Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 044: Prince of Wales Island, Alaska. Steven Rinella talks with Morgan Fallon, Garret Smith, Korey Kaczmarek, Erik Osterholm, and Rick Smith of the MeatEater crew.

Transcript

Ep. 044: Prince of Wales Island, Alaska. Steven Rinella talks with Morgan Fallon, Garret Smith, Korey Kaczmarek, Erik Osterholm, and Rick Smith of the MeatEater crew. · The MeatEater Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: This is the meat Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: can't predict anything, all right, First thing I want to
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: do is um Garrett, act like I act like I
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden just fell over dead and and
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: it was just silence, and you had to be like
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: and you all said it to step into the role
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: of being the host. The reason I'm doing this because
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: this is the first one, honest, but tell us, this
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: is the first met Eater podcast that y honest who
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: tells was not here because now he's now got a
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: crippled up knee. He feels that though he's gonna get better,
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: I've written him off. It just seems to me once
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: someone's knee goes bad, it's just they're done. So here
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: I am, I've fallen over dead. What would you How
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: would you proceed? I'd say a moment of silence for
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: Yanni's knee, and then I'd ask Rick man, I couldn't
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: do it. I just you wouldn't just jump into like, no,
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: you'd make me do it, Garrett. I'm totally unqualified. So
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: but it began. The conversation began then that that was
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: the voice of Garrett Smith, and then and then as
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: though dealing poker, the next Corey, and it just introduced
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: say say a few things about yourself. My name is
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: Corey kas Merrick. Sometimes catch marks, sometimes catch mark like
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: depending on how rushing they're feeling or polish. So yeah,
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: this is my i'd say seventh meat eater. As far
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: as working with these guys as a cameraman, but uh,
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: tell him some of the other camera man, um. I
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: do the show called mountain Man where you fall around
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: our mountain man's excuse me, where we fall around guys
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: living up in the woods, up in the mountains, killing
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: animals for food. I do snowboard, extreme sport, filming, some
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: documentaries here and their commercial work. You worked out that
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: new movie on Brandon On Brandon, Yeah, we took sixteen
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: wild Mustangs from Mexico all the way up to Canada.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: Took us five and a half months. I rode about
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: thousand miles of the ride. Yeah. Yeah, I learned a
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: lot about horses and you were a ride. I rode, yeah,
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: holding from the were you trying to film from the horse?
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: We did? We did film with a little DSLR camera
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: off the horse and then we'd get off the horse,
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: run ahead about until we were out of breath, you know,
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: set up a shot and they ride by and then
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: we have to catch up with them. And we know
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: we did that for three thousand miles and my buddy
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: Phil bear aboo and uh no, it is a good success.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: You guys got to check it out. It's on Netflix
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: right now. Philip Phil barbou film three Memter shows he did. No,
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: I've seen it. I've seen it on Netflix and I
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: haven't seen it yet, but I've seen the got like
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: heavy treatment on Netflix. I'm excited to see it. Man,
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: I was, I've been. I've had it queued up a
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: couple of times and like kind of you can't go wrong.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: But now I'm I'm going home directly to watch it. Man,
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: does the movie does it take a pro wild horse
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: or or or or does it does it try to
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: stay like how does it fall on the political? Not
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: the political, but you know, like the there's a debate
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: about wild horse where some people feel like we should
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: treat him like a native wild animal and some people
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: feel like it's feral livestock. We're right down that middle
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: line there, they explained. They explained that debate. Everyone gets there,
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: you know, a fair share as far as like debating
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: their side. And I think we did a good job
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: at keeping it right down the middle, explain both sides
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: of the story and in the end, you know, you
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: kind of make up the decision about you know, I
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: guess there is no end for the horse, and like
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: there's it's an open ended story. Really, I think we
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: need to hunt him. Yeah, I need them now. Speaking
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: of that, we're up on Prince Wales Island right now.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: I want to get back to that. I definitely get
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: back to that. It's not like this world. I want
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: to get back there. That's real important that you just
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: said that we're on Prince Will's Island. We're just out
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: running shrimp traps tonight and Moe is naming off a
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: number of places where he's eating the horse. Yeah, I
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: mean enjoyed it. I was getting to that, but I
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: was just kind of kind of easy into it, you know,
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: bridging off that I'm an aggressive host. It's an aggressive host.
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: It's called a segue and editing. I was kind of
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: trying to build a nice natural one. Oh sorry, Um yeah,
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: I'm Morgan or mo Fallon. Um, and uh, I've been
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: what we the first time we worked together was almost
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: eight years ago now on a number of little pilots
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: as you were married or not married. That's how I
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: would know when it was you were married. A yeah,
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: you were always married. Um. But we did a number
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: of little pilots together as we kind of geared up
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: for figuring out what would be a show, you know,
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: kind of based on I guess your philosophies and lifestyle
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: and you know stuff and um. And then did a
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: show for a travel channel together, UM, for which I
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: was the director of photography, and then moved on to
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: start doing these the Meat Eater shows, which I was
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: originally the director of photography, and then I kind of
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: segued into directing, which was the beginning of me starting
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: to direct things, um, which is what I've continued on doing,
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: moving from cinematography to directing. So I've been a cinematographer
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: for fifteen years. Yeah. When you when you did, because
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: you worked on when you were young, like just starting out.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: You worked on Ali big feature films. Yeah. Yeah. It
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: was Michael Mann's assistant for two years, um, right out
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: of UH school, which was a kind of an amazing
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: experience and he made like Miami Vice. Yeah, I mean
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: he yeah, he made my advice the TV show. But
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: he also made I mean his great films are like
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: Last of the Mohicans, which is like a masterpiece. He
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: he he. I think is it's also a masterpiece? Um,
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: inside the Insider, that's that's also a masterpiece. Uh you know,
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, dude, Collateral is a good film, maybe not
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: a mass to piece, but you still talk to him,
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: you know. I ran into him at the Director's Guild
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: in l A like a few months ago to screening
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: for The Revenant. Um, it was really interesting. I hadn't
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: seen him in almost fifteen years. Ah as uh you
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: know as I and I was twenty four year old
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: kid coming out of film school and worked for, you know,
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: directly for one of the biggest directors in the world.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: I went from like, you know, living in a crappy
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: dorm room until like flying on a private jet you know,
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: to Africa with him. It was a it was a
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: real head trip. Um, how did that happened? Not to
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: interrupt now, you know it's interesting. I like I got
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: a two day job as a p A to fill
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: in for someone in his office. Explain what that means.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: It's a production assistant job, so entry level in the
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: in the in film and television production as a production assistant.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: Um can I can I interrupt real quick? Yeah, we
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: have a role that we made up called the w
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: P A wilderness Wilderness production assistant. That would be like,
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: that would be a level above you know, a normal
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: p A because it requires some additional skills that are
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: somewhat esoteric, you know. For me, it was like, can
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: you make coffee and and clean up, like literally make coffee?
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: That would be a job. Yeah, make yeah, exactly, Yeah,
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: make coffee the way Michael likes coffee made, which, trust me,
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: is a high pressure situation. If you think it's not
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: a high pressure situation, you don't know, Michael Man, are
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: you thinking, oh, yeah, I'll wind up like directing shows?
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: And I mean it was it just seemed like that
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: in the world. But I thought I thought, I thought
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: I'd end up directing feature films. I really thought I'd
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: go down, um, like a narrative and feature film path,
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: you know. Um. But the more and more the more
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: I was exposed to like documentary filmmaking, the more I
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: realized that it really fits my you know. Yeah, I
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: guess my god given talents, you know, my particular set
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: of of like inherent skills you know, um better than
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: you know, looking at a script and in making a
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: future film, which is very like a very I mean, look,
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: it's an art form, so I'm not you know, I'm
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: not talking down on it at all, but it's, um,
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: it's a very contrived art you know, it's and UM,
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: I don't think that was particularly right for me in
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: the end. But what was very right was, you know, documentary,
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: which is you exist in the moment, you know, and
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: you use your instinct and your skills, uh, you know,
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: and your problem solving on a moment to moment asis,
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: which uh, for me, it was like very appealing because
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: you're figuring out the story as you go along, you know.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: Tell the others. Tell the show you worked on for
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: a long time. Can you talk about that? Yeah? Absolutely?
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Biggest Biggest Loser? Yeah, oh yeah, I mean
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: for how many years to do that? I did? Uh?
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: I did three years The Biggest Loser, ninety six episodes.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: And then talk about what you've been doing in the
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: three and a half years since you since you uh
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: since because we worked together for years. I mean together
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: together for years. I mean we're still in communication all
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: the time, but we worked together together for years and
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: then we were still we still work with the same company.
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: But now you do now you direct episodes of Yeah,
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: so I directed. I direct a couple of different shows now. Um,
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: a show called Mind of a Chef, which is based
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: on I mean, you know it is what it is.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: It's you know, eight episode seasons of based on a chef.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: So we'll pick a chef and like kind of dissect
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: their life, their philosophies and um. That's really that's a
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: very very fun show to work on because it's like
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: total creative freedom. We can look at you know, we
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: can look at a chef and and come up with
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: all kinds of wild ways to tell their story. Um.
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: Then I also am a cinematographer and director on Anthony
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: Bourdain Parts Unknown, which is a show on CNN which
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: is like, uh, a food, travel, culture, kind of political,
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: kind of everything else kind of show, you know, Um,
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: which is a little different in that it's a host
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: based show, you know, so it's you know, one host
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: all the time, Anthony Bourdain, you know, and it's really
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: his looking at the world through his filter. You know,
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: how many of those of you every year? You know,
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: I used to shoot when I was just shooting them,
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: I would shoot eight or nine a year, And now
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: that I'm directing him, that really limits the amount you
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: can get out. So I do too. Maybe I'll do
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: three next year directing, and then I'll probably shoot two
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: of them as well. Um, not not directing but as
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: a cinematographer. But that's about as much time as I
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: can get in, you know, because I mean directing your
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: you know, you're two and a half months in or
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: two months in pre production, just sitting at a computer,
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: you know. Then you're ten eleven, twelve days in the
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: field filming, and then you're you know, another six to
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: eight weeks or so sitting in front of the computer
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: again as you edit, you know, as you edit the show. Yeah. Yeah,
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: it's exteresting, man, it's engrossing. They're little films, you know,
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: but uh yeah, I mean really very rewarding show as well.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: Um so yeah, and then you know, hopefully more of these.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: Now Mandus did his first uh that was that your
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: first uh guesting guesting on a show. That's funny after
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: all this time, it's the first time I have really
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: been on camera for the duration of a show, you know,
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: and felt like kind of what it's like to stand
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: on the other side and have someone like point a
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: camera at you and be like, okay, so now say
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: something cool and try to come you know, trying to
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: come up with interesting you know, ship that you think
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: people would be, you know, would want to hear, and
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: in your force to like, you have to appreciate the
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: importance of coming up with something because you deal with
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: the other end of trying to put this stuff together later. Yeah,
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: you realize like, no good when you bomb out. Yeah, definitely,
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: you get into some weird you know, in my position here,
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: you get in some weird like Heisenberg's principle of uncertainty
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: kind of stuff, where like I'm kind of I realize
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: as I'm doing this, I'm kind of tainting the process.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: So I mean, if you're going to talk about like
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: pure documentary stuff, just the fact that I have so
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: much inside knowledge, I'm like, I was aware as we
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: went through this process that I was like clearly manipulating
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: something inside because I know how it'll cut together and
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: how it'll all work, and you know, um, the hardest thing,
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: which shows like this, which is that you know, it's
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: very very difficult to get the amount of ideas and
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: material that you want to get across to tell a
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: story into twenty two minutes. You know, it's it's a
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: real difficult process. You know, when we sit around, let
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: me come back there. I want, I want to keep,
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: I want, I want to keep. No, i'na say it.
