The Wild Photographer
Learn techniques, tips, and tricks for improving your wildlife, travel, landscape, and general nature photography with Court Whelan. Whether you consider yourself a beginner, serious hobbyist, or advanced professional, this is the way to rapidly understand and implement new skills to elevate your photography to new heights.
The Wild Photographer
The Hidden Secrets of Pre-Production for Stunning Wildlife Films with Jake Willers
In this episode of The Wild Photographer, host Court Whelan dives into the art and skill of wildlife photography. Jake Willers shares valuable insights into capturing animals in their natural habitat, discussing techniques to approach wildlife ethically and effectively. He emphasizes the importance of patience, respect for the environment, and understanding animal behavior, which can make the difference between a good shot and a great one.
Listeners will gain a deeper understanding of camera settings, lighting, and compositional techniques that bring wildlife photographs to life. Jake also discusses the challenges and rewards of this unique field and offers practical advice for both aspiring and seasoned photographers aiming to refine their wildlife photography skills.
Expect to Learn:
- Essential camera settings for wildlife photography
- Techniques to approach animals without disturbing them
- How to use natural light effectively in outdoor settings
- Compositional tips to capture dynamic wildlife shots
- Ethical considerations and respect for wildlife in photography
This episode is kindly sponsored by:
LensRentals.com - be sure to use promo code WildPhotographer15 for a 15% discount.
My Full Camera Kit:
Welcome back to the Wild Photographer with your host, court Whalen. We've got another great episode today, a unique one, with a BBC Nat Geo star and filmmaker and producer, jake Willers. He is very firmly in the world of videography today, but didn't always start that way. He started off with a photographic background and I think this is a really, really unique and helpful episode for all of you in the audience to understand the similarities, the differences and maybe some of the progression from photography to videography. We're going to give you a lot of tools for the video world. We're going to learn about Jake Willer's approach to storytelling, which translates into both photography and videography. We're going to talk about some of his past, present and future projects that I think you'll be very interested in learning about. As it pertains to your own work, your own vision. We've got a lot packed in today's episode, as always.
Speaker 1:I want to give a quick shout out to lensrentalscom, sponsor of the Wild Photographer podcast. If you go onto their site and see something you might want to rent, which I, of course, advocate, for it's a great way to learn and experience and understand different lenses out there for not a lot of money. You can use promo code WIL photographer 15 to get 15% off. So that's pretty fantastic and, like I said, I really do think it's a fantastic tool to try lenses before you buy them. You can even buy them from lens rentals, but it's a low cost, easy entryway to rent a lens for a few days to try it out, maybe for a whole trip. It's a really, really great asset. That's why I really enjoy having them as a sponsor of this podcast, because I think they're just darn useful. So anyway, without further ado, I want to get into the podcast itself. Help me welcome Jake Willers, jake, welcome.
Speaker 2:Hi Court. Hey, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1:My pleasure, my pleasure. Well, let's get right into it.
Speaker 2:So, jake Willers you are a renowned filmmaker, but it all started with photography, am I right? Photography came before the TV. I would take pictures at the wildlife park. So we would, you know, use photos our library for kind of marketing the wildlife park, you know, keeping tabs on all of the animals that we had in there and that would come in and go out, because in the early days it was an animal sanctuary and so we would have native wildlife bought into us that had been saying a road traffic accident, and we would nurture them back to health and release them and take pictures and what have you. And so I kind of got into.
Speaker 2:I had one of those old zenith 35 mil cameras way back in the day I think I was probably about 16 years old, so it was a long time ago and also I did a at school. I did a darkroom course or just after leaving school did a darkroom course and really just after leaving school did a darkroom course and really just got into kind of like doing some architecture type photography. But working at the wildlife park was really where it was at, taking pictures of animals. And then when I got into TV, it turned into hosting for Nat Geo and then getting a video camera and going behind the lens of a video camera, which then changed everything for me, cause it's, you know, it's, it's very, very similar, right, it's taking pictures. You're just taking 24 or 30 of them a second, so yeah, exactly yeah.
Speaker 1:So you knew pretty early on that film was the direction that you wanted to go.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, again, this is. This is an interesting one, because I never aspired to get into TV or actually do video in the early days. What happened was I was kind of discovered for want of a better word at the wildlife park. I had just curated an insect house called Waterworld and Bug City at the wildlife park.
