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Welcome back to another episode of Cutting the Distance Podcast. This week, I'm your host, Dirk Durham, and I have a special guest for you. It's my good friend and slash videographer slash meatpacker slash the guy that makes me look good on film. I mean, I don't know how good I look, but...
He does his best. It's not his fault though. My buddy, Dusty Rupp. Welcome to the show, Dusty. - Hey, thanks Dirk. Glad to be here. - So this episode, I wanna talk about best practices for filming your own hunts or filming your friend's hunts.
Every year we get questions and I don't have any specific ones lined up today, but these questions kind of come from memory that I'll be asking today. You know, it seems to be pretty popular these days to film your hunt, whether you're a fledgling YouTuber, you know, want to build a really cool channel and share your hunts and your activities with everyone. Or maybe you just want to film some stuff to share with your family and friends when you get home.
And we want to kind of cover today some of the best practices to get, you know, the most out of your efforts. So, Dusty, I'm going to put you on the spot right off the bat to kind of tell you or tell our listeners about yourself and maybe your background in filming and how you got to be the filmer today. Oh, man. Okay. Yeah. So, I'm Dusty Roop. Yeah.
How I got into filmmaking. Let's see. So I've always filmed, specifically hunting. Ever since I started hunting, especially bow hunting, I started in 2000. And me and my buddies would just decided we just want to start filming our hunts just for those memories. And it was probably not until 2010 when...
There was three of us that hunted. So two buddies, me and my other buddy who hunted and his brother would come along and he would do all the cooking and he'd hike with us and do some calling and just have fun. Well, he would do the filming as well. So he would film us to hunt. And in 2010, he couldn't be there. So I picked up the hunting slack. I thought we still got to keep this going. So I bought these little tiny Casio pocket cameras. I don't know if you remember those, but they're just...
Not much of a zoom or anything on them. They're just a handheld push a button to record in. And that's it. Did it come with a matching calculator watch? It should have. It looked like a calculator. It's about the size of a calculator. And you just fit it right in your pocket. Super easy to carry around. But it filmed in 4K, which was pretty cool at that time. And yeah, so...
carried those around and got that home. And I was like, you know what, I'm going to start editing these because we hadn't edited anything. My buddy had the camera and he just recorded and put it away. And I thought this is not good because I'm not seeing any of this fun footage. And so I started editing them and making DVDs and just having a good time doing that. And it just kind of just started really starting the fire within me to want to do more. So
It was about 2015, 2016, right in there is when I was sitting in my cube and I was thinking, man, there's got to be more to life than just sitting in a cube for nine plus hours a day.
And I thought, I need to figure out what I want to do with my life. And I started going through this test that was – actually, I found this test online. It said something about like bow hunters guide to changing careers. I think I took that same test. You know what it told me I should do? What? It said I should be a pig farmer. Nice. I don't know a thing about pigs except I like bacon. Yeah.
That's awesome. Okay, sorry. No, it was good. So I took this test. It basically just took you through a whole list of questions on what are your favorite things to do in life. And it didn't matter whether you thought you could make a career out of them or not. It just made you list everything you like to do. And basically from that, it started chopping things away. And my last two things on the list ended up being videography and hunting.
And so I said to myself, that's it. I'm just going to start doing that. I don't know how I'm going to do that, but I'm going to start doing it. And long story short, it's a pretty long story of how the rest of that came to be. But slowly over time, I started buying video cameras, a better video camera, audio, all that stuff, and just started learning how to be better at videography.
And in 2017, another long story, but we moved to Boise from Colorado and still had the dream of doing videography for a living. But I was still working a cube job and just trying to figure it out and thought I was going to have to go through the YouTube route. And I was planning on doing that, starting up a YouTube channel and just showing films and showing hunts.
And I got laid off from my job in 2019 and I was following this guy named Dirk Durham on Instagram. And during that time, he posted a Instagram message saying he was looking for a camera guy and he had a whole listing of funny things that he was looking for. Um,
And I'd been watching this guy, Dirk Durham, as I'm staring at him now, watching him on YouTube, watched him hunt with the bro crew and all that. And I always thought to myself, man, that guy's funny. I think I could get along with that guy pretty well.
Well, here he is asking for a camera guy. And I thought to myself, man, that would be so awesome to be his camera guy. But I didn't think I had a chance because I didn't really have any experience other than just my own hunts. And I thought with his connections and all that, he's going to want somebody who has been in the production side of things for a while and
But my family said, hey, you might as well do it. And I said, you know, you're right. I should just, at least he'll know I'm alive and I exist. He'll see a video. So I put a video together, sent it to him. Didn't think I'd probably get anything back from it. And probably I think it was a week, maybe later, I got an email saying that he was coming through Boise and he wanted to have lunch with me.
And that's where it started. The rest is history, really. Met you for lunch and hit it off.
Yeah. Yeah. So that was awesome. It's funny about that little ad I kind of put out, you know, I, I had some pretty specific things I said that were kind of like tongue in cheek a little bit. They're kind of funny. You know, you had, you had not, you couldn't be afraid of beers or bears. Right. You couldn't be a poopy pants. You know, you couldn't be somebody who's got a crappy attitude and then a few other things. But I did not really say what kind of a film I wanted you to make because
Right. Just like, send me a quick short film of, about you and what you do. Yeah. And,
And so I didn't put any guardrails, any training wheels on this thing at all. I figured like, I'm gonna let the creativity speak for itself from people who want to send me stuff. And some people, they sent me videos like, hey, my name's X. You know, I do this stuff. I love hunting. I love the outdoors. And just kind of a generic like interview video, which was pretty good. But Dusty put together like...
the next level type of film. Like it was like so well scripted and like he checked all the boxes that I, that I wanted that I didn't even know I wanted until I watched him. Like this guy, this is exactly what I want. This, this guy is exactly what I want. He knew how to, he used a high quality camera. It was beautiful footage and,
Um, the storyline was beautiful. It was great. Um, he got, he captured some really great shots, you know, showed creativity and, and, um, mastering of the camera. Um, and,
You know, he, he knew he hit me hard, you know, he hit me with every time now. And then as, as he would talk a little bit, it would flash to like, like movie quotes. Like he'd have a little snippet out of a movie and it was beautiful. It was a, it was an amazing little, little short film production. I was like, this is the guy, this is the guy. I got to go meet this guy and see if he's in for real. Like this can't, this can't be true. So when had lunch with Dusty and Dusty's,
he's the real deal man he's he's a quiet uh soft-spoken uh gentleman but he has a wit that's very quick and very hilarious but sometimes you don't always pick it up unless he you know but every now and then he'll just like interject something like that's so funny it just kills me and i that's what i love about him um and one part in the the video said he had a um
a snippet from, I can't remember if it was from Wedding Crashers or whatever, and Vince Vaughn saying, like, I'm not a talker. I'm not a talker. Because he's, you know, he don't, oh, I think that was one of the things. I didn't want to chatty patty. Yes, right. If anyone knows me very well, I don't like to talk a lot before, I don't know, nine o'clock, 10 o'clock. It just takes my mind a while to wake up, you know, in the morning and I'm just,
half brain dead until the middle of the day most of the time. So I was just like, this is perfect. But then as we started hunting and started filming, I was like, man, I thought you could talk a little bit more if you want. Then I was afraid, he was afraid to talk because the man's not a talker, he's not. But when he does talk, it's always of good substance. It's not like gibberish or nonsense. It's always really good stuff. So.