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: I doesn't stay real quick because I'll forget we said around.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: We'll be like, yeah, we want to like coming up,
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: we want to do an episode about Dad's right. Um Joannice,
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: his dad, you know, brought him up hunting and has
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: a lot of really interesting ideas about what he thought
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: his kids would get out of going to hunting camp
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: and being exposed to this sort of cycle of there's
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: a handful of guys that hang out and they meet
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: every year and and sort of how you interact and
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: how you kind of come together and and fulfill you know,
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: and pursue goals and come into this this camp and
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: assign people like different tasks and make the whole thing
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: work smoothly and get along well and very differences and
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: and know what subjects are sort of just not good
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: to bring up and just how to hang out, you know,
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: and he felt that it was like a great gift
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: to his to his son to bring him in that world.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: We've had these conversations, so we're like, okay, we should
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: do an episode about Dad's you know, and be honest's
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: dad's always umed to go on a moose hunt. So
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: we're gonna take on a moose hunt. And and in
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: the end, you know, we keep talking about it like
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: the dad's thing, right, like be honest dad, the dad thing.
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: To us, it feels that way when you watch it
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: will be like these guys were hunting moves and there
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: was this, and there was that, and there was a
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: bear and oh yeah, someone's dad was there, and it'll
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: be like, but you but it really feels like you're
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: going to it really feels like you want to make
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: a comment about Dad's definitely, yeah, because it's so it
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: winds up being in this kind of thing where's all
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: this like uncertainty and action stuff and you know, shooting
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: guns and chopping animals up and ship like the thing
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: you were wanting to talk about. Sometimes the only winds
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: up being like a hint, yeah, but if I can
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: if I can interject real quickly before you move on
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: to One of the reasons why that's so difficult to
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: do is that if you if you were to make
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: a show where you're like, I want to talk about dads,
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: and you just you came out of the gate just
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: swinging and and like wanted to relay all your information
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: and all your thoughts and feelings about dads and all
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: the stuff you want to get across in the show.
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: So it would feel so phony and preachy, and and
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: you know up its own asks that it wouldn't work.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: There's a way that when you go into the edit
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: that you have to divulge a story that you know
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: is kind to the audience. You know, that allows the
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: audience to get a sense of tone and place and
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: feel a sense that they're they're involved in the story,
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: that they have some steak um before you're able to
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: sell high concept ideas, you know. And so you realize,
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: like in a twenty two minute show, by the time
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: you've set all that stuff up, you know, and you've
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: brought them into the experience, and you want to now
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: divulge your information, You're like, you have very little time
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: to do that and then tell the rest of the
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: story points that get you from A to B, Like
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: you gotta then actually kill a moose and then butcher moose,
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: and then you don't have a meal out of up moose.
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: It just becomes the time to get ideas across is
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: so whittled down that what you end up with is like, well, okay,
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: what's the most concentrated salient point that I can interject
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: at this one particular place where I can get an
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: idea in um because that's about my only thing to
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: have it become the show about Dad's I think of
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: it as being somewhere between nine and eight twenty, like
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: we just wanted we did the thing we wanted about
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: Aldo Leopold. Okay, what's all said done will be probably
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: about if you if you broke out the minutes or
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: the seconds or whatever, maybe about ten percent about the
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: one thing we talked about going into it. Yeah, that's
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: that sounds about right. But that's the I mean, those
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: are like the shackles of the twenty two minute you know,
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: UM format. It just we're saying minutes, were talking about
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: a thirty minutes elevision. You got two minutes, you know.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: So that's like a standard form for the television industry.
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: Is like twenty you know, a half hour twenty two,
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: a one hour forty four you know. Um, you find
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: it like a forty four minute show seems like it
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: should be harder to make, and it's like way, way
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: easier to make a good one, you know, um, because
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: you actually have some breathing room and some time that
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: you can you know that you can get your ideas
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: across and really like structure, something that is interesting for
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: people to watch, takes them, brings them into the story
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: and the experience and is like coherent you know. Um,
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: So anyways, you know, but but I like them personally.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: I like the twenty two is because they're they're very challenging,
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: you know, they're challenging, and when you get a good one,
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: you like feel real proud of that. And and it's
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: a nice digestible size show for people to watch. I
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: used to hate it, but I like it. Yeah. I
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: think it's better in a lot of ways when you
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: can do it well, you know. Anyways. Rick, Yeah, my
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: name's Rick Smith. I Uh, I'm I'm not a hunter,
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: but I uh filmed a lot of wildlife stuff and
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: started uh writing and kind of helping produce some of
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: the Apex Predator episodes with Remy who is like the
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: master hunter. So it was good. Uh. I always knew
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: I wanted to get your first time as being out hunting. Yeah. Yeah,
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: I always felt some of the wildlife stuff that I
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: was doing was like hunting with a camera. You know
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: a lot of grizzly bear stuff where you were stocking
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: and getting close, but it was just with a with
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: a camera in some way. So it felt pretty natural
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: to do it. But I really respected the z b
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: Z who who makes all this stuff uh with no reservations.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: So as I was coming up as a uh in
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: in film school and figuring out what I wanted to do,
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: I saw no reservations and I was like, that's the
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: kind of stuff I wanted, wanted to make stylistic, beautiful,
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: but it felt very authentic, and uh so I was
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: super excited to start work on Apex and then this
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: is my second medi eater show and we did We
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: did Old Mexico and yeah it was awesome. Now what
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: what So you went to film school? Yeah? And then
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: how did you get into did you go into being
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: like that you wanted to film wild life? I mean
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: I didn't. I really had no idea I was. My
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: undergraduate degree was in biology, and I knew I didn't
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: want to be a biologist as a did you know
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: what that meant being a biologist? Like, no, you just
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: I mean did it winds up being like a university thing? Right? Well,
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: that's why I did research. And you know, people, all
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: the professors I spoke with were like, it's not really
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: they weren't. Nobody seemed very enthused about what they were doing.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: I think that's just a matter of old people just
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: talking about work period. But I wasn't convinced that I
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: was going to be able to do what I wanted
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: to do. What just largely going a lot of adventures.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: So I thought documentary film. I like film. I like film,
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: film and stuff. I had no idea what that meant,
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: and I went to grad program in Bozeman. It's an
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: m f A and science and natural history documentary film.
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: And I had no idea what that meant. I mean,
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: it's a what it's a it's science and documentary film
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: and rolled in. Yeah. So the premise was to take
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: people trained in science and train them in filmmaking. It
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: was like you and another guy, No, it's I mean
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: that makes sense. It was like a well in Bozeman,
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: it's like, yeah, there's all these folks that are I mean,
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: it's kind of taken over the industry at least in
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: some some aspects of it. A lot of guys working
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: for the BBC at that, winning some big awards, producing
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: stuff for nat GEO, a lot of folks work for NASA.
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's but it's the skill set, it's kind
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: of you know, um, it's not exclusive. You're range as
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: a scientist, then you have to learn like storytelling. So
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: it takes a little while to figure it out. But um,
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: yeah it's a weird program. But I wanted to be
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: in Bozeman, and yeah, I didn't know what else to do.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: So so break it down how you were just recently
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: doing a job. But your job was just go out
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: and collect footage of animals, doing animal ship with just
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: like behavior. Yeah, so I mean a big part checklist, Well,
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: a big part of the natural history filmmaking deal is
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: you're you're having to tell stories with with just animals.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: There's no host, there's no nothing blue if they called
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: blue chip wildlife you know television or film, and yeah,
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: you're you're shooting behavior and the progression, whether it be
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: over the course of the season. But these animals lives
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: in a way that people can watch it and actually care.
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, when you're out hunting, you start to if
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: you watch an animal long enough, you start to understand
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: their story. Well you often catch them at the tail
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: end of their life too. That's exactly right, um, But
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: you're you know, when you have hours and hours of
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: watching an animal while the story unfolds slowly and over
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: the whole season. But to do it in a twenty
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: two minute show or of you know, forty four minute
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: forty four minutes, you have to be very uh I
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: guess precise about the imagery you get that tells the
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: story of animals that are out. Okay, you know, when
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: you're watching a shitty wildlife documentary and they'll show like
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: a rabbit just looking like a rabbit, and then they
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: show a raptor, and then they show a rabbit and
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: an initial a raptor, and an initial a rabbit and
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: an initial a raptor, and you never see the raptor
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: in the rabbit together. And then also there's a raptor
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: that maybe it's the same one or maybe a different
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: one eating some nondescript hunk of meat on a fence
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: pole and they build out as though the raptor like
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: total artifice. So yeah, there can you Well, we're trying
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: not to. But the show that I'm working on is
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: for the Smithsonian Channel. Um. And then the grand scheme
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: of like natural history natural history films that the BBC
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: makes really expensive a lot of days in the field.
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: So it's it's it's a time intensive, money intensive thing
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: to make a good natural history show. Um. The show
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: I'm working on doesn't have a huge budget, but we're
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: trying to not make it suck. So it's it does
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: trying to get both things in the same shot. You're
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: trying to be just like we're talking about this show. Uh,
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: you're trying to be authentic, and the audiences can they
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: can read bullshit. Um, And there's maybe a percentage of
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: population that doesn't care one way or another, but good,
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: good documentary film has a level of of authenticity to it.
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: So the audience at the end of the day knows
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: if you're getting if they're getting sucked with you know,
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: if there if something's happening, like if there's the rabbit
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: and the raptor and they never actually interact, but you can, Yeah,
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: you can construct. You can construct the narrative in a
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: way that doesn't reflect the actuality of what happened. And
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: I mean that's just the reality of making documentaries, right,
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: And so what what are you beginning with? Like what
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: is your when you when you're doing a job like
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: that when you wake up in the morning, are you
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: just a slaved or whatever happens? Or do you have
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: a very precise thing like the shows that you decide
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: you want to make about dads like I want you know,
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: we have a premise that we want to go shoot
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: and you're aware of the premise, yeah, you know, the
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: overall structure. But in the end, like that the year
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: of a Bear, let's say, right, right, but you're sort
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: of the story is going to reveal itself and whatever
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: actually happens to some degree, you can try to, I
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: don't know, enable a certain situation to occur or be
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: there the right time in the right place, but more
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: or less, um, you get what you get out there. Um.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: So in what percent of your work you're doing in
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: national parks? Yeah, so, I I mean I do. I
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: don't do a ton of just pure natural history stuff.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: Most of my work has been host based adventure filmmaking,
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: where I'm following a host much like yourself, doing something
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: and and it's kind of a hybrid of pure natural
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: history with with some you know, with a with some
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: humans in there um. But most of it, you know,
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: any good wildlife sequence. Most of it takes place, uh
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: in situations where the animals are habituated. This doesn't mean
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: they're not wild places, but they're used to seeing people.
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: You go to a place where certain animals are not
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: used to seeing you, and they're just gonna they're just
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: gonna run away. They're just gonna be like or I mean,
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: if it's super novel, maybe they'll like come close to you.
