Casey Neistat's Wildly Functional Studio

this is exactly neighborhood welcome my name is Casey Neistat and this is my this is my studio all in all I've been at 368 Broadway for almost 10 years I make movies here I started making movies in I think it was 2000 it might have been 99 whatever Apple came out with that blue iMac know what I'm talking about in case you don't it's right there maxed out my credit card to get that computer and I learned how to edit using the iMovie tutorial which was like a washing Steve Jobs dog and outdoor kiddie pool that was the footage they gave you and they played with cutting it and that's sort of it I started messing with that I got really into filmmaking and I kind of never looked at hustled my way hustled my way through the business all of my short movies are like are produced in here all my animations are shot in here right here actually and I would say the basic premise of this studio is anything I may need ever to make one of my movies I should have in within this studio whether that be camera gear or a chainsaw but everything in here is for him designed by me and built out by me over the years that's how it maintains her this consistent aesthetic plus I really like to buy things I always prefer to make things and I think this studio kind of embodies that maybe more than anything else that I do so this is the workshop here the tool shop here this workshops needed to maintain this studio so anytime I need to build anything in the studio I usually start at the workshop all these tools here in the layout of everything here is designed with purpose so everything that's within the hands reach within an arm's reach like this all this stuff these are the most frequently used tools including all these power tools which are always ready to go always playful always out and then when you go up another level these are items that are used slightly less frequently so they're still within an arm's reach like spray paint but they aren't taking up space the way these tools are space taking up space then the next level above that are things that are used maybe even less frequently like light bulbs or my silk screening equipment and then up there is deep storage so to get up there you would actually need to use a ladder and all that's very deliberate it's to make this area as functional as possible this is some of the studio weapon I've never actually used but it's funny this is a baseball bat and the move sort of goes like this say like the pizza man gets belligerent as you're talking to the pizza man like this this comes and then you have it at their ready and then obviously in case the baseball bat doesn't work we have a series of axes this is more of a tomahawk this is more of a wood chopping axe and then if really gets out of control obviously there's the more lethal options this year's we're painting equipment by painting supplies get really out of control when I'm in the middle of painting something so I think it was two summers ago now I had an intern last summer I had an intern design a painting shelf that incorporated all of my painting tools and it took them the entire summer to build X I had them rebuild it maybe 20 times the thing that drives me nuts is this angle bracket used for this shelf here this should not be an angle bracket it should be a corner bracket like this angle bracket stand and that's why this isn't a right angle corner brackets will never Bend this is the appropriately named wireless setup if something doesn't work you need to follow a cable if it's a rat's nest of cables it's very hard to follow but if it's laid out like this it makes it much easier to follow so while it's pretty to look at it's also it serves a function of having it having your wires and cables organized like this and this is something that we try to maintain throughout the entire studio I get a lot of why am I so OCD or obsessive about this space it's not so much about that just pure functionality I mean there's so much in here all of its used otherwise it wouldn't be in here and you have to keep track of it so every minute that I spend looking for like velcro tape or my drill gun is a minute I'm not doing something productive so why not build an infrastructure that supports that rather than encourages the chaos so the tool area looks the way it looks not because I think it looks cool but because that's like the height of functionality and that level of functionality breeds its own aesthetic this is my overhead shooting rig and it's probably the tool that I use most after a camera when it comes to making movies and this is I built and designed this and the idea with this is the cameras here are facing straight down and the monitors here it telescopes up and down it's like like that so let's just plywood and then a vise up there and then it telescopes I'm sorry it slides back and forth just using this clamp here so it slides back and forth like that and then left and right using the same clamp and then I have this this ruler this measuring device here to set focus at certain Heights so I know how far to bring things up how far to move them down I use deli paper here for white seamless that pulls down all of these tools here are things that I use when shooting in this table so they're always readily available this is the black seamless here and the black sea mist is activated if you see this red sort of button here in theory you just kind of push that and it rolls out so then you have sort of a black backdrop instead of a white or the wood this is probably the latest edition when the air conditioners blasting and I'm doing like stop-motion so the air conditioner doesn't blow away all the paper whatever I'm using I put a it's just a window blind this tape dispenser here cost $100 and I saw this in a science lab and just had to have it and it's just used for labeling so it's different color masking tapes made in USA a suction cup the table anyhow it's just something I really like this table is actually a door from a world war two shipping boat then I bought like $8 or $15 or something insane and then turn it into a table on wheels this here this is the my assistant or back up edit day so when I'm working with an assistant editor this is where I stick them nothing super interesting about this space except for the fact that it's is far from my desk is any location in the office beers when I'm working with an assistant editor they should have their space and I should have mine so like in the early 2000s when everything was going from VHS to DVD I panicked because I I think DVD is the worst medium in the history of moving images so what I do is I I had a Netflix account where I'd get my three DVDs every other day and I would downgrade the DVDs onto VHS so I'd backup my entire collection on the VHS I had that going for several years I'm told they came out Netflix on demand which i think is the best medium and the history of moving images and that's when this program kind of stopped but I really hate DVDs these are bootleg bootleg copy of my HBO series we print these right there this monitor here is just so motorcycle cars parked outside you can kind of keep an eye on it so one on the second floor here these are like 12-foot windows with the second floor just above Broadway which makes it really really tricky to record audio in here it's so noisy but it's really good for social interaction this is really fun this is just for the double-decker in New York City tourist bus drive by a lot so this is how there's one right now and then you gotta put away before the cops show up because you get trouble with this thing so all this stuff around here like pencils play-doh crayons chalk Elmer's glue and then all of these things these are all used for movies they're all