- The editing here is, like,
what really makes this pop. - Yes, yes, it's so much- - Hey, everybody, welcome
to this bonus episode of "Digital Spaghetti." About a month ago, we released a video breaking down Casey
Neistat's iconic classic, "Make It Count." And there were a lot of
comments pointing out that we did not give credit
to the editor of that video, Max Joseph, somehow. So, we're bringing on Max
to set the record straight and talk about some of our
speculation in the video. Please bring in Casey or Max
to talk about the process. I love your speculation, but it would be fun to see
if it tracks with reality. Justin, it's your lucky day. We have Max Joseph himself here to right some of our wrongs- - Guys, I'm so grateful,
not in my wildest dreams would I imagine that there
would be people on YouTube that would stick up for
me and raise their hand and say, "Hey, wait a minute, you're not giving this person credit." I made this video with
Casey, I think, 12 years ago, and I get nice flowers for this video, but you know, I'm also
used to watching Casey get all the flowers for this video. And so this is very heartwarming
and feels very good. So thank you, Justin Lind,
Stuart Spicer, and Hiiimaaaa. - We've got our episode. You've
put some markers on here. What I'd like to do is
let's watch these areas and I want to hear what do we get right, what do we get wrong,
where are we full of shit. Like, you know, school us here. This is us speculating and
here's the chance we get to actually see if the speculation holds. - This is like, you know, when
you're in an English class in high school and you're like
reading into this paragraph and you wish you could bring the author in and be like, "Are we right or not?" - And now I got the author. - One of the authors.
- One of the authors. - Okay. Let's acknowledge
that Casey is amazing. - Of course.
- And is a great filmmaker and had a lot to do with this, obviously. - We spent 45 minutes acknowledging that. - That's right. Casey already got credit. So fuck him. Let's go into this. - Okay. - Not to stop it so soon. The other thing I wanna point out is that this is a sponsored video. The fact that this is
so popular, so engaging and it's an ad is such a feat in itself. - I also loved, it's so slow. The whole first bit, no sound, no music. It's like a unboxing
video with some jump cuts. No talking, no dialogue. He
just takes out a wristband. - Casey called me on my 30th
birthday and I was in LA and he said, "I wanna make this Nike video where we go around the world. Are you interested? I'm
leaving like in two days." So I was like, "Yeah, I'm down." I flew to New York, got to his office
straight from the airport, we had lunch, and then we went
back to the airport and left. And we forgot the actual band. That's right. So in all of these shots where he's running around the world, he's not wearing the product. When we first showed that to Nike, we showed them the first
cut, there was no band. And they're like, "Guys,
we like the video, but like, you know, where's the product?" So we shot, Casey shot it,
I was already in LA editing, so he shot this part
where he like opens it up, takes the thing out and runs. And that's the only time
you see the product. - In the entire video. - So we already had the
video basically edited. So that's kind of why
it doesn't have music. The video really starts
with the text scroll. So he literally just shot that front part and we just like plopped it on the front. - And when you did that, did
it work or did you think, "Ugh, it really should have music, but we're gonna leave the
music, like we don't have time?" - No, it worked.
- It worked. Okay. - It worked. It worked. Because it also, like we
knew that we wanted him to like start the run. We started flying before
we shot the front part where he like leaves his office. So we knew we needed to do that anyway. And we knew we wanted to do
that before the credit roll, and the credit roll
didn't start with music. So it was kind of cool to have this kind of dead space silence where you're just like, you know, it's a little disorienting. Like you're kind of dropped
in the middle of this thing. No one's explaining what's going on. And then the credit scroll comes on and we explain like what's going on. - It's still a bold choice
to not have any music there. I mean, yeah, it's a lot of emptiness at the beginning of the video. But it's almost like there's something that's really gutsy about it because it makes you think like, the rest of this video must be really good if they're gonna start with this sequence. I don't know. It's anticipatory. - Yeah, right. It's anticipatory. We knew what was coming and
we had already built it, and so it was like, "Well, we're not gonna mess
with the edit at that point. So we'll pay onto Caesar here, we'll give Nike what they want, and then we'll get our video." - Cool. I think he's really good at
understanding when to use music. And so, right as you're reading this, "Instead of making their movie, I spent the entire budget
traveling around the world." Literally, when I get to the phrase "Traveling around the
world," (beat boxing) like, and it's right when
I'm reading that in my mind, the millisecond that that music
comes in is so intentional. It comes in at exactly the right moment to juice our anticipation and excitement. I'm curious about my speculation there around getting to the phrase
"travel around the world." - Okay. So I think you're... I mean, I'll take it.
