Watch: A Powerful 4-Minute Lesson on Filmmaking from Casey Neistat
This video from Casey Neistat is both a warm hug and hard slap to the face.
If there's one thing we all have in common, it's that we all have (or had) a dream of becoming filmmakers. You might've wanted to move out to L.A. and be the next Spielberg or marinate in a dirty motel room in Vermillion, South Dakota for six months to pen the darkest, weirdest, and greatest screenplay ever written. Regardless of the paths we take as creatives, we all share the same dream, but we also all share the paralyzing disappointment when that dream is crushed over and over and over again.
If you're in need of 1.) some inspiration to get you out of your creative deathbed, or 2.) a nice, hard kick in the chonies to get you out of said creative deathbed, then you need to watch this video by Casey Neistat now.
If there's one thing I know about dreams it's that, to achieve them, you have to stop at nothing.
Neistat is right on the money when he says that "the grind is not glamorous." It's not. It's not all red carpets and Chandon and director's chairs, award acceptance speeches, and press junkets. It's getting off work at 5 and shooting at 5:30. It's maxing out your credit card to fund your short film. It's making shitty film after shitty film after shitty film. It's being told "no" a million times. It's constantly trying to keep your head above water when your self-doubt rises high enough to choke you out. It's coming to terms with the reality that you may never be the filmmaker that you always dreamed of being, with the glitz and the glamor and the calling Martin Scorsese "Marty."
But most of all, it's understanding that, as Neistat says, "filmmaking is finally ours." You can make a movie with the phone that's in your pocket right now. The barriers to becoming a Hollywood big shot and making multi-million dollar Hollywood tentpoles may still be as wide as ever, but filmmaking is now something we can all do. There are no excuses anymore. If filmmaking is a sport, then you need to go out and play.
Source: Casey Neistat