What Casey Taught Me
// Who’s Casey Neistat?
I missed the whole daily vlogging era of Casey - I never watched any of his daily vlogs when they appeared on Youtube in the mid 2010’s but his rise was astronomical and meteoric. He daily vlogged (released a new vlog style video everyday) for around 800 days in a row with every single one being a new unique story - just think about that in your normal life.
Every single video had a different story for 800 days straight - I (as some of you will do) go to the same office every day and I do something similar every single day but Casey was able to create and then release a new unique story every day.
Casey had success before his Youtube vlogging era - he had a HBO mini-series in the USA called ‘The Neistat Brothers’ with his brother Van which was an early pre-cursor to his vlogging and then he had several ‘viral’ videos before social media which meant his videos were shared through email and not discovered on socials.
But the daily vlogs and his chaotic, ad-hoc and homemade style made his audience.
He never went to film school, he didn’t learn his craft in any class, he didn’t have any experience when he started - he just had a passion and that made him want to succeed. This is what resonates with me.
// The Course
Late in December 2021, I was travelling for work and for the first time in a long time, Casey dropped a video on his Youtube channel called ‘The Most Important Movie I’ve Ever Made’ (watch it here) which was an announcement video (in Casey’s normal style) about the fact that he had created a course on Filmmaking. The course ran through January 2022, a new video inside the course released every day to go through the recording of a video, the capturing and then the editing - the two biggest things I have always wanted to learn from Casey were;
How does he find stories?
How does he edit?
The course is run by Studio - a course platform which only really deals with celebrities. I had never heard of ‘Studio’ before, but it seems like a good platform (it was good, I don’t know why I said that).
Throughout January there were several groups put together, presumably at random and through some random algorithm and we had to introduce ourselves to each other in the group and then follow the course together - this is why you can’t just ‘start’ the course immediately, you have to be in some form of timed course structure.
Throughout the course, each group then supports and offers advice (based on Casey’s videos) as we all went about to create our own videos.
// What Casey Does
The course is split into two parts which was really helpful - the first half of the course is solely dedicated to Casey (and those taking the course) creating a vlog style video using just your phone. No fancy equipment, no expensive camera’s or mic and no set up.
The second half of the month long course is then Casey creating another video (a completely different story) with his expensive DSLR camera - each half of the course covers the same kind of structure, he goes out into the street, films and explains why he’s filming specific parts and then edits the video’s into a narrative.
The editing process takes up most of the two half of the course as he explains why he’s cutting parts, what he does to drive a story forwards and why he is keeping specific parts of the video but the interesting parts happen when Casey is filming.
// What I learned.
I set out on this course to watch Casey work his magic - look at what he does to film scenes, how he set’s up stories and what he does to generate an interesting video. I have taken the course three times overall (which means I’ve watched all the videos three times) - the first time, whilst the course was running, I didn’t actually do the tasks set and I probably let my fellow course mates down by not completing the task.
I focused heavily on the early stages of Casey filming - he breaks down the focus he takes and how he films things. The biggest takeaway I can give you from these early stages is that everything has a story. You can step outside your door and see something that could take the focus of a story - someone walking down the street, a dog on the loose, your journey, the people you meet - everything has the opportunity to be a story - you just have to condition your mind to take it all in.
The two stories he creates during the course are different but one is spontaneous and one is structured.
The difference is that on the first video, when he sets out with his iPhone, he is looking for a story - he want’s to film something (in a similar style to his vlogs) which captures imagination and is completely unscripted.
Don’t get me wrong, the whole process takes a lot of confidence and standing on a New York street with your iPhone propped up on a wall and talking into it will take balls but it’s nice to see Casey make a mess of his ‘lines’ and just how many takes it does take to get the words out of his mouth.
But this is where the magic happens - people around him are curious, people (especially Americans) ask him what he’s doing and on one occasion (which makes it into the final edit) - Casey interacts with someone and that is where the magic is.
You see, people and their energy is what feeds Casey’s videos - it’s where I believe the magic happens and it’s what sets Casey’s videos apart from all the rest. His willingness to include anyone in his videos is admirable and it really adds to the story element because it’s never just about him.
I’ve tried this since the course and honestly, it’s so hard to do purely because of the unpredictability and the unknown nature of what will happen - thats scary and exhilarating in equal measure.
I know I want to do more of that but it’s super difficult to nail and people (especially British people) don’t really want to be in a video they know nothing about.
// The edit.
The video is made in the edit.
These are Casey’s words, not mine. But it’s true - I could film my entire day and it would be interesting to some but to create a story - you need a beginning, a middle and an end. A three act structure as Casey calls it.
This is what I’ve struggled with in videos before - how to start a video, what the conflict is in the middle and then what is the resolution.
Every great story has this structure - it has a beginning. A set up - what is the story about and what does the main character want to achieve?
The middle - a conflict - a problem or a situation which the main character needs to overcome and then the end - the fairytale ending or the failure.
Every story has the same structure. In my early videos (which I don’t think are very good) - there is a blurring of the lines between each of these ‘acts’ and there isn’t a clear narrative which stands out - it’s what Casey’s course taught me and I think my videos got much better after that.
The actual editing process which Casey outlines is looong and going through the process with him there are two main things which stand out - the music is a deliberate and hyper specific choice and the way he cuts from scene to scene is also very deliberate and specific.
The music has to tell the same story as the video - they have to complement each other. You can’t have a melancholic song choice in a video which is supposed to be upbeat and you can’t have an upbeat song in a video which is supposed to be sombre. It just won’t work - from the moment I took that course, I started ‘banking’ and saving music from multiple sources. I wanted to have a bank of music I could call upon when I needed to. That really helps.
The editing - the scene set ups is also amazing to watch. It’s very difficult to explain in words what Casey does to create these specific edits but honestly - how he does it is incredible. He’ll overlay audio from the next scene onto the previous scene to transition you from one space to another and he’ll quickly snap the camera in specific ways to create motion etc - everything is done in the edit..
// Well, I say that.
On both videos, Casey works hard in the filming process to film the story as he goes - he understands what shots will work and what shots won’t work and he works his camera and his filming to make his editing life so much easier. He focuses on capturing more content than he needs so he has throwaway shots if he needs to fill anything.
His experience and his natural talent does a lot of the leg work and he clearly knows what he’s doing - that will obviously take time to master and the more you do, the more you will get better at videos.
The whole thing takes time and the more you do, the better you will be.
Nothing can take the place of the actual doing - it’s impossible to replicate the actual doing.
I mean, you could watch hundreds of tutorial videos from Cristiano Ronaldo on how to perfect the free kick in football but no amount of theory will give you the experience of striking the ball - the course I took by Casey was great, I picked up loads but the main thrust is the actual doing.
// The video.
If you want to see the actual video that Casey creates in the course (he doesn’t tell you this on his Youtube Channel) then you can actually watch it - it’s called ‘HIDDEN VIDEO CAMERA in my custom glasses’ - watch it here.
// The course.
Oh, and if you want to take the same course I did - you can see it here. (Click here)