He's accompanied me since 2019 on my elk hunts, filming them. We've had some really awesome ones. We've had some rough ones. He's never complained a bit. He's always had a smile on his face.
I've always been pretty lighthearted and, and always keeps me, keeps me going too. So I always appreciate that. And one of these days I'm going to get to call you in a bowl and you'll kill it. Oh man. In 2020, was it 2020? Then we tried hard, you know, hunted with Dusty and his son Easton and, and,
Man, we had some pretty close encounters and almost got it done. Yeah. But one of these days, it's going to happen. It's going to happen. I'll be able to return the favor for all your hard work and energy. I may be able to call in a bull for you. That'd be awesome.
Anyhow, so that's Dusty's backstory. And then we'll talk a little bit more now, fast forward to 2023, and we got Dusty Roop starting a production company. Correct? Correct. What do you call your production company? Yeah, it's Depth of Field Productions. Depth of Field. Depth of Field. Productions. Yeah. So that's kind of a delicious little name, you know, kind of, you know, leveraging production.
videography, photography. So tell us about what all you're doing now. Just starting this business, filmmaking business, and kind of specializing in brand storytelling is the idea, which is just another type of video marketing where we...
basically work with companies, small businesses, different brands that to help them develop a more emotional and deeper connection with their target audience through the power of storytelling. And so we do that. We choose story as our format because we believe that story just has, is the most effective way at driving an impact, whether that impact is influencing buying behavior or, you know,
or increasing a perceived value or spreading an idea or something like that. So story is how humans connect with each other. Whether you're talking around the water cooler or whatever, you know, you talk to somebody, say, how was your weekend? And a lot of times they'll go into a story about their weekend, right? And if it's something you relate with, you connect with that person at a deeper level. And it's a story you just remember. You remember things a lot better through story. So that's kind of our...
thing that we're trying to do is just do it through story. I love that. And I think using that kind of format is so important. It just really lets the customers connect to the companies. You see it in outdoor space. You see it in other places where people, once they understand and see other people's backstories, they're like, I like that story.
that company or like that guy or like that gal, I want to support them. And, and it's good to get people's individual stories out because sometimes, you know, everything's so high tech these days and everything's so fast moving, kind of gets lost in the shuffle. I know in my past life,
life, my past career, you know, worked in retail or for a big tire company and building relationships with large accounts. You know, that was my, one of my main fortes. And, you know, when people are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on tires for their fleet, they usually want to spend with the people and do business with the people they've built a relationship with, people they trust, people they like, people that bend over backwards for them. And
They love to support those kind of people. It's not always bottom line price, right? They might have paid a little bit more sometimes for whatever they're paying, but they know the people that are getting it to them
aren't going to leave them there holding the bag or they're always going to be there to take care of them if they need anything. So I think that, that building relationships and, and it's important by telling people's stories or company stories. So I love that. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. So if we fast forward from that kind of idea, so, you know, for, for aspiring filmmakers now listening to this podcast, um,
Try to identify maybe the storyline within, you know, your hunt. Okay. Okay. Every year it's going to be elk hunting, right? Right. We're going elk hunting, but maybe there's an underlying story. Like maybe this is a special place, um, that your dad hunted and taught you how to hunt. Maybe this is a place grandpa used to take you. Maybe, um,
Maybe your hunting mentor is not no longer around and you want to, you want to, you want to talk about them and, and then, you know, pay your respects through hunting and dedicate the hunt to them. And then all the little nuance that goes around with that. Maybe during the hunt, something really bad happens and you have to like recover, you know, maybe wreck your car, maybe you hurt yourself, maybe, you know,
something happens to where it's completely out of character for the storyline for the, for the hunt. And maybe the story you thought you had is immediately changed by this new story. Um, you know, that don't, don't take that for granted, like capitalize on that and, and, you know, kind of spin that into your, into your storyline of your hunt. Um,
Um, sure. It's always, it's just, it's just Dell cutting, right? It's like how many, how many different ways can you slice it, dice it? And like we get in the truck, we go out to the woods, we get out, we hike around, we bugle, we try to find an elk and kill it. Right. And pack it out. But there's a lot deeper stories sometimes, or some little things that kind of go along there. Um, they're, they're, they make the, they make the film more impactful. Right. Um, so yeah.
Going back to like when we first hunted together, let's think about like some things that, or maybe not even hunted together, maybe when you first started filming, let's say that. When you first started filming, some things that maybe you just took for granted that you're like, okay, I just got this camera. All I got to do is turn the power on and push the button and start recording. And it's going to be awesome. It's going to turn out awesome. Where are some things that...
might've, you might've took for granted that maybe went wrong. That's like, Oh, I really need to do this. And I need to do this to like capture better footage. Yeah. So probably start back when I bought those Casio cameras. You know, my thought when I bought them was I just wanted something quick and easy to put in my pocket, take out, hit record, and
which it did its job. It was perfect for that. But I didn't, I took for granted the idea of, well, what about the audio? What about when that elk comes in, you know, at, um, you know, 60, 70 yards, but you want to get closer. You want to zoom in that little hand camera does not zoom in. And,
And so I'm left with this really tiny footage of this elk in the trees that you can hardly see. So having a lens that you can zoom in and get a little closer, that kind of stuff I took for granted at the beginning. Didn't think through any of that. I don't even think I thought through storage capacity, how much space is this going to take for a week-long hunt if I'm constantly recording? Can I...
can I get everything that I need to capture on that one little hard drive? All I thought about was lightweight and easy to put in my pocket.