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: But more or less, you have to be in a
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: place where it's like a weird congregation, where your chances
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: of seeing something are pretty good and the distances required,
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: like I mean, to get a decent shot even with
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: a huge telephoto lens less than a hundred yards. So
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: that's that's close when it comes to these animals that
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: don't want to be around you. So but when that
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: guy finally got that shot of the snow leopard in it,
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: what was the program petarth I heard that he was
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: like a thousand yards, like some absurd distance away he was.
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: He was really far. But that was a place that
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: was like a known place. But he definitely spent a
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: lot of time in a blind. But he spent like
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: three weeks in a blind that shot for that, you know,
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: for that shot. But I know another guy that's working
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: on a show. I think it's funded by the Chinese,
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: but I think it's for Disney Nature, um. And he
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: got some amazing stuff and into beet snow leopards. Snow
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: leopards like way close. And it was largely because they
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: had a h h set of you know, individual cats
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: that were okay with their presence and they never put
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: the stock on. They never like threatened them because the
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: cats know they're there, and they I mean they got
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: I think they got some amazing stuff. So it's really
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: finding individuals or populations that allow you to get close
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: enough to tell the story um that that otherwise mostly
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: can't be told. Most wild animals don't want anything to
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: do with people. So I was talking to these guys
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: at down in Fort Bragg were the UH I can't
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: remember what one of the one one of the special
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: forces groups is based out of Fort Bray. I can't
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: remember what number. I know I'm a donner to hang out.
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: And these guys told me a story that one night
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: they were in a pass in Afghanistan staking out a pass.
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: Did I tell you this? I think you might have,
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: but I'll take story. They catch some guys, They catch
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: the suspected Taliban guys coming through the pass and they
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: start shooting at him, and one of them is carrying
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: a big recoilist rifle and they wing the guy and
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: he drops the rifle and then his his friends drag
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: him back down out of sight. And the guy sat
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: there all night with a thermal scope, you know, watching
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: two so he could hit whoever came out to get
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: that rife, because he knew someone was probably gonna come
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: get that rifle. And as he's watched that night, a
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: snow leopard came out and smelled the blood for that
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: guy got hit and he saw it. That's awesome. Yeah,
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: A lot of people will never lay think myself included,
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: will never lay eyes on one of those things. Peter
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: Mathison wrote a whole damn book, never saw one. It's
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: like it's it's like Mount Mountins outside around Bozeman or
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: there was one at m s U Montana State You Niversity,
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: there was one spotted on campus at like two in
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: the morning. I got a text alert like watch out
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: for the mountain lion. But but there's cats out there
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: and you'll never you know, you'll never see them, and
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: uh they're there watching you and there and they're mostly
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm never gonna do anything. They don't they
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: don't eat people. Otherwise they would eat people, right, I
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: mean they killed like a deer a week or something.
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: They eight hikers in l Ah. You have a better
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: chance of getting I don't. It's like I'm not saying that.
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: Introduce yourself, Eric, Now you've ruined the entire conversation. When
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: was that, Eric Astro home, I'm a producer and director
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: at the same company that Mo works at UM and
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: that your shows, you know, produce on zero point zero
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: and uh yeah, mostly have done travel advent sure production
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: all around the world, all around the damned world. Yeah,
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: lots of crazy stories from different corners, remote places. But
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: my first hunt was actually or that I was anywhere
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: near it was with you five or six years ago,
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: a doll sheep hunt. Yeah, I've never been a hunt before. Yeah,
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: and then before then and after then you worked for
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: other Yeah, bounced around a bit. Yeah, freelance lifestyle, yeah,
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: which I think, Uh, you know Corey and Rick here
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: also enjoy and Mo has in the past, bouncing between,
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: you know, different shows, different adventures and different corners of
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: the world. I lived in Alaska for a little bit
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: doing a rescue show which was pretty wild. Rescued a
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: couple of hunters and like remote spots. Yeah, there was
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: a problem. I just remember there was. It's all kind
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: of blend together. I do remember. There was like an
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: eighty two year old guy who was just out on
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: a remote island, you know, and you know, off on
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: his own, had hunted all his life and was you know,
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: ended up having to call in to be rescued, but
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: really didn't actually want to be rescued. He was just
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: tough as nails and kind of just wanted to like
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: a re supply of some water and some foods. Who
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: could keep hunting. So it was yeah, some interesting uh yeah,
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: some interesting experience. No no, no, it's not Gonn carried
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: away water water, some bobo bis. What was he hunting for?
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: I don't know, it was It was a really long
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: time ago. Uh but I imagine probably it was up
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: near a Sitka. Uh so, I don't know. It's on
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: the islands outside of Dear, Yeah, probably Dear. Yeah, but yeah,
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: everything from rescue shows to been down to Antarctic a
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: couple of times. Spent some time in Afghanistan, lots of
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: different places abouts of Africa, Yeah, lots of Africa. Yeah, yeah,
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: I think I think the biggest takeaway is is something
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: that we were talking about earlier today, which is just perspective.
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: You know, you gained some perspective on different people's you
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: know where they came from, their perceptions, and uh, it
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: helps you not to jump jump basically to conclusions because
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: everyone has a completely different paradigm. You know, you realize
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: very quickly when you step outside of your own neck
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: of the woods, so I speak. Yeah, it's a little shocking, yeah, yeah, surprising. Uh.
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: And now you're full time, you're full time. Yeah yeah,
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: very recently full time and CPZ and uh and just
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: moved to Montana, which is exciting. I was living in
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: reluctantly living in Manhattan for a long time. I left Colorado.
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: There aren't as many trees or mountains for me in Manhattan,
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: so I was kind of run around like in that case,
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: I think people saw me and my bike, pulling my
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: skis like behind me through Manhattan, like kicking off yellow
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: cabs quite often, like ice climbing stuff in my backpack
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: and heading like either to get to a train or
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: a plane to like escape, yeah, to escape out. Yeah.
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: I remember on time walking in New York and I
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: had found a deer skull in Wyoming and gave it
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: to Chris and Lydia who owns zero point zero or
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: you know, two of the yeah, the founders, and uh.
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: A while later, they pointed out to me that there's
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: these little pyramids of dust underneath the skull all the time,
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: and I realized there's still some dermifted beatles or like
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: some carrying beetles living in the skull and they were
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: still active. And I was like, well, I'm gonna take
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: a home and clean it. So I'm walking and I
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: didn't have anything to put in its on this walking
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: down into the subway station with a deer head skull
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: with antlers on it, some dried hair and stuff side it.
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: Still this guy sees it and he's so insistent that
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: I sell it to him that he comes into my
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: He like gets into my subway car with me. Just
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: he's flabber gases about this thing. Any amount of money
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: is fine, you know, And I'm I'm trying to explain
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: to him, like, listen, you don't understand the nation is
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: a wash in these things. You just don't know because
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: where you live that they're laying on the side of
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: the road. This is not like like this seems very unusual,
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: you know. So he's like, highly unusual. It's just not
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: you can you don't need to give me hundreds that
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: you get a you know, a forky deer antler. It's
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: a big world out there, buddy, and it's full of
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: deer skulls. Did you did you want to take the
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: money at one moment? Or here's the thing. I would
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: have been a second, but I've already given it to
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: Chris Lady. They loved it, but they just didn't want
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: it in their office. Was like a little like he
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: didn't even notice it. Every time I pick it up,
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: there's like little sawdusty things underneath it and they're still
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: in there, eating them whatever out of there. So I
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: couldn't then go like, oh, hey, you know, I know
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: you want me to take home and clean if I
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: sold it two guys in the subway. Here's your gut. Yeah, perspective. Now,
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: dirt you dirt myth? Explain again? Why they why not?
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: Why they call you? Explained dirt myth? Can I like?
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: This is my favorite story in the world. I had
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: ah that's the name of my uh photography company, and
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: it came from I had a speech impedimant when I
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: was young, and I'd introduced myself as dirt myth Garrett Smith,
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: because you dirt myth, amongst other wrong words. But still happens.
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: I still make up words occasionally, but not as bad
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: because nobody's calling dirt. Yeah, that's a compliment. Garrett does
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: more on this production than he does everything. He's running
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: the podcast machine right now. He's like mixing the audio.
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: I'm just pretending he's a horse in the field. He yeah,
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: he must. He must add one a hunter pound pack
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: with a camera with sticks on your shoulder the whole time.
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: I don't know, but I was saved by Rick and
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: Eric when I about went down the mountain with that weight.
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: That was scary. Yeah, that was a close call, like
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: we'd joke about, like, oh you know, it was pretty
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: sketchy train or tough train. I mean there was a
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: point that Garrett fell and if he didn't stop tipping
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: over with a big pack on, he would have died
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: lost a leg. I mean you were, you were inches
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: away from the tipping point from which you would not
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: have regained control. And it was it was, I don't
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: want to say you would have died. It was significant consequence.
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: You think, yan, he's got problems. We're joking about about
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: dirt self arresting with the hunk of his own leg bone.
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: That was about it. This is classic. This is this
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: is Garrett just in general. Is everything's okay all the time,
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: even if it's not not. As he's falling, he says,
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: I'm okay as a right now, don't yeh, don't rip
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: my new pants still still in motion. Yeah, and then
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: you're like, watch the pants. He had so much holding
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: God to your pants to keep you from pitching over
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: a thirty ft drop. But you know, everybody knows the
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: Midnight Ride of Paul Revere. There was the midnight the
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: midnight Hike of that was that was heroic man, what
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: kind of But not really because I messed up? Yeah,
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: I forgot Later when you explain what you were seeing.
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: I realized that was a heroic effort. Man. Whether you
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: GPS on the way down, yeah a lot, Yeah, that
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: was that was a heroic effort. No GPS hiking out
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: at night in this is pretty This is rough terrain
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: in parts in a in a really yeah, in in
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: a bush wax sense. If you if you rated bush
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: wax and there's a bush rag rating scale, a bushwack
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: rating scale, I'm interested in looking at it was explaining
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: to me, but it would have to be on a
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: one attend This is like an eight bush Yeah, yeah, definitely,
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: because there's no Devil's club. There's no devil in the night.
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: That's right. Yeah, I've been up up that hill and
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: that's that is a nine or ten man, but no
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: Devil's club. But it is I mean, that's sick. That's
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: just like and to come down in the dark at
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: night with only the range of view of your head
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: lamp um alone. I think the choice to go down
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: the drainage, which we initially were like, oh, he's going
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: down the drainage, that was a good move. Again though teamwork,
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: Like I had communication with you guys once I knew
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: that that would empty close. It was an easy call.
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: So that was that was moving with like fear motivating
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: you because it's about two and a half going down
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: with heavy I mean heavy packs. If you ripped down there,
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: you got that. Man. I was nervous. What if I
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: come back up? Man? Yeah, I wondered that there was
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: bourbon down here, whatever that was. I was hoping you'd
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: bring the burb and back up. About it, dude, I'm
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: addressed that the fish check used to have such an ample.
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: The alcohol section used to run from that first aid
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: kit over to that really old bottle of separated honey,
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: and it was just like it was four and a
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: half feet of liquor. It's down to two Bacardi bottles
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: that you know, the dimple on the bottom of bottle.
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: The Bacardi doesn't come up to the bottom of the dimple.
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: And then I think a Yager mice. I think a
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: Yager miss just been here. I think since we bought
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: this place, who drinks Yager muster? Someone thought was good?