Speaker 2:And we had a production company come along and they wanted to do some little newscast pieces that they would put out to different news channels. And so they interviewed me with some of the insects that I had at the attraction would make a good host for a TV show. Would that interest you? And I'd never thought about doing anything like that. And I said, well, it does, but I don't know how I'd have the time to do it. And they said, no, we'll just come and film a five minute promo and we'll see where it goes. So I thought nothing more of it. They filmed the promo, they went off.
Speaker 2:A few months later they contacted me and said we have a six part series with National Geographic Channel with you as the host, and that bowled me over. And there I was a few months later in Africa filming the first of our series called Insects from Hell. And so I kind of fell into the videography world, and getting to see the behind the scenes of how natural history shows are made just really inspired me from a storytelling perspective. It gave me another way of looking at how I could pass my passion onto other people, which is what we did at the wildlife park. You know we would do outreach projects to schools and what have you. And so this was just another area that I thought well, this is a really powerful tool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're not the first person to that I've heard this from. Is that kind of moving tool yeah, you're not the first person to that I've heard this from. Is that kind of moving? You know, from photography into videography is largely fueled by this passion, this interest to get into deeper storytelling. So the storytelling element, I know, is really near and dear to your heart and that's something I want to talk a little bit about here.
Speaker 1:You know, storytelling for me is a fascinating subject when it comes to photography, cinematography largely because I honestly don't feel that I'm very good at it. I don't feel that I have a super solid, innate, intuitive grasp on it, something that I'm consciously trying to learn from and learn about. I'm spending a lot of time and a lot of effort doing so, but I think a lot of other folks out there probably feel the same. We all know what a story is. We all know what storytelling is. We can think of you know nursery rhymes. We can think about cavemen around a campfire. We can think about even modern media social media, youtube and documentaries as storytelling.
Speaker 1:Talk to me a little bit about your approach to storytelling. I know that one of your main goals as a cinematographer is to help the scientific community translate inspiring information to the public, which I think is so darn important in today's day and age. How does storytelling work for you in that context? And you know, what advice might you have to someone like myself that knows it's important, wants to do it, but feels that they might need a little shot in the arm to really accelerate their journey towards storytelling?
Speaker 2:science and storytelling was when I became a host for Nat Geo, wild and National Geographic Channel. We would interview many, many scientists and film their research and it really became obvious that when we were doing that research of their studies, there was nothing written in kind of plain text. It's all scientific talk, right Papers. You know how a paper's written right.
Speaker 2:So it's, you know, to a lay person it's pretty difficult to understand, and so it would be translating that into lay speak so that I could use that as a on-camera host to be able to talk about their work. And it just became increasingly more obvious. That was something that was necessary with everyone we met and their science, and I found I was pretty good at being able to understand most of the time it was speaking, having an interview with someone off camera chatting with them about what they did, and then be able to translate that and just talk about it in a more accessible fashion. And so that really excited me, because the more into filmmaking I got, I realized there was so many incredible studies being done, so much new information coming out that just needed an outlet.
Speaker 2:And you know, actually on my podcast, one of my original I think the first episode actually is Rick Rosenthal, who filmed on planet earth one, and Rick said that you know he was a scientist, a Marine biologist, and he wrote a bunch of papers that he said he jested, but he said that 12 people read. And then, you know, after he became a cinematographer, he said over a billion people have seen his TV shows, and so when you look at it like that you suddenly see the power of being able to translate science to the. You know the screen and, of course, you know everyone does that. Now I mean conservation and natural history. Filmmaking is all about that. For me, it's about finding really I like to be passionate about the species that I talk about and that I film. So first of all, it's about, you know, looking into the things that really make me tick.
Speaker 1:When.
Speaker 2:I became a host. I started off hosting shows about insects because I had a huge passion for insects. I loved, you know, telling people about them and kind of dispelling the myths, the vilification of creepy crawlies. That was really important to me and that led to multiple series. And then it led to me doing series about other wildlife. So we moved on to do rogue raiders, which was all about human wildlife, conflict, wild events, which was all about some of the largest animal spectacles on the planet, and so it really opened up for me. So now really my process is when I find if I'm you know, the stories come to me two ways.