I think a lot of people think that, you know, like today, you know, everybody gets the GoPro. Right. Like this thing's easy. It takes amazing footage, yada, yada. But it does have its limitations. Like you can't zoom with it. Sometimes the audio is not the best, but I think it has capabilities where you can do remote audio. Yeah.
with GoPro now, but still you have some limitations. So maybe the right camera for the right occasion, like maybe you use a GoPro, but you're using it for your B-roll, your tricky shots where you can't get a normal camera steady, maybe for walking, maybe it's putting it into precarious places. You're walking along a cliff. You can put that thing right down by your feet and easily walk along the cliff and
get some good shots like that. I think the most creative part can come with a little small camera that doesn't zoom like that. But like you said, it has its limitations. It does. So what'd you do after that? Yeah, it was after that is when I decided, man, I love doing this and I need to learn. I just basically need to learn what
what cameras are out there and how much they cost and, you know, how do you get great shots with the zooming, with good audio, you know, what brands are good. So it was just a lot of research just on the computer, Googling and reading a lot and watching videos a lot and just digging in to all that. I would make spreadsheet lists online.
different camera brands and audio brands and I would like write down all the goods of each one and try to compare and all that. I think they call that geeking out. I was geeking out. Yeah, for sure. I think you have to a little bit. Yeah, for sure. And, you know, I mean, my background is IT, so I kind of have that geeky side of me, likes computer stuff and IT stuff. So,
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Once you started figuring out what you wanted. Now, like picking out a camera is tough because there's a lot of great brands, whether you're team Canon, team Sony, team, um,
Panasonic. Panasonic team Nikon. Nikon, yeah. Like your team Panasonic and that's not a real common camera in our, in our world, in the hunting world. It's true. Um, when you first told me what you're using, I'm like, it's a what now? Um, but the footage proof, you know, the proof's in the pudding, right? Right. It's a great camera. The quality of the footage has been really good. Um,
really enjoy it. I think there's always a trade-off, like one camera does really well with this, but maybe the other camera lacks this, but does really good with that. I think they all have kind of shared those kind of similarities. They do. Yeah. Especially now. But yeah, at the time I was really looking at both Sony and Panasonic at the time and it was a tough, it was tough trying to decide. But what, for me, what hit it was,
the Micro Four Thirds brand of camera is lighter weight camera. So I still wanted that lighter weight feel because I knew, you know, packing weight around is detrimental, especially if you're going to end up getting one and you got meat too, plus all the camera gear. Like I was just thinking, I don't want to have to deal with extra weight if I don't have to. So like that was the stuff I was putting in the spreadsheet as well as how much do these things weigh and comparing that.
And so Panasonic really won out on that side of it with the lenses are smaller. Um, and, and then the, the weather built of it at the time was better than Sony. Um, it did good in rain and all that kind of stuff. So I thought I, I just, if I'm going to hunt, if I'm going to film hunts, you know, I need to be ready for the cold, the rain, the rain, the dust. And I want everything to be sealed, um, pretty well. I want my camera to last in those elements. So,
That's why I went with Panasonic. I knew they had bad auto focus, but I thought probably I don't know how much I would use auto focus or not during a hunt. I had no idea at the time. And thankfully, for me, I feel like you should manual focus when you're on a hunt. Absolutely.
That's the route I go anyway, so I don't really need the autofocus. Of course, it would come in handy in times when you're doing these B-roll type stuff. You could maybe do some focus grabbing and keep on the feet of the hunter walking and stuff like that a little easier with a good autofocus. But anyway...
That's why I went with Panasonic. And yeah, like you said, it's been a great camera. The footage is amazing. Has not done me wrong yet. The color profile is amazing with that camera. It really is. I feel like Sony, their color is really hard to color grade. And sometimes some of them even falls apart a little bit. Yeah. If you, depending on what mode you're filming in. Right. Yeah. That autofocus. I want to talk a little bit about that for the aspiring filmmakers. Yeah.
you know, autofocus is a slippery slope. I feel like for some occasions it's acceptable, but for a lot of occasions, you just, you just can't even, can't even do it. You cannot, you can't use it for instance. So maybe if you're walking along and you're doing some B roll stuff and you know, you're moving a lot or whatever, maybe your autofocus would be, be okay to use at those times, or maybe just a quick interview, um,
But when you're talking about calling in an elk and you're all set up and the elk comes in, especially in low light conditions, that can play a heck with an autofocus. Because as the bull starts walking into frame and starts moving, autofocus, you can touch the screen and say, okay, focus on that elk. But as it moves through the frame, sometimes...
Good old Mr. Autofocus gets confused and it's like, I know you wanted me to focus on the elk, but there's a really cool branch right here that I really, it's not moving. I'm going to just go ahead and focus on that. And it can really foul up the shot at the most critical time. So one thing I think we found that, and you can speak to this, is that
setting up the camera to where maybe you don't have as much blur in the background. What do you call that, Dusty? Depth of field. The depth of field. Now we're starting to come full circle. So without having so much depth of field, you can maybe...
make it easier to manually focus and everything's in focus instead of just like a portion, whatever you're like really dialed in on, whether it's the elk or maybe a Tweety bird in a, in a, in a tree or whatever. And what do you think is the best way to accomplish that? How do you, what, what are the camera settings that you get that you change to do that?
Aperture. So if your lens goes to like a, some lenses go to a 1.8, 1.4 or 2.8 is pretty common. You just increase the aperture up to, you know, three, four, five f-stop. That'll start making the stuff in the background and foreground come into focus along with your subject. So you don't have to worry as much about your, just that subject being in the, in focus. Right. Yeah.
And as you change that, other things change too. Right. Like your ISO. ISO. And all the, what's ISO for the folks who don't even know? Ooh. Yeah.
It's basically how the light comes in or out of the lens, um, how much light it takes in. Um, so you're going to open that up or close it down a little bit. So, um, you could control your ISO a lot, um, on these run and gun hunts cause you'll be in the shade, then you'll be in the sun, then you'll be in the shade, then you'll be in the sun. So my thumb is on the ISO wheel that I have set up on my camera so that I can move that, um, quickly. Um,
as we are moving. Plus I have an ND filter as well. It's kind of another way of controlling that sun, but between the two of those. Right.
And if we want to air high or low, do you want to air on like a bright blown out picture or do you want to air on like maybe a little darker? I'd air on the darker side. Yeah. Because we can always add. Yeah. Blown out, you can't get that back. Yeah. Because you lose all your color, you lose all your shadows and shading. Whereas if it's a little bit darker, you can add in some light in post-process to where it's still not totally shot. Correct. Yep. Yeah. It is tricky. So by putting it on...