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: I need to bring up. Is that way you guaranteed
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: to always have a little bit of liquor. Uh. We'll
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: explain why we went up the mountain, why we went
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: up what we were doing this in particular time we
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: were on this was hunt. Yeah, this was um, what
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: was my second deer hunt? Uh? Yeah, I didn't say
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: first deer hunt. No, I'm just trying to tell the story, man,
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: But I like to start with a solid you know,
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: we'd be authentic. I have I have a way of
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: the VULTI I don't know why I'm I don't know
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: why I'm directing you, man. I guess just like a
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: chance I have to direct you and I just can't
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: turn down. No, that's fine, Yeah, you know, um yeah,
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: it's my second deer hunt. Um. But more importantly than
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: any of that, it was this is the this is
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: the spot of kind of our first real um, you know,
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: our first real like endeavor in this in this field
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: um or in this genre like together, you know, working
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: we had done we had done some of the pilots,
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: like I said, ramping up, but those were really just
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: like dicking around getting to know each other, kind of
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: ramping up, figuring out what a show would be. We
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: came here six years ago on the Travel Channel show
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: Wild Within. On the first episode, Um, it was the
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: first time that like all the gears were kind of engaged,
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: and we were really going after the kind of show
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: that we ultimately wanted to make people would see and
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: yeah and that, yeah, and that would be kind of
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: out there in the public eye, and you know, like,
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: you know, it was interesting that you have to also
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: kind of take into consideration the context at that time,
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: like six years ago, with what was what was available
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: on TV. But on mainstream television, people weren't doing content
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: about hunting. You know, even at that time, I know
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: there were executives within the network there that we're leery
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: about what we're doing, and we're constantly trying to put
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: their like shine on it, well, like well, it's not
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: a hunting show, and I'll be like, well, because we're
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: doing a lot of hunting, so you know, Um, but
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: I think people were in and I understand their position.
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: I you know, I think it was people were very
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: leery of like how that would be accepted on like
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: a mainstream network, you know, um, hope. Besides that, it
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: was the first time that we had the funding and
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: in the crew and the implementation of the technology and
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: kind of a little bit of the know how to
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: go out and kind of figure out what, you know,
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: how would we do this in an authentic way, UM,
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: that that that wouldn't either you know, ruin um the
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: standards that we hope to achieve in terms of television production.
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: But also wouldn't you know, ruin the hunt um, which
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: is which is a delicate balance, you know, I mean
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: cameras are difficult animals in in of themselves. They're very finicky,
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: and they require a lot of attention, you know, and
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: a lot of input. We just to keep them working,
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: it will no, not just not even just to keep
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: them working, but to keep you know, to keep like
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: myself as a camera operator or a DP at that time,
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: in a position that I would be getting a shot
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: that would be actually telling a story, you know what
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: I mean. So meaning to say what I'm what I'm
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: getting at is a very complex way of saying that.
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: Like it's hard not to spook animals because you know,
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: we want to tell the story in a way that's
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: the most conducive to like divulging a story and building
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: a story and making it entertaining and exciting, and like
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: we're good at that. I know exactly where I would
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: ideally like to be, you know, on various shots, um,
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: And by shots, I mean camera shots, you know, to
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: to document a hunt that is not necessarily conducive to
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: what what you know, actually stocking up on an animal requires,
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: you know, So there was a lot of there was
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: a lot of learning in that, um, you know. But
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: like I said, it was you know, that was a
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: full time first time. We were full up and running
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: and going, and it was a very uh like a
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: very I think, a very exciting time in all of
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: our lives. We were really figuring out and writing the
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: genre like as we went along, because no one had
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: really done a show I think like this, and and
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: and by the way, I don't I don't know enough
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: of the um, I don't know enough of what was
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: out there at the time in the hunting world to
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: be a correct about this. So there maybe people who
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: are like, well, you know, you're not taking into consideration
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: this show or that show, or the work of this
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: person or that person. But in my perception, and to
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: the extent that I know you're familiar with network television,
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: I'm familiar with network television for sure. But um, what
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to say is that I don't I don't
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: know that there was a hunting show that was doing
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: kind of what we were trying to do at that time.
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: We had talked a lot then about like, UM, hunting
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: shows as being made by hunters who were interested in
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: picking up a camera and like documentary what they were seeing. Um,
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: it didn't necessarily have like the television savvy to be like, well,
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: here's how you articulate like a complex narrative with dramatic
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: highs and lows and you know, tell a beautiful and
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: like cinematic story that has some like gravitas, you know. Um,
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: we were like we were TV folks that didn't know
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: anything about hunting, really didn't particularly know anything about being
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: out of doors, you know. UM, who had become by
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: virtue of like meeting you and getting to understand your world,
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: like interested in making shows about hunting and about this
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: world and about you know, how you live. Um, and
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: that took that was like a steep learning curve when
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: those worlds came together, because you don't you know, it's
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: not like you know, in a normal job like I'm
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: working biggest lot loser, like show up at eleven o'clock
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: in the morning at call time, hit the burrito truck,
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: you know, for craft service, and you go get my
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: camera ready and like the whole list of shots and
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: just stuff to accomplish. This was like really writing the
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: entire textbook as we went along because we didn't know
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: how to show like us would work. And it was
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: very exciting to pull a crew up that mountain, pull
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: a crew back down that mountain, have a successful hunt,
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: you know, um, and figure out that a lot of
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: us just had no idea what we were doing outside,
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: but I wouldn't. Really the most proud of and in
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: the whole process is that we were able to go
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: in and like not know what we were doing and
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: really you know, make some mistakes um on that first show.
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: Even though we walked away with a pretty successful show,
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: I still really like that episode turned out, um to
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: then be able to like reassess, figure out like what
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: we needed to tweak, how we needed to do things
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: and be a little bit better than next time, and
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: like be a little bit better and next time, be
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: a little bit better next time to the point where
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: we actually we were fined it into a show that
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: like really worked, man, where we weren't we were not
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: a footprint that was affecting the quality of like the hunts.
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: We understood how to act around animals, we understood how
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: to um, you know, how to make the like the
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: hunting endeavor successful, but at the same time, we didn't
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: sacrifice like the beauty and the dynamics of like the
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: show and what we wanted to achieve in television. And
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: and that was like, that's a really that was a
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: really tricky balance. Like for reasons I said before about
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: where the shot kind of wants to be, you know, yeah,
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: I want to I want to Joe, because that's something
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: that even just now on we just did you know,
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: we just filmed the hunt right now. The it's just
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: it's one of the primary things I think about when
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: we're out is it's like, for instance, I'm not I'm
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: not having a very clear start. So we're out running
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: back till here. Now you're going through coastal rainforest is
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: very thick, and you come on these openings called muskegs,
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: and we'll get to the edge of the opening I
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: want to call right, So in my mind, the perfect
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: thing with that would happen would be that I would
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: hit the edge of the muskeg. I would settle in, yeah,
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: wiggle into the ground, like try to become the ground
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: or try to become a tree. And all the cam
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: the camera guys would just lay down, right, but they
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: know that they have to do a job. And the
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: minute any of them move, I want, on one hand
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: be like lay down, but on the other hand like,
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: well the reason we're all here, Yeah, it's because they're filming.
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: It's perfect. Perfect. What's your guys like, what's your guys perspective?
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: I mean, do you feel me giving you the evil eye? Oh? Yeah,
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: it's good. I don't know. There's there's a real functional thing, right.
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: If you don't film it, then you have no show.
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: But if you spook the animal will help, then you
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: also have no shows. So there's there's two competing no
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: shows that are possible. So you're trying to figure out
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: how to balance, how to balance it. And I think
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: what you guys did in creating this show was generally
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: television making. Television is about control, controlling all aspects as
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: in like setting up, setting up everything. It becomes the
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: production becomes the production first subject matter. Second to control
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: it and shoot exactly how you want to do it
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: and have the hours that you want to have and everything.
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: And this this show, uh is about in some ways
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: the hunt first and then the camera guys has to
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: have to figure it out. That was a clear decision
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: from the very beginning was that the hunt would be authentic,
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: and the hunt would be the process, and we would
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: accept whatever the outcome of that was, whether it was
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: a failed hunt or a successful hunt, and that the
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: the what it really took was was I don't brag
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: about a lot of things. I am a excellent, excellent
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: camera operator. And what it really took was having a
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: team that was like kind of at that level. Because
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: the camera, the language of camera is extremely articulate. There's
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: thousands and thousands of variations. What does that mean. What
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: it means is that um Um kind of was trying
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: to go on to explain that, but there's there's thousands
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: of variations of what you can do with a particular
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: shot to tell um to tell a story, right UM,
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: for example, a shot that There's a couple of shots
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: that became hallmarks of this show that I was like
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: emphatic about from the very beginning that they have to
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: be because I had watched some hunting show and I
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: had seen like things like you were talking about earlier,
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: with the separation of the raptor and the rabbit. I've
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: seen that on hunting shows where they show an animal
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: and then they show a dude and and they feel
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: disparate from the very beginning. To me, I didn't. I
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: was not super interested in like the kill shot, like
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: the perfectly framed kill shot. I was very interested in
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: integrating the hunter into the kill shot. So that over
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: the shoulder shot of you taking a shot at an
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: animal was absolutely mandatory to me. It's it's nice because
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: it works well in terms of how your soilhouettes line
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: up and in terms of the animals field of view.
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: You know, um, so that one actually that one actually
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: plays diminishing what you dish. It's well instead of two
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: dudes out there, you know, you see one dude, um
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: another one from Because that that's important to stick on
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: because the effect the effect gives. Is there anyone who's
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: ever gone hunting with their friends or whatever, like you
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: spend a lot of time hunting my brothers, and just
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: the sneaking up on something. You're there. You don't sneak
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: out side by side now like Jerry, like there's the guy.
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: If you're calling for your friend or your friends, it's
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: his turn or anything like that. You're behind and you're
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: sort of seeing the world through this kind of like
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: this over the shoulder view, and it wind up like
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: in doing it that way, I felt really just felt
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: so immediate, like you were with someone in the woods.
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: Organic And that was again because you don't always see
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: what's going on. Perspective. Perspective was the most important thing,
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: and in developing this show, it was that we needed
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: to We needed to put the audience in the hunt.
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: You know, in order for a mainstream audience to accept
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: us in like really kind of understand it. In in
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: order to explain your philosophies in your world, we had
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: to put them in the context. And so it had
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: to be experiential. If we had gone in and set
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: up a bunch of shots, you know, the audience would
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: instantly dismissed it. We were talking about my like kind
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: of my mentor earlier um in Michael Mann he used
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: to say, um, people are like smart as people, but
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: they're brilliant as animals. What he meant by that was
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: that people have this extrasensory perception of when shit is
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: just wrong in bullshit, and and people know an audience
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: knows if you look at you look at shows that
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: are out there, you know, when you're being shined on,
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: you might accept it as like entertaining and be like,
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: oh fine, I don't care, but rabbits don't talk. But
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: from the very right, Well, that's an extreme example, but
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking more like survivalist shows. You look at something
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: and you're like, something just doesn't look right about that.
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: That just that's not right. And it's like, yeah, it
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: isn't right because that's the back of a Walmart. I've
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: spent hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of days out in
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: the woods. Seldom is my face dirty, right, it might
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: get a little sweaty, but sell them isn't dirty. But
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: but things like that, I mean people do pick up.
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: People do pick up on things like that. And I
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: think we knew from the beginning that we were treading
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: on like new ground in terms of mainstream audiences and
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: stuff like that, and that that it had to be authentic.