Speaker 2:One, I can go out looking for a story which can be quite hard because you know, a lot of the time it's hard to know where to look. It takes a lot of research, but often it's the case that the story comes to me, I'll hear something, someone will tell me something, or I'll read something in scientific paper or a new story, and and that will be the trigger that says, okay, this is something that could be, incredibly, you know, good to make a show out of. So then it's kind of finding that hook. You know storytelling is all about hook and it's all about acts.
Speaker 2:I mean the same as a Hollywood movie is or a good novel. It's all about an act structure. So you have to find you know your characters, your protagonist, you know the issues that they face, what are they trying to overcome? And then you know how do they overcome that, what are the solutions and the resolution to the story. So really, if you keep it very basic like that, it can be easier to kind of find the elements necessary for a good story, and so that's kind of my process, and then I start doing a lot of research into working out you know how that's going to translate to the screen, because not all of them can you know.
Speaker 2:I mean this day and age. You know it's easier now that we have the ability to make two minute films and distribute them Right, and they're not just half hour or one hour. I mean back in the day it was, all you know, really minimum of 24 minutes for a half hour show, and so you know you have to have enough content to make that show worth watching, keeping viewers, you know, keeping their eyeballs on it. Now of course we can find really interesting stories and say you know what? This is really cool, but it's only a three to five minute story, but we still have the ability to do that and put it on people's websites and YouTube and depending on who we're making it for.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I mean I think that's the biggest boon today is that it's almost encouraged to think of short form because of the way that social media works, because the way that YouTube works and even film festivals. So it's really quite interesting that we now have this ability to cheaply or at least not as much money as back in the day get your stuff published, your stories published. Let me kind of dig into some of the filmmaking the cinematography aspect of the storytelling so fully agree. The act structure, the filmmaking, the cinematography aspect of the storytelling so fully agree. You know the act structure, the characters. I think that the more seriously you take story structure, even if it's for a three minute YouTube video, the more seriously you take that. The more professional, the better it's going to be.
Speaker 1:But let's say you have your story, you're going to go out in the field and start shooting. Obviously you need the best shots possible. You need the polar bear in slow motion walking. You need the bird taking flight with full wings spread. But what are some of your thoughts going into a day of filming? That really helps get you what you need to complement the story, because of course you know this is much more than sitting around a campfire through oral tradition. This is like, this is filmmaking, this is visual. So the visual element, even though it probably can't live on its own, there has to be that story as well. The visuals are super important. So what are some of the thoughts going through your head? Like checklists? Do you organize your shots into priorities of what you need to get, or do you let stuff come to you and just make lemonade out of everything possible? Maybe just touch a little bit on the actual pursuit of capturing that stuff on film and how you go about doing it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely the most important part of filmmaking is pre-production. Right, there's really three areas. There's pre-production production, which we would be the part of going out and filming, and then post-production, editing it and finalizing it and putting out there. Pre-production by far is the most important part, because without good pre-production there's really you're out there hoping that you're going to get stuff rather than knowing now obviously with wildlife. It's like they say never film wildlife and children right the hardest things to get what you need.
Speaker 2:But you know, understanding animal behavior and what's going on and the specifics of the story you're going out to film gives you a very good idea of what you need to get to tell the story and what the you know the percentage chance of you getting it. So I like to split it up and I have two shot lists that I carry with me. I have an essentials list and I have the ultimate list.
Speaker 2:And so when I'm doing my pre-production, I have the treatment ran out. I understand the story. I'm now looking at what are the images? I need to tell that story in a way that's going to keep eyeballs on it, because it's all about retention, right? You want people to continue through your story, and so I'll create a list I call my essentials list which is like this is the bare bones of what I need for that show to become a reality, and without that list.
Speaker 2:I can't make the show right, so that one there is a reality. And without that list I can't make the show Right, so that one there is a must. And then I have my ultimate list and my ultimate list is probably got about 30% more shots in there and it's like, well, if I added this and this and you know all the incredible stuff that is probably impossible to get, then it would be fantastic. But the reason I do that and I actually teach people this because a lot of the time if you make one list, what tends to happen is we look at the story and we dream about how it's going to look and this incredible show we're going to make. If we go out with that list and we don't get everything on that list, we can start to think, oh my gosh, this is what's happening here. We don't have enough to make it.