On auto ISO, if you don't set your parameters right on your auto ISO, as the evening gets darker and the shadows grow longer and you're starting to lose light, that auto ISO may just jack itself way up to where…
It's like in your little screen, you're like, oh yeah, I can still see what's going on. But when in post-production, you're like, oh my gosh, this is like so blown out. It's just horrible and grainy, right? It's too bright, too grainy. And the images just fall apart. So if you're going to use auto ISO, put some better guardrails on.
put in some commands where don't let it go above a certain amount, maybe below a certain amount. Yeah. Or if you want to, the ultimate control, you want to adjust that throughout the hunt on, on manual. Manual. Yeah. Okay. That seemed, that's a, that's a mouthful. That seems like a lot, like right there. Some folks would be like, Oh man, that's, that sounds a lot more complicated than I wanted, than I really want to do. Right. But yeah,
getting those good shots that are usable and are going to look good, there's a little bit to it. So it's not simply you just pick up your camera and today and then tomorrow it's like, hey, let's go film an elk hunt. You
you got to put in a little bit of time with it in the off season. So maybe that's filming your dog. It's, um, you know, filming your kids, um, maybe going to the local park or, you know, filming people. Maybe that might get weird. People might frown on you filming them at the park. Hey, what are you doing over there, weirdo? But, um, you know, there's, there's a lot of places. Um, my son, he wanted to get into videography and photography. I said, well,
He's like, I don't know what I should. I'm like, well, he has cats. He has a couple of cats. I'm like, film your cats. So he's been following his stupid cats around, filming them. And one of them is his male cat. His name is Vesuvius, like Mount Vesuvius. Wow. They call him
But anyway, he followed that cat around, took all sorts of great pictures and took some little video clips. And he put together a little silly video of Vesuv being a cat, but kind of twisted it to a darker theme, like he was a bad kid here.
kitty or whatever but be creative i make yeah you don't have to have a elk hunting um you don't have to have an elk hunt to like have your subject matter to film uh pick something common that's close to you common is great because then you really have to like think about ways of being creative to get different angles and stable shots and back to that storyline how do you want people how are you going to get people like vasuv little vasuvius i mean
He's a cat. Some people aren't cat people. I mean, you think I'm a cat person. Yeah. Yeah. Not always like you. Yeah. I'm not a cat person. Dusty keeps thinking I am. I saw it. You were petting my cat earlier. That's my wife's cat. Stupid cat. My wife gets a cat. His name's Olaf. Yeah.
She gets the cat for her. Guess what? Olaf loves me. Loves dirt. Will not leave me alone. That's how cats are. They love people that hate cats. That's true. That is true. Shoot. Okay. Sorry. We kind of derailed there a little bit. Another cat story. Okay. So I mentioned stability when you're trying to maybe make some films around the house or in your kitchen.
community or whatever. Stability. Do you need a big tripod, heavy tripod? Should you handhold? Should you use a monopod? It's very popular to use a monopod. What have you found for run and gun elk hunting like you and I do? What have you found that works best? Maybe, and I feel like
It's like the ever that always the unachievable, like thing you're always looking in my mind. It's like, if we could only have this do a little better of this, or if we, it's like, how do you get there though? Yeah. Um, that stable image is what is paramount. Great, great stable image and great audio is super important. Right. What are you doing to get your stable shots, Dusty? Um,
Um, yeah, I don't always get stable shots. Um, so for me with the Panasonic I have, it doesn't even have in body stabilization in the camera. It does in the lenses. Um, so I get a little bit there. Um, but yeah, it's, it's,
Although hard, it's soft stepping, which can be very difficult in the woods, especially when you're chasing the elk. Sometimes when we're chasing an elk, I don't even worry about it. I'm just like, this is what it feels like. It looks like Blair Witch. Let's go on the ride. Yeah, you're going for a ride. I'm not stopping the record button. We're going to just film it. We can cut out what we want. So there's a lot of post-production.
production stuff we use the stabilization in that if we can sometimes that warps things so it doesn't always work but there are some good cameras canon has a really great camera with great i think five axis stabilization in the body that does a really good job
So if that is like a high priority for you, then that'll be something you want to look at in a camera. I have gone the monopod route with a full monopod stick. And I still have a monopod now, but it's a little shorter one that I can expand out. So I can keep it very short and keep three points. I have two, both hands on both sides of my camera and the monopod. Sometimes I'll keep it on both.
I'll angle it straight into my chest or down into my waist and have that support there and get my stabilization from that. So a three-point of contact is always the best way to get the most stable stabilization.
I've also found just most recently with just not doing elk hunts, but just doing other videography stuff, kind of the more weight you have with a camera kind of helps with stabilization because you can't move it. You can't get those slight wobbly movements with your hands because the weight of it there kind of helps stabilize.
stabilize itself in your hands. So you get a little bit more smoother shots that way. So if you can weight up your camera a little bit more, that can also help in stabilizing stuff. Yeah. Now, David Frame followed me around last year in Utah to film an Elkhunt for me. You were unavailable. You were Elkhunting yourself with Easton. Yeah. But anyway, David Frame, he was one of those cannons that's got the amazing, amazing
stabilization and his camera's big it's heavy he's got he's got the
What do you call it? It's got the extra battery capacity in it. Like a V-mount battery? It's the one that's underneath. Oh, okay. That hooks in. Yeah. What do they call it? I forget. The grip. They call it a grip. You know, it's got a bigger grip with double batteries. So you get better battery life. And it's heavy, but he handholds most of the time. And it's crazy to see the difference. He's handheld for us in the past with our Sony. Yeah.
And it's an a 6,600, uh, Sony and the stabilization on it's okay. It's not great. Um, the stabilization on that Canon, it's, it's amazing, um, night and day difference. And then just film quality, uh,
Yeah, way better. Way better. But when you're looking at price tags, the price goes up. So, you know, the Sony, it's pretty affordable. It's expensive, but pretty affordable. That Canon is the next level up. So, but if you watch Dave film...
He'll fold his, he'll hold it with both hands and he'll fold both elbows in and brace them on his chest. And he will hold very still, very far. Even with all that stabilization capabilities, he'll hold and then he'll make fluid motions. He won't make jerky motions like quick jerky motions. He'll make fluid, slow fluid motions to where it lends itself to better, better quality without less, without as much shaking. So that's good.
Now, audio too. We talked about how audio is so important. There's lots of ways to get good audio these days. There is. There's external microphones. There's lav mics, if you will. There's just the shotgun mic you put on your camera. What do we do for our hunts?
Yeah, we mostly do our shotgun mic on the camera. And we go with either Rode or Deity microphones. Deity. Yeah.
Every time I hear that or see that, you ever watch that movie, Conan the Destroyer? Yeah. You ever watch that? At the end, then there was that big statue. They put the weird horn on its head and it started coming to life. Right. And I think it was a deity of some kind, right? Oh, yeah. And then to save the world, he went over there and ripped that horn off that thing's head at the very end. All right. Okay. Sorry. We went down.