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: That if we if we broke the if we broke
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: the audience trust in any way in terms of the
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: authenticity and what we were presenting, that we had really
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: like lost the battle because we were we were trying
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: to present the philosophy more than more than anything else,
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: you know, Um, and make it entertaining and all those things.
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: But we really was like a philosophy, you know, so
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: you can't lie to people. You can't like be like,
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: here's our philosophy and we really believe this, and you're
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: you're lying to them. You know what I mean? You
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: have to tell the truth in the language of camera.
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: You know, the language of how you tell that is
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: is super super important. You got to bring people into
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: the experience. I found early on that what would happen
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: a lot was I was following you, but I wasn't
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: looking at you. I was looking past you, right, I
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: was looking in the woods, past you and kind of
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: like moving from side to side and seeing you kind
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: of pass in front of me. So that became a shot.
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: I was like, well, that needs to be a shot.
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: I need to put people in that experience. So I
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: with another shot. I came up with that I really
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: married into the language of the show was the long lens,
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: meaning that I'm on a more of a telephoto side
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: of the camera, pushing past your body which is in
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: soft focus in the foreground to the background, which was
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: really woods or something we were looking at, which is
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: in focus. And by by doing that, what I'm telling
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: the audiences Steve's looking at those woods. Steve's examining those woods.
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: We're now in a in a predatory mode. We're now down,
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: We're hunkered like you see wolves stock in, you know,
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: and our focus is what's in front of us. What's
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: happening in the foreground doesn't matter. We're looking we're looking out,
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: We're hunting now. And that became a very important shot.
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: That was a shot that put people in the moment
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: that they could understand on a cerebral in like primal level,
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: you know, like I'm saying, there's a there's a language
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: to all this, and there's there's hundreds and hundreds of
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: shots like that, and and what the art is really
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: in doing this is knowing the context, knowing the experience
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: and um and learning when to plug those different shots in.
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: Because this is all happening in the moment. It should
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: be made clear to people that did we didn't bullshit
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: any of this. This was real stuff. These were real events,
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: you know, they were happening. We just over time learned,
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: like you know, what what technique do you plug into
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: what hole? As you go along and divulge the story,
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: what is going to accentuate the story. What's gonna bring
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: people into that moment. What I think it's important within
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: that too, is we talked earlier about twenty two minutes.
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: Now when I'm like, like they like think the when
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: I when I when I was writing my Buffalo book, okay,
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: and and I'm and I'm writing about the experience of
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: being out looking for in Buffalo now. At a lot
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: of times in my head is stuff like uh, you know, man,
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: I like should I file for a deferment for my
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: taxes this year? Or like, man, I should call my
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: mom or often and all these other things. But that's
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: not part of what I'm talking about. I'm talking about Buffalo.
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: So you create a sort of a distorted sort of
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: you create sort of a distorted reality about what it
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: is you're thinking about and what is you're talking about
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: by highlighting certain elements what you're talking about and chasing
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: twenty two minutes um over the course of seven days,
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: eight days, chasing twenty two minutes just in the fact
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: that you you're not you might not be bullshitting, but
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: you're selecting out a very very small chunk of everything
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: that occurred. Synthesizing. Yeah, if not symnpthesizing is not the
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: right word. We are not we're we are not synthesizing.
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: What we're doing is condensing and and it's a distillery.
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: We're not condensed or condensed wouldn't be accurate. Condensed would
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: leave you one minutes of glassing. Yeah, in one minute
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: of stalking. I don't agree with that. It's we should
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: get out a dictionary. It is not it is, but
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: it is definitely not synthesizing. Well, what does that synthesizing
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: and officializing? Synthesizing would be to constructor reality. That's not
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: what we're doing. We're selectively distilling the the the process
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: selected distallation. I would I would say we are we
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: are constructing an authentic version. So it is a synthesis,
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: and that it doesn't reflect the reality because the reality
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: took place over eight days and it's now twenty two minutes.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: But if you do it correctly, then it reflects the
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: original experience in a way that is is honest. You
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: can do it in a lot of different ways. You
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: can synthesize in a way that is totally different than
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: that initial experience, or you can do it in a
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: way that is pretty closely parallels what you honest is
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: probably the key word. Yeah. Yeah, it's like with porn,
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: with porn and like, well how did these two ben't
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: But it's they left out the part where it's it's semantics.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: I think you know it is semantics. But I think
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: that was a very good explanation. I just the words
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: synthesis has a connotation to me that the um that
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: I guess doesn't jive with the way that I've viewed
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: what we do. But I understand what you're saying and
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: your I think we're exactly on the same because there's
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: so many versions. And the reason I respect and I'm
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: so happy to be working on this show is that process,
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: whether it be synthesis or distilling or condensing or any
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: other chemical term you gotta go in here, is that
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: you have to figure out a way to cram in
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: this experience. It is long. It's long. Nobody would ever
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: actually in Norway, they do watch this stuff slow teeth TV.
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: Have you heard about this, But it's but generally in
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: America we watch, you know, twenty two minutes of something
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: or very short amount of time, but we film it
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: over this long period and we want to give the
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: audience the best version of a way that they one
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: will watch. That's one two that they respect, and that's
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: those two things together. Man, it is really right. It's
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: really hard to make. It's it's very difficult to make
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: and it requires, like as go through the process of
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: making a single show, it's hundreds of decisions of like, well,
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: should we do this and we do that? Or now
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: is a Now are we sliding over the edge of
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: what's bullshit? And you know? Now are we lying? Now?
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: Are we telling the truth? Now? Is that? You know,
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: it's a lot of balancing like that as you go
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: through it, because you are you know, we can't say
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: that this is a scientific analysis of like of of
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: an experience. It's not. I mean we're by virtue with
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: the fact of handing, you know, having our hands on it.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: Any time and any time an avot or any other
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: editing machine is involved in a process, you are affecting
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: the reality. I mean, you're now writing a narrative. You
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: know what it is is you know, we I think
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: constantly we're asking ourselves or constantly ask ourselves as documentarians,
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: does this fall within the bounds of what is generally
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: perceived to be you know, acceptable limitations on what is fair,
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: you know, in documentary storytelling, and and there's no set
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: of rules for that, but I think we all kind
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: of inherently when we work in the genre, understand what
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: those are and understand when we've crossed those boundaries. What
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: was nice about this show is that I feel, almost
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: without exception, that we never made those calls, even though
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: they might have made more exciting shows. We we fell
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: within what we thought where the boundaries, because I think
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: that's the way we just wanted to live our life,
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: was to feel that we had done something that had
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: some integrity. You know. That's I mean, it's it's like
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: a whole field of studies authenticity in documentary film, and yeah, absolutely,
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: I mean there's a lot of very They sit right
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: next to the wildlife biologists who want to go in
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: a document that's well, we had to read some of
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: that stuff. But there's this you know, Werner Herzog, who
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: has made UH both fiction and nonfiction, one of my favorite,
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: one of my favorite, so he talks about in in
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: documentary there's moments that he creates true film that are
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: more truthful than the reality of the situation. I'm familiar
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: with Deadline of thoughts. Yeah, and and and in some degree,
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: you know that's but there was there was a high
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: profile case. I shouldn't say high profile. There's there's a
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: medium profile case where a woman was writing a memoir
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: about her life and hard scrabble existence and how she
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: wanted to be a writer but but didn't get any
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: support from her parents. And she wrote in her book
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: and presented as fact that her father caught her with
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: a typewriter and ceremoniously took the typewriter out and and
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: pulverized it with a sledgehammer. Turns out her old man
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: bought the goddamn typewriter for her. Okay, but she, in
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: her defense said, well, all things taken in his the
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: way he viewed my wanting to be a writer was
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: akin to had he smashed my typewriter. So to make
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: that point in a way that assistant the narrative. Yeah, right,
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: it's a fucking What I'm trying to say is it's
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: like it's a and we walked it many many times.
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: It's a very difficult balance. Yeah, but she was over
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: the edge, pointing out she was over the people want
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: to classify things is either fiction or nonfiction? Yeah, and
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: it's uh, it's not a helpful it's not helpful. No, no,
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: I would that's what I would say. It's not helpful.
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: Like our twenty two minute version show. It is an
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: authentic version of what we experienced, but it's twenty two minutes.
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: You gotta cut some stuff out. We didn't like, we
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: didn't film Garrett, you know, almost dying down this mountain.
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: That would have been the best part of that. Yeah,
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: nights Night walked back, Like all these things just didn't
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: make it because we're shooting two hundred minutes each. That
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: six hundred minutes a day. Yeah footage. Yeah, can't all
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: that show, They can't. So that four days, what is it?
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: I shot how many? How many minutes altogether? I'd say
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: twenty four her plus their little bonus cams here and there.
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: One out of every hundred minutes. That's but a but
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: a one hundred ratio is not surprising. I shot this year.
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: I shot a hundred hours of footage for a forty
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: four minutes show. Hundred hours of footage. Yeah, so we
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: never we never know we never know when the animal
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: is actually gonna be there either. So we're rolling full
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: time because like like this tie, Yeah, all of a sudden,
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: it was like yeah, and this is a perfect This
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: is a perfect example of cameraman knowing what shot he
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: needs to get, director telling Okay, I need the over
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: the shoulder shot that that mo you know made as
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: a part of the show. I didn't make it. I
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: just yeah, no, no, but recognized the value of getting
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: in over the shole shoulder shot that contextualizes the whole experience.
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: But cameraman and the guy is following is just in
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: two different locations. And if he moves, you know, I
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: should have moved with you when you went to that
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: next location, and I just didn't. But when he was
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: getting when he shot the deer, well I was initially
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: I was initially lined up over your shoulder and I
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: was good and I was happy and a great two shot. Perfect.
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: I would have been down the barrel. And then he
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: moved and I didn't go with him because I was
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: scared that I was gonna get yelled at by Steve.
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: It's all barking, it's all bark and no bite. It's
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: all bark and no bite, Like, what am I really
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: gonna do? Well, what's gonna I know I'm trusting when
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: I'm evil lying and all that and yelling, whisper yelling,
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: I'm doing When I'm whisper yelling, all I'm doing is
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: I'm basically saying this. I'm saying, I know that you
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: need to do your job. Do your job in the
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: way the best way you can that conforms to my
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: ideal of you laying face down in the dirt. That's
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: exactly right. No, So so Eric is saying, get get
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: the shot, get the shot, and I am like, I
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: can't move. Yeah, But what I would say about that situation,
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: I think you guys handled that situation perfectly. Were on
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: exposed face with a deer looking at us, and there
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: was no he wasn't looking at No, he wasn't looking
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: as when I moved, I moved because I knew if
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: a deer popped out, I was going to blow your
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: freaking ear drum out, you know, from from where I
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: was sitting, So I had to get in front of you.
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: Um once that once we made that call, there was
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: no one was going to move. We were on an
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: exposed face, and I should have anticipated that because I
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: could have moved with you. There was not a lot
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: of space for you to be. But but I mean
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: all this. All this means to say is like you
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: do the I mean, with these things, you do the
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: best you can with the situation you're handed, and you
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: you you kind of accept what the best you know,
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: what the best you can do is. It's nice when
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: you have the setup and the or thought in the
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: time to be able to position yourself. And and that
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: for me was like a big learning curve on this show.
