“Filmmaking really messes with your space-time continuum”: Van Neistat on “A Space Program”
Matt Damon’s space-stranded botanist ain’t got nothing on world-renowned artist Tom Sachs. Back in the early summer of 2012 the self-proclaimed bricoleur (DIY projects are second nature to Neistat) took visitors to the Park Avenue Armory on a trip to Mars – or at least a handmade version via the artist’s immersive installation “Space Program 2.0: MARS.” And now, director Van Neistat, costar of HBO’s “The Neistat Brothers” and a frequent collaborator with Sachs, has created his own lovingly crafted documentation of that unique event. I spoke with the unconventional filmmaker prior to the March 18 Metrograph theater premiere of A Space Program (which will be followed by Sachs’ latest space-inspired project, “Tom Sachs: Tea Ceremony” at The Noguchi Musuem in Long Island City March 23-July 24).
Lauren Wissot: So how exactly did you go about shooting this immersive installation? (I assume it was filmed over multiple performances with a variety of cameras?) What were some of the greatest challenges you faced?
Van Neistat: The “Space Program: MARS” installation was up for five weeks at the Park Avenue Armory. During visiting hours the installation was basically static, with Sachs’ studio crew doing maintenance and rehearsals for the demonstrations. On each of the five Thursday nights during the show’s run, Sachs and his crew executed a demonstration of the complete Mars mission – from suit-up, to liftoff, to splashdown and rescue. Which is to say there were a total of five demonstrations of the activated sculptures. So for the Armory show I had five live shoots during the demonstration.
Shooting was broken up into three units. During the performances I shot documentary footage at the Armory handheld with a Canon T2i. During museum hours outside of the performances we shot some “clean” shots with the T2i and $99 camera stabilizers (poor-man’s steadicam), skateboard dollies, and homemade dollies with PVC tracks. We also shot handheld close-ups and cutaways during visiting hours.
Sachs and his crew strategically positioned 48 surveillance cameras throughout the installation to record each aspect of the mission. Some cameras were passive. Some had remote controls to position the cameras. Others were fixed to cinderblock dollies hand-pushed by crewmembers. A director at mission control then chose each shot in real time using a 48-button switchboard. The shot/camera, selected from one of the corresponding 48 computer monitors, was projected onto a 20-foot screen for the Armory audience to see. A hard drive recorded action from the projection’s camera. There were many, many boring hours of footage to sift through. I also put a camera team up in the bleachers to shoot the surveillance images off of the 20-foot screen.
For visual effects and the “Industrial” interstitials we shot at Tom Sachs’ studio in Manhattan. For instance, the opening shot was shot at Tom’s studio. The dolly-ins that introduce the characters in the first act were shot at the studio about a year after we shot the Armory footage.
LW: Can you discuss your relationship with Tom Sachs? How long have you been collaborating, and what other projects have you worked on together?
VN: I worked for Tom as a studio fabricator beginning in 2001. He was building the model of Corbusier’s “Unitè de Habitacion” for his “Nutsy’s” show. Before working for Tom, I had been making shorts with my 10-gig iMac DV and my Sony TRV-8. One day, unauthorized, I shot a short about the project and the space in which we worked—a greasy, industrial machine shop called Grand Machinery Exchange (which is now fancy lofts for rich people). Sachs had this Stanley tape measure, and where it normally says “Powerlock II” Tom had had his assistant Oksana Todorova trompe l’oeil “Kubrick is Dead.” So if you looked really closely at the Stanley tape measure you noticed it said, “Stanley Kubrick is Dead.” I found this hilarious, so I started the short with a shot of the tape measure, pulled the camera back, and showed several shots of the creepy interior of the space where we were working. For the soundtrack I used the monologue in “The Shining” where the building manager is telling Jack Torrance that the last guy who had his job went crazy from cabin fever and killed his family with an axe. It was real horrorshow, but it was also kind of hilarious because of the tape measure. (The short only exists as a really compressed Quicktime file, because I never exported it to tape.)
After he saw the tape measure film, Sachs told me to make as many shorts as I could while I built stuff. By the time the show went to the Guggenheim in Berlin we had made a couple dozen short movies about Nutsy’s, and a bunch of them played in the museum. We also made “10 Bullets,” “Color,” “Space Camp,” “How To Sweep,” and “A Love Letter to Plywood.”
LW: You and your brother Casey landed the HBO series “The Neistat Brothers” after finding online fame with films like “iPod’s Dirty Secret,” a short that shone a light on Apple’s battery replacement policy, of all things. Does the “philosophy of bricolage” practiced in the “Space Program” project extend to your filmmaking philosophy as well?
VN: I’ve always been a bricoleur in nearly everything I’ve ever done. I just never knew it was called bricolage until I met Tom Sachs.
LW: According to the film you’re in charge of “propaganda” for “Space Program 2.0: MARS.” While I realize this description is tongue in cheek, I have to say that image of the Gagosian notebook in the film immediately struck me as product placement. (Or was this simply an innocuous reference to “Space Program’s” initial “launch” to the moon at the Gagosian Gallery in 2007?)
VN: Forgive me, but I must correct you. “Propaganda” is not tongue in cheek. We make propaganda. Like the man said, “All art is propaganda.” Make no mistake. Every film Sachs and I have ever made together is propaganda. “Steel is the king of all building materials and plywood is the queen” is propaganda.
All of these movies serve to propagate Tom’s ideas. They serve to unify his cult. Don’t get me wrong, his cult is a fun cult – and you get paid to be in it! – but it’s a cult. All of the contemporary art studios I’ve ever heard about operate on the cult model, and cults benefit from propaganda. I don’t even agree with some of the stuff we say in our movies. In “Bullet 4: Be Thorough from 10 Bullets,” Elsa Hansen solders a wire junction without twisting the wires together. Sachs does that. I never do it that way. But what can I say? Tom’s the boss of the studio. Also, I think “A Sacrifice to Leatherface” is bullshit. (That’s right, I left the glue gun plugged in. You don’t like it? Fire me! I ain’t paying Leatherface shit!) Sachs’ sense of humor makes it come across as hilarious, and that’s what sells it. That and the Gagosian letterhead.
LW: Finally, “Space Program 2.0: MARS” opened at the Park Avenue Armory back in 2012, so I’m a bit surprised this documentation of the piece didn’t arrive in theaters sooner. What was the editing process like?
VN: We just had to do it over and over until it was right. It was like owning an MG. We went through three editing platforms, basically starting from scratch each time. After the second iteration we recruited Hailey Benton Gates to help us write a script and to do the voice of the commander. So we got through two complete edits before we wrote a script. Then we started again. After it was accepted into SXSW I got in my truck and drove 4000 miles to Guerrero, Mexico, where I hid out for four months trying to get my brain back. I settled into Cartel country in a shack on a beach 30 minutes’ drive from Internet or phone service. Filmmaking really messes with your space-time continuum.
Image: Lt. Samantha Ratanarat harvests opium latex at the Bio Lab on Mars. (Josh White)