It's a great film. Look it up. Conan the Destroyer. And it's, you know, it's a sequel to Conan the Barbarian, which is pretty good too. I mean, if you like swordplay. Yes. If you're a swordplay nerd like me and a big Arnold fan. Anyway, sorry. So, okay. A deity or a road Mike. Yep. Shotgun Mike. What do you like about them? Just, I mean, the quality is, it's, they're the best, I would say. Yeah.
And they're lightweight. They can pick up sound. Bull elk bugling hundreds of yards away, it can hear it usually. So yeah, I mean, they just have not done me wrong, either one of those brands. Just very crystal clear sound. The only time it'll do you wrong is if you
are too close to the bugler when he bugles. That can cause blowout. So you got to watch that. What I like about that deity for when I'm bugling and when I'm not bugling, it's got a knob on the side. So it's like, oh, Dirk's going to bugle. You turn it down so it doesn't blow the audio out. And as soon as I'm done, you turn it back up to where it was. Yes. I think that's a cool, important feature. That is a very good feature. Yeah. Especially for those situations, it's huge. Yeah.
you just got to remember, turn it back up. Sometimes you turn it down, you bugles, and I know with you, there's going to be a sequence probably of bugling. So I'll just leave it down and you'll do your sequence and then we'll move on and I'll stop recording, but I won't turn the volume back up. And then Dirk suddenly wants to talk. And then I turn it on and we're talking and then I realized, oh no. The knob, I did not turn it up.
But normally we can pick that back up in post, which usually hasn't been a problem. Right. But a lot of times you catch it too, which you probably have a little meter on there that shows like, oh, you're talking, but there's nothing happening. Oh, just a second. And then we're like, okay, retake. Exactly. These are just some of the challenges of filmmaking. Now, let's say a guy wants to, or a gal wants to buy a Rode external lav mic cordless.
Or, what is that other one? The DJI. The DJI. I've heard great things about both of them. What are some of the, they have excellent sound quality. What are some of the downfalls they run in those? Downfall, for me particularly, what I don't like is that I can't control, if I have that DJI mic on you, I can't control from the camera, you know, turning it off and turning it back on. Like,
I would love to be able to, like, if the camera comes on and the receiver comes on, I would like the microphone to come on. And when I turn the camera off, I'd love the receiver to go off and your microphone to go off. Like that would be huge. So you can't do that. So, which means if we forget, you're just running on battery on, on that microphone. So, so the downside is just running out of battery life. You do come, it does come with two, so you can get through the day and
And you can charge them up. Two units, not two batteries. Two units, sorry. Two unit transceivers. So you can get through the whole day with them running. I think they'll last five hours for each one, but our days are usually 15 hours probably. So we would probably run out. So we would need two packs probably of those. And they're expensive. And they're expensive. Yeah. So that's a downside. What other downsides? I'm trying to think.
Well, they have an internal battery, so you have to charge the unit. You can't just replace the battery. Right. That's a big bummer to me. It's like, man, they should make these where you can put a couple AAAs in this thing, a couple AAA lithiums and just replace them. I mean, it's wasteful for the environment, but dang it. I mean…
having to stop and recharge or swap them out that's that's a big deal it can be a big deal and it does have a little it's container it comes in is charged and so when you put it in the container it charges as well but then you got to keep an eye on that because you got to charge the container if it starts dwindling so it's just a lot of more just thinking involved and keeping track of your batteries and how much life you've got left on that and so it's
It's doable. It's definitely doable, but it's, it's just more, it's just more stuff you've got to keep track on. Yeah. And sometimes you just don't want that. Right.
Well, it's so hard. You get caught up in the hunt or we're moving from one spot to the next. Right. The exciting things are happening or maybe it's not exciting and maybe we're kind of feeling a little poopy. And we're like, oh, man, bummed out. Like, you know, your mind gets distracted and you forget those things. And then when it should, when you go to use it again, it's like, oh, dang it. We missed all that. And the battery was dead. Right. Yeah.
Um, so yeah, it's just one more thing you have to stay on top of. I think that's why we really, for the most part, we just use the boom mic on the camera. Uh, if I'm going to talk, Dusty gets close to me. Um, let's just get up close. He'll, he'll make sure the volume, uh, I don't know if you call it the volume or the gain or whatever it is, the thing that, that you can turn up. If, if I'm whispering, you can turn it up and capture what I'm saying. Um,
It works a lot better. And still, sometimes, you know, we have people complain on the YouTube channel. I wish you guys do closed caption on all the talking. I can't hear what it says, you know, for maybe some of the folks that are hard hearing. I'm kind of hard hearing too. Yeah. Um,
And that adding closed caption is a whole nother can of worms. Like you get the whole film edited and it's like, oh man, closed caption. I haven't found a way to ease. I mean, you can do it, but it doesn't always transcribe what the real words are. So it's kind of like you're autocorrect on your phone. You talk into it and send a message to your friend and then they read it. It's like,
What is this gibberish? I don't understand a word he just said. Sometimes that's how it transcribes. So it just adds another layer of difficulty. And if you're on a time crunch, it's just kind of tough to get it all done. But...
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Okay. Batteries. We talked about batteries on our, on mics, external mics. What about camera batteries? How are you managing those? How are you keeping those? I mean,
How many batteries do you pack a day? Um, and then how do you, like when we get home or not at home, but back to camp, how are you like keeping all that stuff charged? Yeah. Um, so I'll keep, I have eight total batteries that I lug around with me, um, at any given time. So, and of course there's, you know, batteries are all different. Um,
I know of some batteries I have that last longer than the other batteries that I have in there. I have no idea why, but I keep those at my forefront all the time. Those are my main batteries. And then I have my backups with me in my pack as well, just in case. And then at the end of the...
The day, you know, I'll keep good batteries on my right side. And then as I have bad batteries that have gone dead, I put them in my left pocket. So right pocket, good batteries, left pocket, not good batteries. And then at the end of the day, I'll take the batteries out of the left pocket and charge them either by a portable battery pack, like an anchor or the...
What's the dark dark energy energy? Yeah.
I can't think of any more. Some of the black magic in that one. I don't know. So, yeah, using that or just a charger in the car, in the cigarette lighter, and use that to charge up. And if we're driving around a lot, then I'll use that time too to have a battery charging on that thing in the car. Just so I'm always on top of that, keeping something charged. I think.
I feel like anytime we're not like in the field, Dusty is charging batteries or swapping out batteries and to charge them. Like that's, that's the lifeblood of your camera and you can't let them go. You have to have as many, like every time you leave the truck or camp, you have to have as many charged batteries as you possibly can. That way you don't,
Yeah. That would be awful. That would be tragic. That's a nightmare. A nightmare. And they always run out when something good happens. Yeah. They do. I'll see that little light start blinking right when we finally are on an elk. I'm like, oh no. I better just change it out now. Yep. Because I'm not waiting until, you know, hoping that we're going to get it. It's going to last for the shot. If there is a shot that takes place. So.