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: Was was positioning. When I got really good at it
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: on the show, I could position to the point where
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: I would reveal animals by by moving slightly around Steve,
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: like in the case of the moose in Alberta, which
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: is a beautiful reveal, and in the case of the
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: have Alina in Texas, um where like I knew where
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: the animals were going to pop out, and like I
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: was behind it and I could just slightly move without
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: spooking them and reveal something that the audience hadn't yet seen,
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: like a moose standing in front of you. But that,
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: I mean, dude, you know it's hard to do what
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: you can six people six you know, I mean, we
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: pull it off often. That's a lot of It's The
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: other thing I happened is even just like hiking up
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: into the area we want hunt. We stopped at a
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: must gag set up called Nothing. Stopped at a must
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: gig set up called nothing stopped that another must gig
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: set up called Nothing. That was before we even got
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: to where we were going. So this time this goes
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: on and on. We set up many places and wait,
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: nothing happens, and you started getting there's like a fatigue
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: kind of sets up, like the first time you might
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: get uh, you get your rest all, I get my
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: backpack set just how I want to be, you know,
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: everything's I got my everything's set, my scope set, you know,
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: and I'm ready the eleventh time, you're just kind of
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: I was gonna lean against this tree and blow the call.
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: I'll start the rest out later. I'm not saying you
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: got that that happens to you, but it happens to
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: me to where it's a thing that makes a good hunter.
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: It's always been like, but this could be the time,
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: but I will I will say that. I that is
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: something I didn't feel vulnerable to when we were when
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: we are really doing the show. I did not feel
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: vulnerable to fatigue or like, oh, you know, I just
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: don't want to do it. No, but but I'm guilty
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: of it. And I even get to where like Corey
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: will be asking me, tell me, give me the set up,
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: give me the set up, I must say, Hey, we
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: don't need to set up. We're gonna go up here
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: and nothing's gonna happen, you know. I just like to know,
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: like a sore throne. So I was a val ready
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: to change my clothes. I was up there for us,
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: But it would have been helpful. It would have been
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: helpful had I explained. But it would have been helpful
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: had I said, an hour ago, whatever the hell it was,
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: we saw a deer we were watching, you know. No,
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: I mean just for not me, helpful for you, helpful
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: for the show. Had I done a oh, we've now
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: arrived at where we feel like a deer vanished. We're
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: gonna blow a call and hoping you pop his head up. Well,
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: and I'm like, yeah, I've been saying that for three days.
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: I remember, I remember having some epic fights with you
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: man in the field about like, dude, just please tell
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: us what's going on right now, and like day seven
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: or eight or whatever on odd ad, you know when
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: we are going up after almost like please just tell
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: me but I understand like the fatigue of just like
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: day in, day out, setting things up that then didn't
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: pan out, that are just going to hit the editing
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: room floor absolutely not making the show. So all of
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: your ideas, emotional energy, all the stuff you put into
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: producing content. It's like wipe trying to wipe the slate
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: clean and say like, I'm sorry, man, I know you
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: worked really hard on that, but it's a complete waste.
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: Now now you have to reset it up, you have
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: to redo it again. And after a while, man, that's
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: just so draining. Dude, it's hard to make. It's hard
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: to do that over and over again. And I started
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: to feel embarrassed. Yeah, you started to get like because
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: you're talking to the camera, but you're in a way
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: you're talking to the guy holding the camera. Definitely, that's
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: a whole another thing we should talk about. But you know,
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: it's like you're just like in this trip, like, Okay,
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: what's going on? You feel like, dude, I've been telling you.
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: I mean, do you really want me to tell you
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: this again? There might be over there. This is this
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: is an interesting thing because the relationship between the in
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: specifically in this usually it's a relationship between the director
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: and the and the subject um. But in this it
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: really is a relationship between the camera operator, the director
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: of photography in the subject because you guys got the
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: point of contact. It can't you know, a director, we
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: just in this in this context, you really don't need
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: another person walking out into the field of view of
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: all these animals, you know. So the camera operator directs
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: a lot of that interaction and that relationship. And it's
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: a hard position to be in because you're asking really
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: really obvious questions that you know, but that you know
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: that the audience needs to know. So you're like, I'd
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: be often asking you things that you're like, dude, you know,
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: you know that, and be like, yeah, dude, I know,
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: I know that, but I just need you to say it,
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: you know, and um, And there's a lot of like
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of trust and stuff involved in that.
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of like development of of relationship involved
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: in that, you know. That's the thing I found is, uh,
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: there's the benefits of working with people you had camera
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: operators you haven't worked with, and there's a benefit of
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: the ones you have worked at the ones you have
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: worked with. Is what'll be going through the woods and
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: I'll see something. If it's a guy I don't know
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: or don't know, well, I'm always herron being like well
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: turning to him meaning turned into the camera. I mean like, hey,
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: check this out. So what happens is you know, I'm
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: all excited to like introduce him to this new subject.
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: I'd be like, you see this, you know, do you
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: do that? And youll go do this and you know
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: you see where bear he'll and then later when you
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: it's like then later when you're with someone you had
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: many experiences with you kind of yeah, they already know
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: all that. Anyways, it was the advantage of the person,
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: you know, is you get a real eye contact thing
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: where I'll be like we're sitting there for hours, I'll
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: have something else that I want to say and just
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: you know, like turn or raise my finger and we're
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: doing it and in it or like you know, I'm
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: kind of like just little signals. I'm making signals as
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: so you can see my hands. Listen to a podcast,
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: but a little signal says a lot. Like a little
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: signal says like no, I mean, seriously, there's something standing
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: right here. This is this Like the way I'm waving
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: my hand right now, we both know means like this
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: thing is extremely close and there's a shorthand that develops.
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: It's helpful for it's helpful for actually hunting, but it's
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: not helpful for no doing the story. It's helpful for
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: functionality and what you like, ultimately hope is that you
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: kind of have both of those. And that's a big
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: part of like, you know, a big part of directing
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: this kind of stuff is learning how to establish a
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: relationship but not contaminate the subject right and and how
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: to continually pump the subject. We're like, I've I have
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: found that in in like documentary directing and a lot
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: of documentary directing, the most powerful weapon that I have
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: as a director to try to move the story forward,
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: to try to help the host progress the story, divulge information.
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: Stuff like that is is a smile. It's the weirdest thing.
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: It's not talking, it's a facial expression of of interest.
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: So a lot of times when I'm working, like like,
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: I'll work with chefs on these long projects. I just
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: finished one. It was seven months of working with a
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: chef that I didn't particularly get along with um, but
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: I spent more of less of my time talking to
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: him and more of my time smiling and nodding and
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: being very interested in what he was saying. UM, with
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: a couple of little questions here and there, kind of
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: pulling him along. It's it's an interesting thing. It's a
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: it's it becomes emotionally draining. Um and it's hard to do.
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: It's harder than you would think it would be to do.
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: But that that kind of interaction and like freshness of
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: of inter pressed you know, on my part, really can
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: help pull that information out. And no, I and I
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: would just say watching both Mo and Eric just during
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: this whole shoot, I worked with some directors that just
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: are constantly exerting their own ego on the situation. Yeah,
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: that's a big mistake. And and it's and I've worked
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: with these you know, guys who have been in the
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: industry for a long time, and that's what they do.
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: They just are constantly basically like trying to get the
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: host to basically say what they want to say, like
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: in this very forceful kind of and it is terrible.
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: I mean there there are times you know, to kind
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: of jump in and try to directing certain ways, but basically, uh,
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: to be hands off in a way and like you,
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: subtlety is man way more skillful and leads to such
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: a better product than Uh. It definitely does. And what
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: I like what I do when I go into a
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: situation less with Steve, because Steve and I like always
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: had a real natural sympathico and in working together, but
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 1: in working with people that I have more difficulty with. UM,
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: I will go I'll go into a scene with like
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: two or three things that I do want the host
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: to say, um, But ninety five percent of what I'm
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: getting them to deliver their own ideas, things you want
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: them to say, or like things you want them to convey, concepts,
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: concepts that I want them to convey, not not specific
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: dialogue UM, because I don't care how it comes out.
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: I just but ideas that I know are important to
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: the story arc we're trying to tell. Most of what
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: I'll spend my time doing is again it's smiling and
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: nodding and encouraging them to feel empowered to divulge their
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: information and their ideas and to feel like their I
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: is are valid, you know, and to feel like they
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: have a voice and are empowered. You know, that's super important.
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: And when you when a host feels confident. When you know,
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 1: when a host feels like they're doing a good job
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: and in control like that, the camera reads that. I mean,
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: that makes a good host. That's someone the audience can
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: look at and be like, well, this is someone who
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: clearly feels comfortable in their environment, comfortable in the information
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: they're divulging, you know. And then every once in a while,
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: Pepper in like, uh, hey, remember when we talked about this,
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: you know, and and what you're constantly trying to do
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: is again like empower the host. Remember when you said this,
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: Remember when we talked about this, Remember when you had
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: that idea of this, Remember when you know those kinds
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: of things. Again it the host has a feeling then
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: that they're coming up with a natural, organic idea. A
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: lot of times they are, by the way, because it's
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: all inormation that I got in in preproduction interviews, you know,
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: um and stuff like that. It's just that I know
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: that right now is the time to say that, and
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: you need delivered in a usable way at a usable time.
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: But I want it not just delivered in a usable
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: way in like a sound bite. I want it delivered
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: in a confident way where the host feels comfortable and organic,
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: and those again when you talk about like the human
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: bullshit meter, when people are watching TV and they see
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: someone that's empowered and feels like they really understand the
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: the you know the context, and feel good about what
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 1: they're delivering. People People buy that, man, People buy it. MO.
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: Did you feel I mean, you were on camera this episode,
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: did you feel that feeling that hosts probably feel often
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: about am I saying the right thing? Or am I
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: coming across across and like the right way? Like if
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: there's a funny yeah, sensitivity or ego that that comes
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: with being on camera. That's different from being behind the
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 1: camera where you do think like, oh I just said
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: a bunch of ship. Doesn't like am I saying the rights?
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: Like is this good ship? Because it's not that you're
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 1: making it up, but you're you're you know, you're on camera.
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: It's not like it's yeah, it's a it's a performative thing.
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: And you want to be like coming across in a
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: good way and not like a douchey way or whatever.
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: You know you want to you don't you want to
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: not be failing or you don't care yeah, because you'll
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: have conversations all the time, and we did too. Where
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: were you almost say like, hey, what's the with this
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: or do you remember that time? And He'll be like,
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: oh no, no, never mind, because I'm gonna take my
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 1: authentic question, my authentic recollection, save it, save it, and
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: keep its authenticity, but then wedge it in where I
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 1: needed to live right. So it's like the impetus to
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: say it is perfectly natural, it's something you're really honestly
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: curious about. But I'm gonna have to suspend the gratis,
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: you know, the gratification of getting my answer in order
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: to get my answer at the time that becomes usable
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: for the production. So it's it's like bullshit, but not
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: at all bullshit. It's just like a reshuffling. It's like
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: a reshuffling of reality. And I can say that there's
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: nothing I mean, there's nothing I said up here in
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: in the context of the show that I don't, like
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 1: one believe in my heart or aren't my feelings about
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: this whole you know, greater subject. None of it was
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 1: made up. And I didn't sit down like on the
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: plane ride up here and like articulate the points that
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: I thought would make me look cool. Or whatever, you know,
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: but there definitely was a lot like a lot of
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: moments going along or I was like, yeah, I shouldn't
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 1: ask that question right now, you know, or I shouldn't
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 1: say that right now. Like I know, you know that
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: we're gonna end with a meal scene, right, Like those
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: are thoughts that you want to say for that meal scene,
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: because like, you know, I want a nice, impactful ending
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: that has emotional quality and like that people can that
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: kind of buttons the idea up and you know, and
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: I know that like when we're starting out, I wanna,
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 1: you know, set up a couple of basic principles that
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: are gonna you know, guide us through or set us
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: on the right trajectory to kind of tell this story.