Speaker 2:The point of kind of separating the essentials is well, no, this is what I have to have. So these are the shots. I have to find the other stuff. The dream list or the ultimate list is the stuff that will make it better. But it's not all essential, but the essentials list, you know we really need those fundamentals. So I do it like that. You know, sometimes it's one list but they're highlighted as the essentials, right? So we know what we're getting.
Speaker 2:The importance of having a shot list is also, if you're working with a team and you're not gathering all the footage, that everyone is on the same page and knows what you need to get right, because a lot of the time, if I'm doing it I mean I'll be perfectly honest I don't have a list. A lot of the time the list is in here, right, it's in my head. It's not actually on paper, and that's because I've done it for so long now I know what I'm after to tell the story and I know if I'm getting it or not. But it does depend on the length of the project and how many people are involved. So once I have that list down, it's really then a case of understanding an image, sequence, right Understanding and actually this really goes before the image list is understanding the big difference between photography and videography. Is a picture in photography speaks a thousand words, right? The problem with a picture in videography only speaks about one word, and so you need a lot of them to put them together to speak a thousand words, right?
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:So what you have to do is you have to build a sequence, and one of the things I actually teach a lot of photographers who are looking to transition into video is to use a tool I called the image sequence breakdown tool, and basically it's a tool I give away on my website, which is a. It's a grid, and what you do is you go and watch your favorite natural history show and you start logging every shot you see on this piece of paper. And so when, say, the establishing shot opens up and there's this drone shot of the forest with the mist below, you stop it and you write down drone, extreme wide, you know, aerial shot, etc. Etc. And then you carry on and then the next shot's slightly closer and you just keep logging these shots and what you start to see is some patterns forming, not always a pattern that's repeatable, but a pattern forming that shows that we establish an area, and then we come in a little closer and we're. You know the whole story is being told, but we're establishing where we are. So when we get down to the details, we understand, you know, the bigger picture and then the detail shots are really, really important Getting in close, making us feel like we're with the wildlife that we're looking at, making us feel at one with the environment.
Speaker 2:Something I know you speak about on your show is, you know, being eye level with animals when we're taking photographs, right, it's nothing worse than if you're really up high and you're shooting down on everything. It's just not a great shot. You get down at eye level. When I shoot black bears, which I film a lot, I use what we call a hi-hat, which is a mini tripod and it's a big tripod, a big, solid tripod with a big fluid head, but it's only about eight to 10, probably goes up to about 16 inches in height, so I'm kneeling down using that. So I've got an incredibly good panning head and tilting head that I can use, but I'm low down, I'm at eye level with a black bear, and so those are the kinds of things that when you break down a sequence from a professionally shot show, you start to see what is necessary to bring those thousand words together, right To make it captivating, to bring us into the story.
Speaker 2:And once you start to understand an image sequence and what's necessary, then when you're putting your shot list together, you know intuitively that, okay, I need to establish where I'm at the beginning and I need to come in and then get a little tighter. If we're talking about a meadow and we're going to film butterflies, let's say, in a meadow at springtime, then we might start with a drone shot of this big, beautiful, colorful field. Then we come in and we're maybe panning across the field and we start to pull out individual flowers we can see. Then we go in tight on a flower and then we start to see some butterflies in the air, you know, and then we go in. And so it's these progression of getting down to the detail without understanding that or knowing that upfront, what happens is people head into the field with their video camera and they start filming willy nilly right.
Speaker 1:I feel so guilty right now.
Speaker 2:And don't worry, cause I've done this as well. Right, this is how I know these things. Right, trial and error. And what happens is you come back and you, you're all excited and you start downloading your footage. You look at it and you go, huh, everything looks the same. And you start realizing that that one shot that you kept getting, of a mid shot of a particular animal, you can only really use it once, right, and then you need to show something else now.
Speaker 2:You might be able to show it later on from slightly a different angle, but if anyone's ever watched the show where the shots repeat consistently, they get very boring very, very quickly, and what happens is you start to tell yourself oh okay, these guys claimed that they didn't know what they were doing, they didn't have enough footage. And when you have that dialogue in your head, when you're watching a film, you've lost your audience. If they're starting to think about the lack of footage, then you've lost them, and so it's really important to know that if you're making a one hour special, you've got to film. I'll give you an example. We filmed a show called Mosquito Hell for National Geographic, where we traveled to four continents and looked at mosquito transmitted diseases. We shot 60 hours for that one hour show, which was basically a 40, would have been about 47 minute show. We shot 60 hours for it, wow, and that is because you need to make sure you have enough footage to build that hour together and make it compelling. That's the you know, the most important part.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, yeah, is that a pretty typical ratio in the world of film, like kind of a 60 to one? I mean, I know that that's pretty high.