Yeah. Keeping an eye on that battery is huge. And Dusty will stop me. He'll be like, Hey, I got to change out my battery. Yeah. And I'll be like, Oh,
I know. Bull's going to be here in a second. They're here pretty soon. Usually you don't wait till the last minute, but, um, but it's like, oh man, it's kind of just like, okay, pause. I'm getting worked up here wanting to get this elk. And then we have to take a pause. And, um, but as, as the people being filmed and the filmer, um, you have to have that good rapport, good relationship and, and,
sometimes tempers could flare. Dusty and I get along great. Um, cause I have so much respect for him and vice versa. So we don't, we don't, we don't butt heads, but I could see some people, they get so wrapped up and excited and like, I could see where emotions could flare. Yeah. And so, you know, if you're the, the, the person filming, um, try to swap out your batteries at opportune times, maybe not in an opportune times, but don't wait till the last minute. It's like, okay,
we're hiking to the bowl it'll be a little bit i'm gonna go and change it now before we get there yeah um but sometimes things happen and we're on the same bowl and we're filming the same bowl for 45 minutes and you're like i gotta change the battery yeah and that happens too and there's nothing you can do about it but yeah stop change the battery and and it hasn't affected us the outcome at all like people always say you know oh it's like hunting with a cameraman
For me personally, I've done a lot and Dusty and I move really well together. We work really well together. I think he probably reads my body language really well. And we've always kind of said like, okay, Dusty, you're in my right hand back pocket. Stand there when we're trying to call in a bull. The bulls come in or we're set up to get a bull. We don't want him four feet off to my right hand side.
You know, we want him right behind me. That way he can see, he can catch me drawing my bow. The bull walks into frame. You get me shooting and the, and the bull. When you do that, when you set up like that, more than likely you're going to get the shot. If you're three feet to one side or another, chances are you're not going to get the shot because there may be a branch or a tree in your way. I've seen it a hundred times, right? Right. But we, we,
We practice that constantly unless there's been a couple of times where it's just like, okay, I'm, I move super fast and Dusty tries to like get it where he needs to be in position, but Oh no, right there. Here's like last year we had that the last day in Idaho, that bull come in and you were unable to get in the right position because I was kind of, kind of running up there. And then I just stopped and knocked an arrow and drew my bow back. And you're, so you, you froze instead of just like, Oh no, you just,
You zoomed out, got me and like everything in the frame that you could and recorded. And if you zoom in, you can see the elk after I missed. After I missed. So...
Had you been right behind me, you might have been able to get a little better shot. Maybe not because it was pretty brushy anyway. But with that extra movement for him getting right behind me, that was one of those occasions. It's like, what do you do? You can't, there's nothing you can do about it. And I think you, you did well, you did as good as anybody could have. And I was happy with that.
with it. So there's always some exceptions to it, but if you try to make that your, your rule, it's like, you're always behind me. Try to get that over the shoulder shot, whether it's, if you're left-handed, right-handed, if you're right-handed, right back pocket, left-handed, left back pocket. And then sometimes depending off that where the elk's moving, you may have to,
switch sides and go from one shoulder over the next shoulder, which, which works. Isn't acceptable. You've done that. Like on my mouth, that bull. That was on the left side. Yeah. It worked great. You know, you got the shot. Um, that's the hardest part. I think a lot of people struggle with it. Just getting the, getting the shot. When the, the bull finally comes in, you can get all the cool B roll you want. Cause it's B roll time is not as much pressure. It's a lot less exciting, um,
And, but when that bull's coming and it's getting exciting, it's like, oh man, if you're right behind the shooter shooting over their shoulder, you know, number one,
The shooter's blocking a lot of your movement. So you can get away with a tiny bit of movement, you know, as far as, you know, positioning yourself a little bit, like swaying one side to the other. But then you're just going to have, you're going to have the best, you're going to have the same view the shooter has. And ultimately that's, that's what you want. I don't know how many shots, how many times I've watched, you know,
Could have been spectacular videos when the camera guy was standing four feet to the right or four feet to the left. And then all they have is the guy drawing his bow and then they pan over to where the elk is. And all you see is brush or a tree and, or you might see an antler sticking out on one side and then they make the shot and they run off and he's like, I got him. And it's like, yeah, I didn't get him. Yeah, exactly. That's a heartbreaker for a filmmaker. It is. Wow. That's kind of write that down. Yeah.
Heartbreaker for a filmmaker. Okay. You know what? You can start selling those t-shirts with your new Endeavor, Depth of Field. I'll just, you know, I'll need my royalties. Okay. Okay. All right. They're in the mail. They're in the mail? Yeah. Okay.
So yeah, it's super important for the videographer to work closely with the subject, you know? Yeah. And discuss all this stuff before we get to the woods, right? We talked about, you and I just talked about all that stuff on the way to the woods. We geeked out, if you will. Yes, we did. On the way there, we had a long drive and we talked about all these different scenarios and thoughts and ways we thought we should do it and capture it. And then as the
as the hunt progresses, we continue to communicate. Um, if Dusty has a concern, uh, he tells me if I have a concern, I tell him and, and neither one of us take offense. We're just like, Oh, maybe what do you think about this? Or what do you think about that? And we're because the ultimate goal, we both want to make the best film we can. Um,
But if we work together, communicate, it's a lot easier. If you don't communicate and you're like, gee whiz, I wish the guy would stand in one spot so I could film him. If you walked around all day thinking that to yourself, but the guy never does stand still,
Well, that's on you as the filmer, right? You have to say, hey, why don't you do that again? Like stand right here in this one spot or walk through this here and I'll get ready and get in focus and I'll get a really cool shot of you walking through this beautiful meadow or walking over this cliff or whatever it is. Those little requests and those are paramount for great filmmaking. Yeah.
I agree. Okay. Now we've got, we've been hunting. We've, we've done all the best practices. We've had our batteries charged. We've learned how to use the camera. We've got our audio nailed. Okay. We've got it. Okay. Yeah. Day one in the bag. Now what do we do? We just go back to camp and eat and sleep and go to bed. Well, we have a little bit of homework to do still. This seems like the videographer's work is never done. He seems like he's always the last one to go to bed. Um,
Just because he has to do, he or she has to do some things. So we get back to camp and we're going to do file organization. That's when we take the SD card out of the camera. We're going to plug it into the computer and we're going to upload all that day's hunts, all the video clips from that day onto an external hard drive. Mm-hmm.
Okay. And we're going to label these when we put it in there, we just don't dump it. Right. So, so we're going to create folders day one and then the date. Right. Okay. So day one date, this bam, you, you upload those, put them in the folder.
