Casey Neistat's Guide to Filmmaking

[Music] [Applause] just want to give a little heads up I know most of my vlogs were like fun and family and adventure oriented today's vlogs is going to be purely technical so if you're not like a YouTube creator or a filmmaker or like somebody who likes to make things or just don't give a [ __ ] about cameras and stuff you're not going to be into today's vlog just skip it stop watching check out tomorrow's vlog we'll be back to normal [Music] okay please vlog is fine you got one thing and one thing only Casey

nice hats guide to filmmaking so for all of you out there who can't afford tuition to NYU or other expensive film schools just watch this video over and over over and I promise you'll be all right let's begin first let's talk about gear gear doesn't matter let me explain well before I get into that let me just first defend myself because right now there's a bunch of people writing comments below that are like easy for you to say you have all these expensive cameras that's very true I do but I didn't always my HBO show

which is one of the biggest successes in like my mainstream movie career was shot on this camera this is even high-def this is shooting on tape this is the video camera your parents used to film you on for your like third birthday and some of my biggest videos like bike lanes bike lanes was shot on this little camera this thing what's this called this is a Canon 300 HS you can buy these used on Amazon for like 90 bucks if all it took to be good was to have the right equipment the people who had

the most money would always win this isn't movie called pan it premiered this weekend now if all it took to make good stuff was to have the right equipment trust me whoever made that movie with their one hundred and fifty five million dollar budget had way better cameras than you could ever afford this is Jonathan I'm just calling to get the status on my blogging in the neighborhood blog when I was like 20 years old 21 years old I was invited to the New York Film Festival and I saw this movie here at the New

York Film Festival a huge huge huge theater sold out standing ovations this is a movie called tarnation it's pre YouTube it's like vlogging before vlogging was even a consideration this movie it won Best Documentary at the National Society of Film Critics the Independent Spirit Awards the Gotham awards la in London Film Festival's it grossed over a million dollars in the box office and it costs two hundred and eighteen dollars and 32 cents to make and it was edited using iMovie software that's free editing software the gear didn't matter for him and he made like one

of the most celebrated documentaries of that entire year and that's what I want to talk about now I want to talk about story time okay before I get into that here is a quick review of all of my favorite video cameras three year old galaxy s3 if you don't have money for a camera just use your cell phone cell phones are great this is my iPhone if you only have like a hundred bucks I highly recommend getting whatever the cheapest point-and-shoot is from Walmart this thing six years old I think was like 150 bucks when

I first got it totally adequate if your budgets closer to 300 bucks I recommend the canon s120 that's what this is it's a really solid camera I used to shoot everything on this now a lot of people say but if I had 300 bucks why wouldn't I just get a go from GoPros are incredible borderline miraculous little devices but if you want to make videos you're better off with a point-and-shoot like this or one like this these are just more dynamic you can do more with something like this I absolutely love GoPros but it's really

hard to watch like long videos especially ones that aren't action videos that are shot in GoPros if you want the very best point shoot on the market get the Sony rx100 mark 4 it's a pretty amazing camera except for the price it's like 900 bucks you're gonna spend 900 bucks you'd be much better off with one of these this is a t-6s which is like the cheapest SLR you can buy it has autofocus now you're looking at my main shooter this is a canon 70d with a wide-angle lens on there this camera is like 1,300

bucks that lens is another 500 the microphones another 200 all in this is like a $2,000 setup that you're looking at to get this picture and this sound but if you want to upgrade this image is from my Canon 5d Mark 3 with an L Series lens on there so this was like a five or six thousand dollar camera the difference between this and a two thousand dollar camera is like this the difference for a two thousand dollar camera and there's six hundred dollar cameras like this [Music] this thing's okay it's about 100 bucks now

if you spend $200 more and you get one of these the quality goes way up and the price only goes up a little bit now if you spend 300 ollars more than that you get one of these for 600 bucks the quality goes way over here but the price hasn't moved much now if you go from 600 to 6,000 the price goes way up and the quality only moves a little bit as you spend more you get less and less for your return story story is all that matters story is golden story sits the top

of that gigantic pyramid that is filmmaking let me do another diagram story is king everything serves the king all of this is just here to serve this story defining what a story is is really really hard to do not sure there's actually like a generic formula to telling stories you have to find something that an audience is interested in and then share with them in a way that they're also interested in the only way to learn these things and get better at these things is by doing it over and over and over we have all

these tools that enable us to create in ways that are more accessible that are cheaper that are more fair that's what excites me the most I hope that was helpful for you if you are an aspiring filmmaker YouTube creator however you classify yourself okay what's up guys my name is Anthony my team username is sky diver and you should follow me because I'm under canopy right now above Colorado follow me remember my beam user name is skydiver