Speaker 2:That's high, but I think you know 30 hours, 30 to 40. Well, anywhere from, it depends on the style of the show. So these are arbitrary figures, you know. I mean if it's a magazine style show, you're going to shoot way less. A magazine style show is very much where it's not one continuous long story. There might be a theme that runs through it, but they're very much mini pieces throughout. If it's reality style, then you can film far less. I mean sometimes more. If it's reality, it depends on what style of reality it is.
Speaker 2:It depends on, obviously, the species, the amount of people involved, things like that. But yeah, I would say for a one hour show it could be anywhere from about 20 to 60 or 70 hours. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Super good to know and obviously the more you have to work with it, the better it is. But I myself I find part of my struggle in my own little personal transition from photography to film is just the organization of all that footage and going through it and marking it and cataloging it. I'm getting better, but it is you know, I find myself trying to shoot as little as possible to not have to go through as much, and I know that that's just the silliest thing.
Speaker 2:Once you have a process and you have that shot list, then what tends to happen is you do end up shooting less because you're far more specific with the shots that you'll get you know one of the things is people who are passionate about wildlife.
Speaker 2:It's very easy to be shooting one thing and then see something at the corner of your eye and go, oh, that would be great. And she, oh, and that over there, oh and this over here, and suddenly you're filming everything yeah, completely, completely irrelevant to the show you're making. So you know, sticking to your shot list. Occasionally you might say okay, you know, we're filming something about lions and here's the other big five or the other you know species that are in the environment and we hadn't got those on the shot list. We might turn around and get some of those, you know, to fill in. But generally when you stay very focused on the storyline and your shot list, you are going to shoot less because you're more organized in the first place.
Speaker 1:So you answered a question before I got a chance to ask it, which is brilliant. I love it, and it's about this grid. So I'll kind of re-ask the question, just to kind of frame. Where I'm kind of going with this conversation is you know, I love the idea of you know hunkering down on the pre-production. That makes a ton of sense.
Speaker 1:And my question was going to be you, jake, have had a lifetime of amazing filmmaking, so it's probably relatively intuitive of what goes on that list, right, your best case scenario list, your must-have list. I think you used slightly different words, but you get the point. But then you introduced this idea that maybe for those that are a little more nascent in their career, is a grid system, and it sounds like you have it on your website. I will absolutely put that in the show notes and part of the process in learning filmmaking is to use that grid and maybe go through some of your favorite documentaries, some of your favorite documentaries, some of your favorite films, and truly just write notes on what kind of shots they had. And I guess that kind of answers my question of like, how do you know what to put on the list? And your answer it seems like study, study up, watch what you like and use this grid infrastructure.
Speaker 2:Once you understand an image sequence, then filmmaking becomes a whole lot more, makes more sense to you, right? Because one of the reasons I started a mentoring group was to overcome the overwhelm that people face when they either transition from photography to filmmaking or just get into wildlife filmmaking in the first place. And overwhelm, I think think is the biggest killer for everyone is that there's suddenly, you know you're trying to put on five or six different hats, because when you realize that audio is more important than the video, right, that freaks people out, because all they were worrying about was the videography, right. And so they start making a film. And then they realize how hard it is to get good audio. And the fact is that if you make a show that has really stunning four, 8k, whatever images, but the audio is terrible, it's unwatchable. If you make a show that has a lot of archive image in it, which you know low resolution, the images aren't that great, but it's a compelling story and the audio is good, it's very watchable. And so it just goes to prove the audio is as important, if not more important, and people don't think about the audio side of it when they get into filmmaking. And so and that's just two elements right, the image side, the audio side, but then the story. And that's just two elements right, the image side, the audio side, but then the story. And sticking to a story that's compelling, because otherwise, especially now, we have all the media content out in the world that we could ever dream of. Right, and there's more and more. I mean, I think it's what do they say on YouTube. It's like billions of minutes of footage a day being uploaded to YouTube.