- Okay. - But that wasn't it... It
was less about the words. Again, it was more about the rhythm. It was like, how fast
is this scroll going? I like to, my rule is
that I read every word out loud quickly and then
it's just like watching that a cajillion times, it's like,
where should the song come in? It wasn't purposefully around
traveling around the world, but I knew that I wanted it to come in- - "Instead of making a movie, I spent the entire budget
traveling around the world." (upbeat music) - The way the song, like the
next part of the song starts, like, where that starts,
if you back it up, like where I wanted it to start, like that's where it just
needs to start in the credits. So it was just a timing rhythm thing. - Makes sense. Makes sense. - So thank you. But not intentional. - Yeah, yeah. Great. - We'll definitely make this flight, but we're cutting it close. So far, the trip is off to a
fairly irresponsible start. - As I tend to do, I was sitting on this
track for a long time. This was gonna be the end
song of my first feature film. Like I knew how great this song was. I knew I wanted to make something to it. Casey had nothing to do with this song. And we had just come off
out of Victoria Falls and we'd already spent like,
I don't know, like four days, five days traveling. And I was like, "God, I hate myself, because I was saving
this song for something, but I think it might be
perfect for this video." And I played it for Casey. *He's like, "It needs to be this song." And I was like, "Fuck. I'm gonna give you this song as a gift, but just it was mine and
I'm giving it to you." That's where the song came from. - Do you write out a paragraph on what you gonna say?
- No, no, no, ever. - As he's traveling, he knows, "Okay, maybe thematically I
want to get this shot, I could do all these match cuts." But yeah, it's really all
very natural and candid. - She's right, we had
a very vague idea of, "Oh yeah, we'll do this
left to right thing." We did a lot of other things, too. We did a couple things where you like jumped over the camera. Another thing we did was
like, everywhere we went, I mean I was kind of like filming Casey and I'd be like, "Casey, turn around," like "Casey, where are we?" Like I would kind of like
give him some prompts knowing that, "Oh, if we
will cut all the times-" - So there's this match cut
of him turning his head- - Yes. - See that?
- Yes. Let's watch that. That's beautiful. - See, that has to be, I don't know, I don't think that was planned. That's just good editing. - Planned. - I'm guessing he's only-
- But it was planned. - It was planned.
- Yeah. - Yeah. The thing is, the magic trick is that we did a ton of those things and then we only showed a couple of them. - That worked.
- That worked. - The ones where he was in
the same part of the frame. - There are some great
outtakes of this video. There are great sequences that like are great unto themselves, but they just didn't
work in the overall flow. They were babies we had to kill. But yeah, this was one that we kept in. - Yeah. Great.
- Intentional. - Great. - Classic Indiana Jones shot. - The classic Indiana Jones shot. I'd seen Casey use maps
before in other videos, but originally that wasn't a part of this. Part of my, where I was at
when I was editing this, I had a very clear notion of
what makes a good viral video. And part of it is you need to know, like you have the beginning
to create your engine, right? And you can take forever
to wind that clock to build that engine. But then once the gun goes
off, I'm mixing metaphors here, but once you've said it, then the audience has to kind of know, "Okay, I know what this
video's now going to be and I know that the
video's going to be over when," fill in the blank. And if they know that, then they're not gonna be
looking at the progress bar. 'Cause they'll feel secure. They'll feel like they're being held. "Oh, this video's gonna be over once they go all the
way around the world." And if there's like a visual to kind of show the progress
bar, which is the map, then there will be no anxiety
on the part of the viewer as to "When is this gonna be over?" 'Cause that's what you don't want. - You're setting up a really
clear goal essentially. And you check in on that goal throughout the course of the video, so you get a sense of how
close you are to achieving it. - Totally. And everything's
going left to right. He's moving left to right.