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: You know, if I have something I'm very passionate about
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: an observation, did I that I'm wed to out go
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: against my own instincts and and stick it in multiple places? Yeah,
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: because I'm trying to like I'm hedging my back. I'm
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: trying to make sure. So I'm like I'll say some
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: point and then it's almost painful to me, but I'll
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 1: do it, like I'm gonna do my point again. Then
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna do my point again later and it's gonna
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: be the only thing I do that meantime. I'm I'm
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: sort of like by I'm sort of pushing this idea,
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: that this idea has to be there, and you have
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: a variety of ways to use it. But I know,
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 1: but I mean, as we go through these hunts, you're
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 1: there's a there's a lot of different ways that the
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 1: hunt can play out. When we were up there, like,
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 1: you know, you'll deliver some idea and and we still
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: haven't completed a successful hunt. And it could be that
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: we don't end up with a successful hunt, and at
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: that moment that you deliver that idea is the most
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: exciting moment in the show, you know. Um, But it
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 1: also could be that that we then run into a
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: lot of exciting stuff, a lot of things that happen
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: after that that you're like, Okay, well, I I know
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 1: that stuff before is getting cut out. So if I
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: want to get this idea across, I gotta interject it.
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: Because from an editorial standpoint and from a standpoint of
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: telling a show that's like coherent in the language of television,
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: they gave the cant that to some some moment in
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: some place that we've never even seen in the show.
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 1: We didn't establish where you're saying something awesome but makes
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 1: absolutely no sense, you know, because they're like, wait a second,
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 1: how the hell did he get there? And where did
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: that jacket come from? You know it it has to
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 1: be that. I mean, there are rules to this. It's
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 1: there are rules to how a show unfolds. If we
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 1: could just make a quilt, you know, like approach the
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: show like a patchwork quilt and just plug a bunch
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: of stuff in from a bunch of different places and whatever,
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: we could make a you know, choose your own adventure,
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 1: a very articulate story that you could you could write
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: down on paper word for word and read it and
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 1: be like, wow, that is just a brilliantly told story.
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: But the visuals on screen would make absolutely no sense.
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: It would be like a bad acid trip. That was
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 1: a really clear decision from the very very beginning that
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: we were not gonna use interviews, and when you don't,
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: when you use interviews, you by default, de fact though
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 1: you do not have a cinematic show. It it's no bullshit. Yeah,
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: I see, I touched the void? What's that? Touching the
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 1: void seems really based on interviews, recreations, no footage of
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: the actual event, amazing films. I need to think about
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 1: that for a second. But I need to think about
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: it because it's it's and and by the way, like
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 1: like I give you tons of props for that poll
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 1: that fast. We're just talking because you definitely you definitely
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 1: stumped me on that one. But but I would agree
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: with you in general terms. You you break, you break
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 1: the momentum of a cinematic story when you cut to
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 1: an interview. An interview gets you out of it again.
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 1: You know, people are brilliant animals and and they understand
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: at some level that you're now going into some contrived,
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 1: controlled environment with a controlled scenario, which is this guy
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: delivering a line of dialogue that perfectly ties everything together
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 1: there needs to be. And where did that come from?
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 1: Where did do in shows like that come from? What
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: the interview? Who invented that? No, like where you have
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: people doing little interactions but then they're commenting on their
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 1: own interact and us that it's efficient. Well, what news
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 1: magazine shows before reality TV were very manipulative and how
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: they people answer questions they would ask, they would phrase
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 1: questions the way that basically and then and cut the
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 1: interviews in a way that that made them say certain things.
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 1: And I think it it went from that, uh into
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 1: certain forms of reality TV where they really constructed these interviews,
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 1: and then I think it was just a natural progression.
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: I think that's I think that's a smart assessment. I'm
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: gonna come back to Touching a Void the Void for
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 1: a second. If you could have told that story in
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: a purely verite sense, you would have. But there were
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: one story, Touching the Void, Touching the Void, but there
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 1: were no cameras, so they had to go to a
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 1: recreation basis. So I don't just for just for out
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 1: of sympathy for the viewers listeners. Touching the Void was
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 1: about a mountaineering accident, a mountaineering disaster. Um. It was
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 1: not being filmed when it happened. What mountain range, It's
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 1: Cordia Blanca. Cordia Blanca range. Yeah, Prue is that Prue?
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 1: And so the two people it involved a fellow who
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 1: had to cut his climbing partner lose, not knowing, couldn't
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 1: see his climbing partner, didn't know if he's dead or live.
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 1: He's hanging on a rope below him, and and and
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: cuts the rope. And the only way to tell the
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 1: story is these two men are interviewed right exhaustibly, and
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 1: there's some very artful recreations that never make you feel
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 1: like you're actually watching it happen. You're very aware that
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 1: it's so let me, let me and it wasn't like
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: the old History Channel style recreation where everything gets kind
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 1: of hazy. Let me let me continue on here because
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 1: I do this. That was an important point in like
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 1: a good you know, a good example. Um, it is
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 1: a documentary in the technical sense. You can't deny that
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 1: it's a documentary, but it is not verite and uh
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 1: and in verite for the audience too, is is like
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: a fancy term for real ship half French, the French
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 1: figured it out chronicle and and you know, and so
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 1: what we're doing in these shows is really verite. And
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 1: and so that's that to me, is where the difference is.
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 1: When you're inter cutting interviews into recreations that are obviously
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: nderstood by the audience to be recreations. That's one thing.
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 1: And it's a beautiful documentary. It's a brilliantly told story,
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: probably to fiction filmmaking. And the guy was it is
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 1: closer to fiction filmmaking when you're cutting interviews into verite
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: what is supposed to be reality. That to me is
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: when you're breaking it. The real the real gift, the
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 1: real skill of of ZPs, of the company we work for,
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 1: is that we over time have learned how to make
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 1: cinematic verite, how to make um choices in in framing
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 1: and cinematography, in music and you know, I would say,
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 1: maybe not most importantly, but very up there, very excellent,
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 1: excellent writing. What we what we do is we take
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 1: a bunch of of ideas that come from feature filmmaking,
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 1: from cinematic you know, produced feature film or narrative television making,
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 1: and we apply them to verite format. And and you
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: know that is that, to me is what has been
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 1: successful with the The second you cut to an interview,
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 1: a talking head interview, out of that, you break that momentum.
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 1: And I guess that's what I meant for for clarification
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 1: on on what I was saying before, is you can't
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 1: in this kind of show, you can't do that. To me,
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 1: you can't do that. Along those lines, in terms of
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 1: talking about verity, a lot of that, you know, circles
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 1: back to acceptance, and we were talking about this scenario
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 1: where you were caught out and you couldn't get behind
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 1: Mo for you guys, you know, Mo and Steve. It's
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 1: something you guys talked about earlier. But that transition and
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 1: that struggle of accepting a non successful hunt, you know,
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 1: which was the reality of the scenario, which doesn't necessarily
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 1: equate to you know, the button that you want to
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 1: put on a television show or a film. What was
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: that transition like did you feel you know a lot
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: of anxiety around a possible non successful hunt, I mean,
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: where you know, was it a mutual anxiety? Like how
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: did you guys overcome that? Because, frankly, from watching the
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: progress some of them are most successful, some of I
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 1: mean some most entertaining shows that I've watched, the ones
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 1: that you haven't know, I thought you couldn't do it.
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 1: I thought you had to just throw it all in
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 1: the garbage. No, I think that was a big I mean,
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 1: that was a big leap of faith early on to
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 1: to haven't. So, first of all, I think the first
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 1: of my do you because I argued against it? What
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: was your arguing just have to scrap it? Scrap it?
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: New EPI shouldn't know something. Yeah, and we I got.
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 1: We got an email one time a guy saying I've
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 1: had a lot of failure in my life. I do
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 1: not need to go and see you go out and fail. Wow,
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: I don't want it always made me feel bad. I
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 1: don't I don't want to go to dinner with that guy.
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 1: I actually do feel bad for that guy as well, man,
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 1: because I think he's missing the greater point. But but
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: generally was it was well received, But I was that
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 1: we it was the fourth was the fourth one we did.
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 1: I argued that it's like, there's just no way it sucks. Yes,
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 1: we'll figure something out. We'll go to my mom's and
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: hunt squirrels in her yard. Like it was a great show.
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 1: There's like a way that we don't have to use
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 1: this because you can't have a hunting show where someone
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 1: doesn't get something. Yeah, but you know what happened in
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: that show? What was the reason? The reason it was
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 1: the goat hunt? Um in Uh, what are you saying
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: you didn't have any anxiety or concern about this? Of
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 1: course I did from human being, you know it, But
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 1: I don't remember being I don't maybe being worried about it. No,
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 1: I was. I was confident in it. Well, no, I
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 1: was a little worried about it, but I was. I
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 1: was confident that we had made a good show. But
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 1: what what happened? And what what I the reason that
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: I argued for it and then I thought it would
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: be successful? Is it? What what happened is all of
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 1: a sudden, by by not coming home with a goat
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 1: on that show, the the subject matter of the show changed.
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: It no longer was a show about a goat hunt.
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 1: The goat hunt was the structure for the show. But
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 1: what the show was about was you and your brother
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 1: and your writing in the way that you handled the writing,
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 1: especially of the end of the last act and how
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 1: that played out, made it a show about spending time
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 1: with with Danny and how important that was. And it
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 1: was an AHA moment because it was like, all of
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 1: a sudden, it was like, wait a second, guys, there's
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 1: a whole world here of stuff that we haven't explored.
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 1: It's not just about hunting, you know, It's about life
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 1: and philosophy and like in the you know, the relationships
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 1: you have in the way that you experience the world,
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 1: like any of these subject matters, any of these things
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 1: can be can be the driving force of the story
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 1: or the conclusion to a story. We go out and hunt,
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: you know, we're successful, we're not successful. Whatever. But there's
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 1: a huge takeaway from the audience in hearing about why
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 1: it's important to go out and like spend time with
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 1: your brother and have that kind of connection and that
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 1: kind of bond and to be able to make a uh,
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 1: smart and accurate judgment call in the moment and be
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 1: like it's a nanny and a moral judgment um which
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 1: some people may agree with or may not agree with.