Speaker 2:And so now more than ever, it's so important to make compelling stories really think about the story you're trying to tell, and if it needs to be, you know, four minutes instead of 20 minutes, then make it really compelling. Four minutes instead of a much longer, boring 20 minutes that people aren't just going to, you know, just not going to sit through it in this day and age. But yeah, understanding that. And then here's the real clincher is that once you understand a standard image structure, then you can break the rules, and many, many a show breaks the rules in how image structures are put together, image sequences are put together. As long as the story is compelling, then you can really start to do what you want with it. Image structures are put together, image sequences are put together. As long as the story is compelling, then you can really start to do what you want with it. But there are fundamentals that need to be in place before you start trying to break those rules.
Speaker 2:And so you know, I mean, a classic example is, you know, starting from a wide shot and moving down gradually to a very close-up detailed shot. So, again, butterfly, you're talking about drone shot, or if you don't have a drone, then just a, you know, a wide expanse of shot of the environment going down to. You know, now we're in the field, it could be a medium shot and we're starting to see clusters of plants. Now we're going in and we're seeing just two plants together. Now we're going in and we're tight on a plant and now we're seeing, you know, butterflies flying around and we're coming closer and closer until we're at, like the macro opening shot might be a macro shot of, uh, the head of a butterfly and actually mosquito hell that I mentioned earlier, the opening shot was a macro shot of the eyeballs of a mosquito with a light moving around it. And seeing the light move around in it.
Speaker 2:That is captivating because of the, you know, the narration over the top of it and suddenly we've got these eyeballs and it's like what is this show about? Well then, what happens is then you move into the image sequences after that. So that's what makes it so exciting. There's so many ways you can play with image sequences to make it work and tell innovative stories that are exciting. And, um, you know, that's that's what I love. Every show I make, I try and look at ways to make it work, make it slightly different, move the barriers, but also, you know, get the story to come across in a way that people enjoy.
Speaker 1:Well, I'll tell you, I can't wait to download that grid, print it out, watch a documentary probably one of of yours tonight and truly just start the work, start studying, start figuring that out, build my own little style and template. It's such such awesome advice and then and that template.
Speaker 2:Just so you know it's called a builder sequence slash breakdown tool, and so you can use it to break down like that, watching something. But once you've done that, you can use the same grid to write your own out. That's coming from your mind with your own story, so it has a double use.
Speaker 1:Super helpful advice. I know a lot of folks in the audience are probably primarily into photography, but they know it's just a matter of time before they want to or they need to get into the videography, the filmmaking aspect of things, and I think that that's. It's something that didn't really dawn on me, so I can only expect that others in the audience are probably really, really stoked to learn about this too. So again in the show notes, another thing that I was thinking about, kind of just more of a comment here, as we do bridge between photography and cinematography. You know, hearing you say about this image sequence makes me think once again about the similarities between photo and video work as something that I teach quite often. I'll mention it again here, just because I think it's so important in today's day and age to think about that image sequence in the way we share media. Now predominantly, we're talking about video today, but making that bridge again back to photos, when we're sharing photos, whether it's online, in print magazine, in a presentation, I think many people in the moment are taking one photo at a time and of course, if the scene is beautiful, they might take a few shots. If some action happens, they might take a few more shots. But more and more as I go into my own journey, I'm realizing that you know, just like film, you need to think about having six to 10 shots in that sequence, simply because of the opportunity that we have today to share more than one photo via social, via presentations that we're doing, via social, via presentations that we're doing.
Speaker 1:It's almost like our brains are kind of wired to think about photography, as in the past, when you go to a photo exhibition or when you see a photo in someone's home that you really like, it's like boom, one photo. Let's get that awesome photo of the lion roaring, full mouth, agape and teeth showing and like awesome, it's the shot. But the reality is 90% of the times we're sharing stuff, it's you're able to share six, 10, 15 photos. So why not take photos of the vehicle, of the drive up, big landscape shot, establishing shot, et cetera, et cetera. So I think that's a really, really good point to make, critical for cinematography but has a tremendous parallel with modern day photography, is thinking of that set of sequences that tell the whole story and get you to think about more than just that climax kind of shot, that main, you know, focal point of your adventure. So, yeah, really really great stuff there and then so I don't want to go too far away.
Speaker 2:Can I just? Can I just add to that one second? Um, yeah, I think that's really important, actually something that we used to get asked for from the broadcaster a lot. So if we were making a show for National Geographic, what National Geographic would want is an image photographs I'm talking about. Now that they could use for marketing.