The map is left to right. And you know that the video ends by the time the marker
comes back to New York. - This shot is so epic. - Wow. Geez. - Music cuts. So much anticipation. - Good editing. - Sound. So good. You think that's wind and water? - It interrupts it. Yeah. - He really holds that drop. - So I was looking at
what is... Is that a boat? - It's like a sunken house. (water splashes) - So this is one of my bag of tricks. I've done a lot of montage
editing before this. If you wanna get out of
the song for a second, you need a loud noise or like
something needs to break it. Like if a window breaks or something, then you can slam cut the music out. And I wanted, we wanted the anticipation. There was this very long moment where he is jumping through the air and like it was way more
dramatic to play that with no sound than with sound. And so the rocks falling into the water was like a perfect spot
to yank the music out. And this was a fun, this
was a discovery I had. So I edited this, this probably took like two
months of like daily editing. It was really fun. And while I was like editing this, I had some idea that like, I wanted to get that
shot of that cruise liner that drowned or like, it capsized. It was a big story at the time that now no one really remembers, but I actually, I was like, "Oh my god, the sound on this shot," I
needed like a water sound to go over this. And I was like, "Oh, we should
just pull it from this shot." And I was like, "Oh man." And this is one of those
moments where the musical logic trumps causal rational logic. Because it sounded the same, because the sound of
the water and the wind was exactly the same. - It wasn't wind, it was water. - It was water. And so it allowed us
to just cut seamlessly even though it's like such a weird cut and you're interrupting
him falling through, you know, falling through the air. It feels okay. You can make that cut, because it's the same sound underneath. It's 'cause your brain is like,
your brain's okay with it, because it's the sound. And then I actually used that technique in my feature like later. There someone, Zach Efron is
taking a shower at one point, and he's kind of like waking up to the sounds of the world around him, and the sound of the shower is actually the sound of the ocean. And then the next cut is the ocean. And it like- - It blends seamlessly.
- It blends, it's a seamless blend. (light music) - That reminds me of the
director of "Sea Biscuit." - Gary Ross. - I remember seeing an interview with him. He talked about how the
truth doesn't matter when he's making a film. It's the emotional truth
that he's looking for. In the story, in the sound, in the video, he doesn't care about the truth, he cares about the emotional truth. That has always stuck
with me in filmmaking. This is a perfect example of that. It's like, it doesn't matter
that that wasn't the sound as Casey was falling. It's the emotional truth of that moment. And so it makes sense. - Totally. Yeah, I mean, Kubrick, especially
when he is talking about like "2001," he's like,
it's a musical experience. It's like you watch it the way
you would watch a symphony. Like that's how it makes sense. It's not supposed to make rational sense. You're just supposed to
feel your way through it. And like, I don't know. I
mean this is not "2001." - I mean this is a piece of
internet culture that may... I mean this influenced a decade of videos that came after it. And still influencing
videos that are coming now. - What's crazy is that like
when we were making this, we were both very aware and very excited about the potential and
the future of web video. Casey had recently come back to YouTube. He had done his HBO show. He had just started
making films on his own. He had just done "Bike Lanes," which was kind of his first
big YouTube viral video that was like two or
three months before this. - Often there are obstructions that keep you from probably
riding in the bike lane. - We did two other Nike videos before this and then we did this one. And the whole trip we
were just talking about this new language, this new world where you can break all these
rules and do all these things. And we were, I'm getting
goosebumps just thinking about it, 'cause like that's the vibe, that's the headspace that we were in. And all of that optimism and excitement like was totally in, went into this video. Like we wanted this to be this kind of like a pure energy like that, just shot out into the world. And so it was very much, it
was meant to do what it did. - Yeah. Yeah. It's so rare that like you set
out to do something like that and it actually works. You know what I mean?
When you're to that scale- - When you're working... Well, that's what's so fun
about working with Casey. It's like working with a movie star. Like, you know that if you make
something good on your own, maybe people find it, maybe they don't. You make something good with a movie star where they're already have
all this attention on them, and Casey, he's more than
a movie star in some ways, 'cause he's a creator himself. But like, it was a way to deliver this, it's like a Trojan horse, it's a way to deliver
this like giant payload into the zeitgeist. And I mean like, that's
always the great opportunity when working with Casey. - I feel like this video
influenced Casey's editing. You can see the influence
happening both ways, I guess, is what I'm pointing out. Like a lot of his style is this,
the text, a lot of it is... Yeah, seems to be influenced by how you guys are working together and your voice is just kind of joining in those conversations that
you were having at the time. It really feels like
came outta that moment. - It was really exciting. Seeing what happened when it
came out was really exciting. Seeing how many peoples it touched and, I don't know, the
fact that people are still, the fact that we are here
talking about this still, it's crazy. It's a gift. So, thanks for having me on. And thanks to the commenters
for sticking up for the editor. (bright music) (bright music continues)