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 1: And I'm not casting judgment on where people would fall
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 1: on it, but to say like, well, technically I'm legally
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 1: allowed to shoot it, nanny, but you really shouldn't and
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 1: and I don't want to and encouraged not to and
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: encourage encouraged not to by vision game, but allowed to
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 1: do it right exactly and and and I think that
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: a lot of things on that episodes. For me, it's
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 1: a real benchmark episode because a lot of those things
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 1: came together in like it really was like a light
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 1: bulb coming on. It was like, wait a second, the guys,
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: there's a whole another world here. We don't need to
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 1: feel the tremendous pressure that we've been feeling to go
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: out and have these successful hunts, Like we can now
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: tell more nuanced, in and articulate stories about the human
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 1: experience and they don't have to be predicated on a
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: kill shot at the end, you know, um not to
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 1: not to say there's anything wrong with that, that's I mean,
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 1: it's great, you know, but we told a lot of
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 1: great shows, you know, a lot of great stories after
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 1: that that we're about a varying degree, you know, a
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 1: varying amount of subject matters that didn't have to do
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 1: with necessarily killing an animal, And to me, that's what's
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 1: given the show integrity and in legs. Over time, we've
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 1: got a lot of stuff we can fall back on,
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 1: a lot of stories we can tell, and a lot
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 1: more we can tell in the future, you know, dirt
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 1: myth authenticity is its including concluding I got to actually
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 1: I thought of this. Can you also talk about where
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 1: you're at with chewing tobacco right now? I mean, just
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 1: like because you quit for you quit for a while,
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 1: then in the car the other day, I quit, Yeah,
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 1: baby steps, Yeah, I'm I'm I'm being supported by my
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 1: friends and co workers on quitting a horrible addiction. But
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 1: my concluding thoughts, no, no, one momentute. Do you see
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 1: yourself chewing in a year? No, I'm gonna get yourself
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 1: chewing in one month. I'm gonna quit tomorrow. No, no,
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 1: don't bullshit. No, I'm gonna say. That's what I always think.
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 1: And Okay, like, you don't see yourself chewning in a year? No?
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 1: Do you see yourself chewing in a month? Yeah? You
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 1: see yourself chewing? Oh, in six months probably? Yeah, Okay,
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 1: just trying to get a sense of just see yourself
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 1: chewing in eleven months, in twenty nine days, probably a lot.
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 1: And then I'm quitting. Okay from so this is like
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 1: a benchmark moment, like to write down history is being made.
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 1: But yeah, you're concluding thoughts out, Um, sorry, I don't
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 1: want to see the developed a hole in your life.
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 1: I know. No, I appreciate that too. It comes it
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 1: comes with love. But the yeah, the concluding thoughts, I
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 1: think that the really cool thing I've been witnessed too.
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 1: And this is my fifteenth so I'm new, but I'm
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 1: also episodes. Yeah you meat eater? Yeah, an, so you're
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 1: like I don't know how many there are total, A lot,
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 1: there's a lot. There's like, yeah, we're talking about it.
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: How many, Well home, it's it's over eight. Okay. But
• 1:41:59
  Speaker 1: something that something that I've seen and that was spoken
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 1: about tonight that's really cool is the crew has to
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 1: be authentic to basically make it. Yes, And with that
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 1: being said, that makes all that we're talking about possible.
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 1: Is it's all people who are willing to put that
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 1: effort in to get the authenticity. Yeah. People, it's gotta
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 1: be people who enjoy it. Yeah, that's the one thing
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 1: when we're talking about like issues like that in wise,
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 1: like does he like run around on the woods? Yeah exactly, Yeah, Yeah,
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 1: that will be helpful. That's gonna And you know what's
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 1: great is how many non Hunters are sitting here right now,
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 1: like and the that's because of the ethos of the
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 1: show man so that you know the development of the
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 1: show and Steve who Steve is and just one die
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 1: hard hunter. We has got a gimpy kneed now so yeah. Yeah.
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 1: Second second concluding top was if you died ABC, If
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 1: I actually died right now, airway breathing circulation. I check
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 1: all that ship before before before doing the podcast and
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 1: then continue the podcast and it's still flatline that hit
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 1: the spot, and yeah, we'd continue rolling. But that's my
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 1: that's my concluding thoughts like that, that's yeah, No, it's
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 1: great to work with Mo and like, you know, kind
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 1: of he's like the founder of the show on the
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 1: cinematic end of things, and you know, listening to him
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 1: tonight and like learning some some true wisdom coming from
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 1: a person who like kind of developed the show or
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 1: helped develop the show. And then like you know, a
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 1: second thought is, um, why we kind of all got
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 1: into working in this adventure filmmaking? Adventure television is like
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 1: you know, it's like anything you struggle, It's like life
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 1: if you struggle, struggle, struggle to obtain this main goal,
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 1: which maybe is like the main goal is to create
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 1: a great, our best television show we can whether that's
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 1: me you know, along the way carrying Hunter pomp packs
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 1: up the steepest stuff you can imagine, like almost falling
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 1: face first multiple times, or like stressing about your shop
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 1: placement or as a cameraman or like where you need
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 1: to be and like in the end it all works
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 1: out and like having you know, building camaraderie within this
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 1: one week with everyone with the same goal in mind.
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 1: You know, it's it's it's kind of fulfilling for sure.
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 1: So yeah, I know, another great pele w show po
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 1: dubs dubs where stories are made and rain a little
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 1: bit rain. The other thing that I think people need
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 1: to know, Oh man, alright, does the system do it?
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 1: I like to giving turns up? Was what was closing thoughts? Uh? Oh?
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 1: Not's hip? Your skipping your turn you jumping the gun,
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 1: jumping the gun high hold. I'm definitely that guy. For me,
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 1: it's you know, it's really nice to come out here
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 1: and see like um that shows in like such good hands.
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 1: I mean, you guys, I think do like a tremendous
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 1: job man um. And I know how I'm one of
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 1: the few people that knows how hard this job is,
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 1: um And it is very difficult, you know, to shoot
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 1: this show. Uh, And I think you guys do a
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 1: great job. And the other thing is just the satisfaction of,
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 1: you know, of being here six years later and still
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 1: having a successful show up and running with no signs
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 1: of of weakening, you know. I mean that is a
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 1: very rare thing in television to be a part of
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 1: something at the beginning and see it be successful and
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 1: maintain its integrity throughout a lifespan. Eight shows is no
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 1: joke by any you know, strategy the imagination. There's no
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 1: reason to think that it won't be a hundred and
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 1: a hundred plus in Um, those are real rarities in
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 1: what we do. You know, most of the time you're
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 1: working on a show that gets canceled after the first season. Uh.
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 1: Most of the time you're you're working on some show
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 1: that's a pitch that never sees the light of day.
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 1: There's hundreds of them, you know. Um. I've had the
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 1: benefit of of working on a couple with legs that
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 1: really that really run and run. And for me, this one,
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 1: for a number of reasons, has been the most important
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 1: and the most fulfilling over time, um, and has done
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 1: more to shape who I am uh today uh in
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 1: my belief system than than any other. So it's been
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 1: a tremendous gift. Tremendous gift. Yeah. So I can't really
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 1: follow that. I don't whatever I'm gonna say. Yeah, but
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 1: all about how when they're watching a wildlife watching the
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 1: wildlife sequence, how what they don't realize is there's a
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 1: hundred people standing there filming the same thing. There's yeah,
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of wow. I'm not gonna talk about
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 1: that either, but what I am gonna say is this,
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 1: this is a very physical job. And I'm always like,
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 1: I think of myself as somebody that's uh, you know,
• 1:47:34
  Speaker 1: like in some ways exceptionally fit to be able to
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 1: like your right along where you gonna say, you're not, no, no,
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 1: I'm I'm fine. But everybody else carrying like I'm just
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 1: impressed with the crew that's on the show. Everybody, how
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 1: one how much ship they're carrying. You know, I had
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 1: all my dive weights in my pack exactly know, and
• 1:47:59
  Speaker 1: it's crazy there, but I didn't even notice. You know.
• 1:48:05
  Speaker 1: It's it's like a club of some sense that you're
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 1: a part of. It's to film a show like this.
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 1: Rogan called it a tribe, and you're just you're, yes,
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 1: when people go hiking, everybody's tired hiking. But when you're
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 1: hiking with extra film stuff and then you're running ahead
• 1:48:25
  Speaker 1: and like doing we just weird things that you would
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 1: never do as a normal person. And I like to think, Okay,
• 1:48:33
  Speaker 1: I am somebody that can do this weird thing. But
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 1: then you see like five other six other people doing
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 1: this and you're like, what the hell, there's there's other
• 1:48:40
  Speaker 1: people that are also this and it's a it's a
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 1: really strange set of folks that enjoy this type of activity.
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 1: And I like that. There's the folks that have worked
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 1: on meat eat or have gone on to do other,
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 1: you know, bigger, better things, or but they look at
• 1:49:02
  Speaker 1: meat eaters a place where that is very, I don't know,
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 1: very fulfilling. And I think everybody wants when they work,
• 1:49:12
  Speaker 1: to do something that's fulfilling. And it's cool to to
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 1: to be a part of a group that is fulfilled
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 1: by working on a show, because there's a lot of
• 1:49:21
  Speaker 1: TV that is the opposite of this. But you work
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 1: on something, you feel good about it and uh, and
• 1:49:27
  Speaker 1: hopefully people enjoy it and even later when they become traders,
• 1:49:31
  Speaker 1: they still look bad. Bade Eric Um just Biggie backing
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 1: off of everyone's points. I think, Um, it's uh, it
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 1: is a bit of a tribe. I think. You know,
• 1:49:45
  Speaker 1: if when you meet someone, um that has worked on
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 1: this show, um and inherently a part of that process,
• 1:49:53
  Speaker 1: you know, struggled through probably some intense weather conditions and
• 1:49:56
  Speaker 1: some long, long days and uh and long it's you
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 1: immediately feel bonded with that person. And I think you
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 1: guys are talking about it earlier. Um it's it kind
• 1:50:07
  Speaker 1: of also redefines you know, fun in the moment, it
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 1: feels arduous. But those are frankly some of the best
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 1: experiences I've ever had, and some of the best stories
• 1:50:16
  Speaker 1: that I tell our stories from Mediator shoots, you know,
• 1:50:19
  Speaker 1: stories experiences added with you Steve or or crew members here.
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 1: And and these are guys, you know, half these guys
• 1:50:26
  Speaker 1: I just met like three or four days ago, and
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 1: and we'll now walk away, you know, calling them without
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 1: a question my friends. UM. And so I think that
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 1: that is a really really unique um, you know platform
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 1: and you know experience that Mediator gives you, um, every
• 1:50:43
  Speaker 1: time you come out, whether you're working on it, And
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 1: hopefully that's something that people take away with, you know,
• 1:50:49
  Speaker 1: their audience members that watched this. For my thought, uh,
• 1:50:54
  Speaker 1: I want to talk about something someone said to me
• 1:50:56
  Speaker 1: at the first TV meeting I ever went to, because
• 1:51:01
  Speaker 1: and it's applicable to life in general. I think where
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 1: it was someone named Gloria Fan who I still keep
• 1:51:08
  Speaker 1: in touch with, a producer and I went out and
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 1: met with her and some other people in Los Angeles
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 1: in I think two thousand four or two thousand five,
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 1: and uh, we sat down in the room and we're
• 1:51:22
  Speaker 1: gonna talk about trying to do something with hunting and
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 1: others ideas. And the first thing she says, she says,
• 1:51:32
  Speaker 1: it's it's impossible to get anything made. Nothing gets done.
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 1: It's just one frustration after the other leads nowhere with that,
• 1:51:44
  Speaker 1: let's get started, all right, thanks for tuning in. It's
• 1:51:52
  Speaker 1: the documentary. It's the documentary episode. There wasn't a lot
• 1:51:55
  Speaker 1: about hunting in this episode. It was a lot of Yeah,
• 1:51:57
  Speaker 1: I mean, if you want to go to film school,
• 1:51:59
  Speaker 1: then then listen, let's go to biology first. All right.
• 1:52:05
  Speaker 1: That was fun. Yep, thanks guys, Thank you,