I'm trapped.

Van Neistat:

Oh yeah, yeah. Oh, because I was listening to "Trapped" by Jimmy Cliff, but I was listening to Bruce Springsteen and that song... You know the song, right?

Jack Conte:

I don't know the song.

Van Neistat:

Oh my God. Write it down. You can listen to it. And this is where I go... Oh my God, I can't even talk about it without crying because... And a long time ago, I was like, "I got to make a video about this song, about Bruce Springsteen, about what this song does for me." And oh, it's hard to talk about because I'm a very sensitive person. He just talks about, he's like, "I'm fucking stuck. I'm in this situation. You're smarter than me. You got me against the rope and I'm going to get out of it. I'm going to fucking outsmart you. I'm going to outwork you." And he's like, "But now I'm trapped."

And that's the part of the song that's the explosive part: But now I'm trapped. And that's the part that he's screaming. And that is exactly what it feels like. When you get real... That was probably almost exactly a year ago. And that was when I was talking about earlier when I was just working way too much and then my rage and it's the last fuel you have is that fucking fight or flight is the fight to get the... And I was trying to do two a week. And I was torching thing, not literally, but was destroying all the people around me. And that's what it felt like, because I had to get this video done, I had to... And that's what I'm listening to. And I'm so sensitive to that song that I was like, "I know if I'm listening to that, even with the camera on and all this stuff, I'm not an actor, but I know I can't get through it."

Jack Conte:

Van, thank you for doing this.

Van Neistat:

Oh man, this is a dream of mine.

Jack Conte:

This is really fun. I feel like we could go another five hours. We could do five hours on just Michel.

Van Neistat:

Yeah.

Jack Conte:

But thank you for hanging with me.

Van Neistat:

All right. It was great. Thanks for having me!