used for stop frame animating things like that and then when you see stuff like these things they were all made for a movie much like all of the things that are posted up around here they're all props or animations or drawings used in movies and it's like after you put all that effort into making something it's hard to just throw it out so if you have wall space it gets pinned up so this is like my studio managers desk here and all these red boxes here our studio supplies that aren't out how they're organized now is categorically so you know like these are scotch tape and double-sided tape and the idea is they should have a relationship with the items around them so scotch tape does have sort of some relationship with you know diamond label makers which has a relationship with maybe staples which has a relationship with like scissors which sort of has a relationship with paintbrushes and then glue and then hot glue grommet gun sort of works that and the idea is it couldn't be alphabetized as each box has more than one item in it but at a glance you should be able to figure out where whatever you're looking for is it only sort of works like that I'm still going for every box if I'm looking for something this wall of pictures here I used to take a picture of every friend that came by everyone that came by the studio and stick it on the wall but I ran out of wall space and Polaroids got really really expensive so I kind of called it quits there and now it's a little bit of like a permanent installation what's fun about this though is it's a little bit like that's like a physical Facebook like no matter who comes by the studio they're like I know that guy and that's like a fun thing but it's it's something you see that rarely gets touched and I like it's nice this is my office I do have what I think is the world's largest or maybe most expensive peephole which is this and I just made that out of this is a like a 55 inch flat-screen TV that I spray-painted white and turned on its side and then there's a GoPro camera mounted on the other side that's just permanently on interesting side note each GoPro lasts about six months before the battery melts but I send it back to go from they just send me a new one thanks you go pro this is level for a body armor with ceramic plates in the front in the back and I have this because when I was in Afghanistan we had to wear body armor and this is a picture of me in Afghanistan these are my gymnast rings I like to exercise and it's nice having these rings here says you can just jump out of the chair and do pull-ups or swing from them or what have you this is my speed bag and this speed bag is you just kind of lower it and there are weights there are weights on the top here to keep from bouncing so it's pretty strong and then I made a little bit tall so I have a little a little stool here and I stand on and then it's just when you get bored during the day to kind of take a break from work and beat up the speed bag so that's why that's there this is a trench knife that my friend made for me for my birthday it's not actually tsa approved my friends Tom sacks made that for me I use it to open amazon.com boxes this is my camera set up over here and a glance I want to know if all my batteries are here and make sure they're all charging so every charger has a spot every charger is labeled and every box charger in theory should have a battery in it if the battery is not in it the batteries in the camera being used same sort of idea with this camera setup here I've gone through like 20 iterations of a camera rack had it with spots for each camera and all that and sort of the easiest is just always having like having them out that way I can sort of grab and go with any at any time just with whatever camera I want my favorite camera my favorite point-and-shoot camera probably my favorite camera my favorite video camera anyways is the Canon s100 this series this is the S 95 this is the s 100 this is the s 100 this is the S 110 I've broken every single one of these including my latest this one I just broke yesterday but they're still my favorite camera I just don't think cameras are precious I think that they're tools and if you break them you break them so I don't really hold back much when using them this is my favorite lens this is sort of my go-to and it's a Tamron 24 to 70 I like this lens that's a really short lens really wide lens but it has a image stabilizer so the Canon 24 to 70 is also a great lens but doesn't have the stabilizer so that's why I use these this is where I sit this here is this is the other side of the studio this is the door you guys came through this is the other door this is outside any idea what this is at a glance I can sort of see everything that's going on you can set up your iTunes I think through one of these buttons to control which speakers it plays through but I don't like virtual software interfaces I like physical interfaces so I built this box here and it's just plywood and a light switch but through this box I can control like these are my office speakers and then these are the studio speakers so they play out there I'm here both up can you kill them both you know I have to fumble through your software and open the right application or do any of that it's just a hard trip so that's something I'm immensely proud of it's really complicated to figure out how to do that wiring this is like this is a police baton that I painted to look like a candy cane so it'd be less threatening just in kind of fun this is like a 100 year old fire extinguisher you'd throw this at the base of a fire explode put the fire out but apparently the chemicals inside it caused cancer so we're very careful not to use that just use a pole and spring bottle instead this is a my Independent Spirit Award pretty proud of this one this is a reward from Vimeo I always prefer to build things over buying them because you can never get exactly what you want when you buy it but when you build it it it is yours so it's easier to take the ownership up and you can make it specifically yours I don't think anywhere in the universe is a shooting table that's exactly fits that space but I could build that in an afternoon and it's done and I think that's true also with my movies it's like there's nothing really typical about the way I make movies but they get the job done they tell the story so I was sort of embraced like the handmade quality that I used with carpentry also with with filmmaking whatever it takes to tell the story is what it takes to tell the story you

Channel: CaseyNeistat

Views: 5,956,822

Keywords: Casey Neistat (Film Producer), Studio (Art Subject), neistat brothers, Manhattan (City/Town/Village), Gizmodo (Website), Electronics (Field Of Study)

Id: vb60rrtTddQ

Length: 16min 38sec (998 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 03 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/blobman2000]

ITT:Reddit doesn't like Casey Neistat

[u/tusko01]

cool video though.

anyone got more videos like this? pics of interesting design/workspace/studios?

[u/HughMility]

I don't know who he is, but I thought the studio and his intent behind all of it was really cool.

[u/returnedfromaway]

Overall he seems pretty douchy. Has he made anything that is noteworthy? Not talking shyz just curious because I have never heard oft his dude.

[u/AlbiTargaryen]

I stop watching after he bootlegged DVDs from Netflix onto VHS. Efficient but irritating.

[u/bambambedrocks]

vampire

[u/ShustOne]

Awesome studio. I always try to have everything I need close by as well.

[u/priceisalright]

Is it just me, or does this guys face seem a bit weird? I think it's his lips maybe? I can't pin it down. I'm not saying he's ugly, but just peculiar looking.