Speaker 2:So they would want a certain amount of images from every sequence that we did, a certain amount of images from every sequence that we did, meaning that if we were making a show on mosquitoes, they would want a shot of, say, myself interviewing one of the scientists. They would want some of the local people in the village that we're in. They would want an establishing shot of the village. They might want a shot of me holding a mosquito up to my eyeball and kind of you know that close-up type. They wanted sequences that they could pick the photo the best represented the final edit now of course when we're filming we're not seeing the final edit.
Speaker 2:We're getting everything that we know we need, but it makes more sense when you're looking at the final edit to then choose the marketing photos from that. So we used to have to take a DSLR with us, take pictures from every sequence, and those in themselves were sequences. Now we do. We generally don't do it so much because we can take, you know, screenshots from high resolution footage, from the footage itself, so, but it used to be a much bigger deal, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thinking in batches, that's the lesson to take away, but it used to be a much bigger deal. Yeah yeah, thinking in batches, that's the lesson to take away. I have heard so many times when talking about film, cinematography, that is kind of sounds a little goofy, but people giving advice would say make your first hundred videos and then come talk to me about my advice, like so. In other words, so much of your own learning process is in the doing and I am a huge believer in that and I'm just wondering your thoughts and maybe some take out the door advice or advice for as you're leaving your house, you know going to do your first project just taking the bull by the horns. Like, how would you approach smaller projects in your own neighborhood, your backyard, when you're not going to Africa or going to the Arctic for polar bears or anything where the stakes are higher? What are some things going through your head or some advice you'd give to aspiring cinematographers and filmmakers to get that practice in?
Speaker 2:Well, I think, first of all, you hit the nail on the head. Just going out into your backyard and practicing is so unbelievably important. I think the most important thing going back to pre-production is I know you're practicing, but you still want to have an idea of what you're going to go and shoot. There's a difference between if you're just going out to test a camera, that's leaving the house with no idea of what you're going to go and shoot. There's a difference between if you're just going out to test a camera, that's leaving the house with no idea of what you're doing other than testing the exposure, the ergonomics, where are the buttons, that kind of stuff. Now, if you're going to actually put it into practice and say, okay, I want to practice making a two minute film so that when I go on my 10, 15, $20,000 journey across the world, I know what I'm doing in that scenario.
Speaker 2:So, find something that interests you in your backyard. It might be pollinating plants or plants that are being pollinated by pollinators, whatever. That is where you are Looking at telling a mini story about that, If it's because you have honeybees nearby and they're coming in and they're going to the blossoms on your tree and to the flowers in the flower bed, then what shots can you think about before you leave the house? That will be interesting to tell that story.
Speaker 2:And then look, and even if you're not writing them down, and I would say if you're starting out write them down and so you just have a little notepad with you and it says you know, you know you're going to want a close-up of a flower or a blossom with a bee on it, and you're probably going to want quite a few of those from different angles and so here's the way to look at it.
Speaker 2:Let's say, you know the bigger picture is you're going to take, you know the establishes of your yard, you're going to come in closer to the plants, you're going to show the flower bed, you're going to, you know, explain the environment. But even when a bee lands on a flower, one shot of that is not going to be enough to tell the story. So how can you film that one behavioral thing happening of a bee coming in and, you know, feeding from the plant and getting pollen on it? How can you now shoot that in a different way, where you can build a sequence of that one event? Because the one event is just not one shot of boom. Here's the flower, here it is Boom, it's gone, exit, done. You know, to really get into the nitty gritty, what we could do is we could do a front shot where you're looking into the flower and you know, you see it come in and it's getting pollen and it flies out.
Speaker 2:Great, you've got an entry and exit, hopefully. If you haven't, then what you want to do is you want to pick a flower that doesn't have one on it and wait for the entrance and then let it do its thing and then let it exit. Because now you have potentially three shots you've got the entrance shot, you've got the feeding shot and you've got the exit shot. Now you want to get that in slightly different way, because I could see that you get that. There's the picture of the flower, you get the entrance, but now, instead of sticking on it, you could cut to a profile shot where you can really start to see the sacks of pollen on the bees legs. And so now you're going to film it again, but from the side, so that when the bees on it, you've got this beautiful profile shot, it looks completely different to the first shot you did. So think about ways you can film the same thing from multiple angles.
