Gadgetory

hey what is the sky isn't pbht here and I've shown you what's on my phone like enough times now you've already seen it this new series is dedicated to touring other creative people's hugs and looking at the tech behind how they do what they do so this is episode 1 with tasty knife set and his type of functional studio so through the vlogs and various Casey videos we've seen pretty much every conceivable angle of his studio and it can look like a mess like like chaos actually there's a lot of surface area covered there's stuff everywhere it doesn't fit the traditional visual of a neat or organized space but it is it really is it's one of the most neat and organized spaces even surprisingly so let's walk through each of these sections with caffeine it's this area behind me this is like my tool workshop construction area and the reason why I have that is literally to maintain the rest of the studio everything in here is always breaking everything in here needs to be built or rebuilt so it's nice having my little tool shop back there to do all that for those of you who have seen cases videos which is probably most of you you know that a lot of what he does involves literally building stuff like putting together new things that are purpose-built for exact situations or tasks and then once they're built you can keep them around or use them again if it comes up but this little tool area a little corner here is where you'll find the supplies to make that stuff all this is exemplified by build over by if you can't buy exactly what you need build it this is the overhead shooting rig so camera mounted here shooting straight down I can see the image here on the screen it makes it really easy for animation but this table is just like old busted up plywood and the Missis plumbing pipe because to buy one of these like a professional and super expensive but like this does all the pro stuff like it telescopes up and down this moves back and forth so it's a homemade overhead shooting rig so build over by again I'm personally a huge fan of headshots obviously but there's no denying it can take a lot of effort to set them up just right and get them looking the way you want every time unless of course you build a permanent rig to look exactly the way you want every time and this rig is a lot more nuanced than you might think there's a 2x4 with a Manfrotto baseplate screwed into it so he can clip any camera with the Manfrotto plate to it pretty quick and there's an HDMI monitor on the other side with a right angle cable that goes directly into the camera plus a remote trigger so he doesn't have to reach around and press the record button on whatever camera he's using there's a measuring tape on the side of the 2x4 to nail focus distance every time there's a roll of white paper France and white background a row of black paper for instant black background there's an iPad on an arm for keeping a shot list or anything else really and these four light bulbs in these circular diffusers make it a super soft shadowless light coming down onto the table their video lights basically the majority of my videos are shot on like portable cameras little cameras like this but I keep this big guy permanently set up here in the office for like the formal talking to camera footage this entire apparatus is built to make it as easy as possible for me to film myself because I typically don't have someone here to help me operate the camera so this big rig is actually another of the same camera it's a Sony a7r Mark to a 4k mirrorless camera that I've actually used in the past but of course it has a couple of video making accessories so the camera is in a cage made by tilta that basically adds a bunch of quarter-twenty screw holes a top handle and a pair of rails to the front of the camera so the rails on the front would be for something like a motorized follow focus to attach to the lens but Casey doesn't use that he uses autofocus so instead he uses the mounting holes in the cage for adding things like a monitor arm and a shotgun microphone for better audio and then this whole cage and rails mounts to the tripod directly so we can just move that around the studio this set up plus a single video light is pretty clutch this is my desk this is where I work all day every day I used to work in the back I like sitting back there better but the natural light on my face makes it a year from to shoot videos sitting at this desk this is like the laptop station where I do the majority of my editing and whatnot and then this is where I want to do my but this computer is just too slow to edit on so I just use all of this for data management 20 terabytes 20 terabytes 24 terabytes and then this is 60 terabytes I never delete any footage so the computer case you actually edits on right now is the 2016 MacBook Pro 15 inch with touch bar despite all its troubles and all its dongles it's the most up to date machine Apple makes right now and he and I are final cut editors so that's a choice and then the never deleting footage part as scary as it sounds is actually true and I suspect this storage collection will be growing pretty soon but for now I count about a hundred 50 terabytes of storage just at the desk and the monitor setup is all very specific as well so from top to bottom its inside video surveillance they're in hallway surveillance outside studio surveillance from a GoPro that's hanging out the window more outside studio surveillance you know just in case next door office surveillance and another angle down the hallway and on the bottom one and ultra-wide is the only one actually hooked up to the Mac Pro running a screensaver that just plays The Godfather one and a godfather to over and over on repeat so that's where he spends a lot of the time and that's where you could say the magic happens and then around the corner is a little nook around the back of the studio which sports a vertical TV connected to a vertical GoPro that's always on this area not so functional these are my dead drugs these have died for various reasons like this one says here crashed into Central Park pond these things happen this is a charging central for all of like my point-and-shoot cameras and the idea this is at a glance to be able to see that everything is charging and ready to go a little secret about this though is that most of these cameras I don't use anymore so this is actually about to be broken down and this wall is going to repurposed it's such a beautiful picture though I've been reluctant to actually take them off the wall this area back here this you should just be where I kept all of my gear but it felt really underutilized and I need to do like a chill spot in the studio so I put this couch in and this became like the gaming station one thing that's super cool underneath this couch we cut a big hole and put the subwoofer there so when you're playing call of duty like the machine gun the sound it literally shakes your ass because the base is so strong okay now I think this is a 65 inch TV it was the cheapest TV I can get off of Amazon looks fine Playstations not to the wall going anything on the floor right here and then up top here are my surveillance monitors behind me is like all of the gear all the camera equipment that I use for making videos almost all of this is is active and the idea with the layout is to have it so I can grab and go as quickly as possible this is the active drone area this is a phantom 4 Pro phantom 4 regular this is the Karma Mavic battery charging station propellers these are my cameras these are the cameras that all work they're fully operational batteries are charged ready to go even these older ones I still keep at the ready just because I have them GoPro set up over here SLRs point shoots lenses a little known secret of my studio here is that I really take advantage of the space under the floor so this trap door here this is like bounce boards lighting equipment c-stands and some more like weirdo esoteric gear like body mounts cool stuff I don't use it often it's like keeping the floor so the Casey Neistat studio is low-key kinda a masterpiece it's a tightly woven collection of Technology and video tools and construction tools that make it possible and maybe the most functional use of the square footage imaginable and it all comes back to two main things build over by and being a lot more organized than it actually looks it's not traditional and even just being there for the first time and me looking around as a video person and as a tech head and a bit of a perfectionist sometimes myself you notice a couple things number one pretty much everything is labeled like meticulously did you notice that like boxes of things categories of gear supplies tools equipment tech stuff it's all literally hand labelled so ideally you can find exactly what you need in second and the number to almost every wire instead of being invisible or shoved behind a desk like we typically do it it's strung out and visible and pinned up against the wall so you can trace everything to where it's then it's a different type of organization then maybe we're used to in a normal super clean studio and then number three the studio is exceptionally well lit I mean it is a video studio after all but everywhere you look there's lights ceiling lights dome lights diffusion satellites all things to brighten the space to give it a consistent even look and to give a subtle blown out bokeh when you're shooting video and to make it feel even bigger than it actually is everything is well lit all of them have purpose and place and it seems like every square inch of space every surface is used for something and that's what you can do when you've been in a space for a decade so that's been it thanks for watching hopefully you now have a better appreciation of the space you've probably seen in so many videos so thanks to Casey for the walkthrough definitely subscribe to his channel for more awesome videos all the time and I'll catch you guys in the next one peace