Walk away, feel good about it, right? Yeah. And typically, I like to keep enough SD cards to keep one till we have a fresh one, a brand new one every single day. So we're not like, okay, day one, we got it on this card, but we still have more space on it. Let's just keep recording on that and then till day two, through day two. Well,
it just creates a nightmare. If you have one card that's got multiple days on it, then you have to, it just creates more time later. You have to sift through all that and be like, okay, oh, here's the, here's where we are day one. Okay. Day two, sift it out. It just creates more work. And I feel like if you can, if you have enough cards, you can have a new one every single day. That's actually your, that's another form of a backup. So backup your footage. Best practice is,
is to have two external hard drives. So you copy all the clips to one hard drive, then you copy it to another. Now, especially if it's like a high priority, you know, film, it's like you've spent money for the videographer. You've spent money for film permits. You've spent money on tag. Like this is a production, right? This is, this is a professional production. Maybe it's not, maybe this is just, you want to take it home and share it with your friends, but you
you have to do some best practices to where that stuff's there when you get home. I don't know how many times I've heard people say, you know, they've had problems with SD cards getting lost or recording this or actually erasing that or whatever. I mean, if it can, if something bad can happen, it can happen. So being organized and doing that, um, will make everything better. Don't you agree? I totally agree. Um,
And I think the other good thing about backing everything up onto two external hard drives, even though we have quite a few SD cards, there can be moments when like we usually get a fresh SD card in each one, but,
Towards the end of a 14-day hunt, we start to get close to the end of those SD cards. But if we have everything backed up twice already, then I could potentially go back and start reusing SD cards because I know I've got two good backups. And that's just another great way of just...
Being able to think things through. If you don't use all the SD cards, then you've got three backups and you should be golden. Yeah. For sure. But yeah, I think the two hard drives is the way to go. Yeah, that's a great point. Because, you know, SD cards are expensive. Yes. And, or let's say maybe you've got, like you thought you had enough and you have a couple that for whatever reason that can't, you plug them in, you've used them in the past. Today you plugged it in and your camera's like, er.
I don't like this. This card sucks. I'm not going to work today. Right. So then it's like now your card game is different. Yeah. So yeah, good point. If you have the two backup hard drives, then whatever may happen, you can always still go back through and start reusing cards and removing the clips from those and feel good about it. Right. Exactly. Yeah.
So, but why, you know, why is that all so important? Like you guys are just being like nitpicky. Like why is all this organization so important?
Well, my son, Austin. So I said he's an aspiring videographer, photographer. Yeah. So he was using this, this winter, him and his girlfriend were, were going up here to Bogus Basin here out of Boise snowboarding. And she'd never done snowboarding before. And, and so he went from like the beginner phase till like by the end of the season, she was doing really good. So he's filming all this and he's using his, his Sony camera. He's using a GoPro. Yeah.
But his file management is terrible.
Dog crap. Oh, no. So he gets home and he starts messing around. He goes post-production. So he's using Adobe Premiere. Okay. He starts going through this and he starts building all these timelines and stuff. And then he moves some stuff around. And then anytime you move anything around in post or anytime you move any of your files around, let's say they're not in a specific folder. And then you create a timeline in Adobe and
And then you take those files and you move them from where they were into a different folder. Well, when you open Adobe again, it says, I can't find the files. They're lost. It's not intuitive enough to like, we'll just look in the next folder. It's on the same hard drive. Just look in the next folder. It doesn't know that. It just knew the pathway to where they were originally. So then anyway, he doesn't have all the, he doesn't have good file management and he's got hours and days of footage that
that he spent a whole bunch of time on his timelines, but then started moving stuff around and it's all wrecked. So all of his, I told him, he's like, how do I fit? I'm like, Austin, start over, start a whole new project, nuke that one, start over. For me, I'm like, there's probably some Adobe guys on here. I'm like, oh yeah, that's, it's easy. You just do this. For me, because I've done this, I've deleted the whole thing, organized my stuff,
than a start over and it's so much nicer if you can start out with a good clean slate of everything so i i sort everything you know whether it's day one day two day three and then gopro footage and then you can label those day day whatever you have a new folder with gopro and then with that you have folders with day one to two like whatever labels you want them and then drone right like have all these things separated where it's quick and easy to where you
When you're looking for a shot, it's like, I think I had a pretty cool GoPro shot. Bam. You go into your folder, find it, put it into your project, put it on the timeline, and you're good to go. Yeah.
Yeah, I've done the same thing too. Like even when you try to be organized and you think, oh, this is how this all labeled it this way. And then you realize, wait a second, you've already dumped anything or everything in your project and your timeline. And then you realize that you weren't thinking straight with the sequence of your foldering. And so I've had to change it that and then I lose track.
You can't find it, but you can locate those files within Adobe. But if you have them everywhere, what a nightmare. What a nightmare. If it's not organized and you're moving stuff and you've already started a project, that is not good. Yeah.
Yeah. I've seen some challenges where, let's say I'm trying to build a commercial for Phelps and I want to take shots from this hunt, shots from that hunt, shots from here, shots from there and make it into a kind of a little montage Instagram reel video. Right. So I've got like every external port plugged into hard external hard drives and I'm pulling from those, those into my timeline. Yep. Great. All done.
It's made a really cool, cool reel. Awesome. Well, then a year later, I'm like, man, I remember I did that reel. I could use that, some of that stuff again, reuse it in a different spot, maybe repurpose that same thing with a little bit different edit and I'll repurpose it. So I'll go back in there, I'll pull it up and then it's,
my thing says, hey, these files are not found. And you see a bunch of Chinese writing all over. I thought Adobe was maybe Spanish. Adobe, Spanish. No, it turns out it's Chinese. Adobe is a Chinese word for video editing. Anyway, so then I have to be like, oh man, where did I...
Where did I pull all this stuff from? So then I have to plug in, find the right hard drives. I got a boatload of hard drives. So I plug them all in like, oh man, it's just enough to make your brain hurt. Finally, it's like, okay, I got it. So best practices, what I should have done is whenever I first started that project is before I even started that project, I should have created a new folder on the hard drive.
external hard drive that I wanted that particular project to live. Mm-hmm. And then I should have pulled in the clips from all those other hard drives into that folder. Yeah.
And then worked off that one folder and hard drive. That way, when I go back a year later and try to mess with it, it's all right there. I've done this a bunch of times and it's like every time I'm just like, ah, you idiot. Stop doing it like that. I'm getting better. I'm getting better. I won't say I'm not backsliding every now and then, but for the most part, if I can remember, I'll do that.
Yeah, I've done the same thing. Yeah. It's just, you get going, you just start, right? Yeah, you just get in the mood. Yeah. And you just start dumping files. Yeah. You're like, I'm king of the world. This is going so good. And then, oh, no. Oh, I shouldn't have done that. Yeah. Yeah. So, more on post-production. Yeah. So, post-production, that's when you take all your files, you load them on your computer. Yeah.
in your program, whether you're using Adobe Premiere, you're using iMovie, you're using DaVinci. DaVinci. Yeah, DaVinci. DaVinci. Forget about it. You're just busting your beans. Sorry, inside joke with me and Dusty. They laugh. But anyhow, there's all these different, these different editing softwares, I guess, if you will. And, yeah,
It's really helpful if the person who films it edits it or whoever was there at the time, like let's say Dusty films it, then I edit it. Um,
because I kind of know what happened that day. As I go through the clips, I kind of know what happened. I kind of know the mood. I kind of know how it all kind of laid out. And the clips are always sequential, right? One, two, three, four, five, six. But sometimes you're just like, man, how do I put this all together to do the right thing? And sometimes just having the same person that was involved, people who were involved, their boots on the ground,
do better editing. So if you don't have somebody that's doing that, if somebody, let's say some third party is editing your stuff, you have to have some notes like on, on the days. Like, so if you were to say, okay, did Dusty filmed it? I was the, I was the talent, if you will. I will. That was a pretty face. Not really. Face for radio. That's why they put me on a podcast now. So, um,
Me or Dusty, we could go through every day and we build a document and say, okay, day one, this is kind of the stuff that happened. And day one, special things to note. By the way, clips XYZ, this happened. Let's say Dirk said a bad word. Let's cut that bad word out. Make sure we cut that bad word out. Okay.
Or maybe Dirk ate too much. We'll cut out the scene where Dirk ate a lot of food, right? Or, you know, if we want to leave something in, take something out, or make sure we want to highlight a certain part of that day, the highlights of that day, maybe we'll write down. And then that way, when you pass on to the third party, they have...
They have kind of a guide, like, okay, day one, day two, three. These are the things that happened that were important. Okay, cool. They start editing through there. They may have questions like, hey, you said this, but I didn't really understand that. I didn't really see that. And then you can go back through it and kind of help them through. I don't know anything harder than being a third-party editor and editing.
editing it right like so the the folks at meat eater you know they have a whole team of people who edit everything wow chances are that the people weren't there right on the hunt 99.9 were not on the hunt but they'll have maybe a producer there that will be taking notes during the hunt for day to day to day or let's say this is super important too so i've seen jason phelps do this he'll he'll
As he's talking or he'll like turn the camera on, have him turn the camera on and he'll like, he'll talk and give a note to the editor. Say, hey, editor, this part of the day, we want to talk about this or we want to highlight this. Take that part out about where we say the location. I said this was Big Jim Crick and we don't want people to know it's Big Jim Crick. Make sure you take that part out.
So you can do that too, like live in the field messaging to the editor within the clip. That way they can be like, oh, okay, I got to make sure we don't tell people where Big Jim Crick is because there's really big bulls there. That's right. We have to edit this now. Yeah. Dang it. Shoot. Every time. Every time. Every time. I can't be trusted.
So anyway, and then for final production, you know, it can, I don't think a lot of people realize what it takes to like edit a full film, especially if you've got five, 10 days, if you got 10 days worth, that's a lot of time. What would you say? 80 hours? Oh yeah. Easily. Easily 80 hours. That may be way undershot. We may, I mean, it takes a ton of time. I know when I started getting into editing mode, I'll set my butt there for eight hours straight and only get up to pee and
and take it and get a drink of water and then go right back to it for days. Oh yeah. It's, there's a lot to it, but when you're in the zone and especially if it's a good hunt where there's things happening and, and,
It's exciting. Like that kind of carries me through. Yep. Um, if it's kind of one of those tough hunts, you have to fight for the, through the tough days. It's like, oh my gosh, this is mind numbing to comb through all of this. And then, okay, here's the good day finally. Right. And then, you know, I feel like you get a lot more boring days than you do exciting ones. But so we'll have how many hours of, of stuff by the end of a 10 day hunt.
four or five hours maybe yeah of content clips oh yeah easily easily six hours of content clips and we have to carve those down yeah to well you know at one time an hour video people could sit down and watch an hour video nowadays i don't it's man it'd have to be so it'd have to be a spectacular film for people to be able to sit down through i mean you have so many distractions um
So maybe 40 minutes or less, you know, 20 to 40 minute film to hack down six hours into a meaningful 20 minute or 40 minute film. Yeah. It's daunting. It is. It's a daunting task. It is. Because it's, you're editing six hours to three hours and then you're going back again, taking the three hours down to...
One and a half hours. And then you're like, oh, I got to keep cutting more out. So you're going through it several times, just trying to figure out where do I stake out now? Yeah. You know? Yeah. It's very daunting. Yeah.
Yeah. If you watch some of our films, it's like, man, I would have loved to share the whole thing with you, but I don't, I think it takes a special person to want to sit through an hour's worth of film. Yeah. And, um, and you know, maybe some of it's not meaningful to a particular viewer. Um, so we try to cut out any kind of fluff. Like don't try to put too much walking in there. Um, we want to meet the film has to kind of tell you what's going on to it because I don't really narrate my films. I want to, I want the, the,
what we captured to tell you what's going on. So we're hiking and we're bugling, we're moving towards elk, you know. So you have to leave a certain amount of that in so the day makes sense. Right. But you can't make it too long to where it bores the viewers. Right. Like all I've seen was like an hour of Dirk walking around bugling and he finally killed an elk. We wanted to be more than that. Right. So we have to cut out the fluff. Yeah.
And then just leads to good stuff. That's a lot of work. It is. But anyway, well, man, thanks so much for coming on today, Dusty. It was awesome. If any of our viewers have questions they want to call in with or email us with, you can email us at ctd at phelpsgamecalls.com.
Or you can call in to our super secret number. That's right. You call in, you leave a message and the message can be three minutes or less. Three minutes, the machine cuts you off. So if you call in, leave your message. The phone number is 208-219-7701. Leave your question. We'll read it on the air and we'll answer it the best of our ability.
As always, a pleasure, Dusty. I can't wait for a few weeks here. We're going to be chasing up again. It's very soon. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Thanks for having me. Yeah. And how do people find you? I do have a website. It's called dofproductions.com. Great. So dofproductions.com. And I'm also on Instagram, dof underscore productions. So you can DM me there or you can go to my website and have a contact page. You can contact me through that. Great.
People need a video guy. Dusty's the man. There you go. As long as I'm not using him. That's right. If I'm not using him, you can have him. All right. Thanks, buddy. Thank you, buddy.
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