Speaker 2:That's one of the best learning things you can learn when you're starting out, because what tends to happen with the overwhelm of doing everything is we get a shot of a bee coming in the landing, we go oh my gosh, I got the whole thing, it was excellent, and then you're on to the next thing and then you get in the edit and you go. Well, that was like six seconds. You know what? What do I do now? But we tend to get too overexcited and our you know physiology trumps thinking and so we get back and we realize we don't have enough.
Speaker 2:So I would say, you know, really concentrate on getting the same thing in different ways. Don't get the same shot over and over and over because that's the other mistake people make. They'll stay in one position and go well. One came in and fed. It looked fantastic. I'm going to do it again.
Speaker 2:Now, that's okay to do that and get a safety shot, but if you know you got it and it was in focus. Now change the angle, because that's a usable shot. Change the angle because that's a usable shot because when you cut from one thing to another, that cut should be of a big enough significance that the story is moving forward. The worst thing is when you see a cut and this, the image is almost the same and it was like wow, they, that's not moving the story forward with images in any way. That's just just like a that looks like a mistake.
Speaker 2:So really practice on you know how many ways can you film the same thing? Because what you'll find, the more you do that. It's exciting when you get in an edit, because now you have all of these different angles and not all of them will work, but you'll find that you can really start to piece them together in a way that becomes compelling. So I think that's one of the things that I find most important. And then really, just variation of shots. You know your, your establishes, like we're talking about image sequencing. I would say the other thing to avoid overwhelm is not to put too many, you know, not try and make a professional film right off out the gate.
Speaker 1:And so you know this is going to be planet earth, for you know, not try and make a professional film, right off out the gate and say you know this is going to be planet earth 4.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, look at it in a way that you're you're going out to try and get shots, that you know, when we go out as filmmakers we don't make an entire movie from one trip. Generally, right, generally we're going out and we're getting pieces of the puzzle and when you look at it like that takes the pressure off, because if you go out and you know there's not much happening in terms of the bees coming into your yard, oh, here's a shot, I got a shot. Oh, and maybe it's coming back, I'll get a different angle, you know. So, okay, you're not going to get the whole thing in that hour or two, maybe try over the course of a week and go out and see if you can build it.
Speaker 2:You know, obviously, understand continuity, meaning make sure that the light is the same. You know, if you're filming at midday these, you know buttercups with the the bees coming in, make sure it's midday or looks very similar. Don't do it on an overcast day where you can't match those two images together. And and really don't worry too much about you know, trying to get cool movements and making it too stylistic, because those things come with time. You know, if you go back and look at the good old fashioned kind of natural history shows from the 60s and seventies, there wasn't all of this very fluid movement that we see in the today's shows and that's because they just didn't have the technology available. Now, of course, it's all about shot overs and you know gimbals on helicopters and you name it, but you don't have to incorporate all that to begin with. In fact, if you can take your iPhone out or your Android phone out and you could make an image sequence with your phone, what you'll find is it's rather you're now not worrying about, you know, exposure and things like that, because you're going to just set it on auto and let it do its thing. It's going to, you know, pick the best setting for you. It's far more important to be able to worry about. You know your the frame right, where your composure, you know how are you composing the shot, are you using the rule of thirds, are you doing too many of the same shots or do you have enough variation? When you start eliminating all the other things like exposure and you know iris and shutter and taking all of those things away, you can really start to think about the framing.
Speaker 2:And this is obviously. I could go on forever about this. It's such a big subject but we are. One of the main differences is that when you're transitioning from photography to videography, we tend to leave the shutter in its place right. So we're doubling the frame rate with our shutter tends to be. If you're filming at 30 frames a second, you have a 160th shutter and you leave it there. Unless you're trying to get effects or you're trying to get more light, you generally leave it there, and so you know, rather than trying to worry about the technical side of what it is to take video, worry about the storytelling side and what it is to make good looking images, get a variety of those, and does it make a compelling viewing experience, telling that story, I think, and using a phone can really help you do that, because it takes all the other worry away. So I'd say on your first outing when you're practicing, try something like that, don't overthink it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, great, great advice, and I've heard that and believe it time and time again, that it's really not the equipment, it's the vision, it's what goes deeper and well beyond all that. But let's stay on this topic for one more follow-up question the audio. So obviously we now know the audio is at least half the equation. What would you say to the beginning filmmaker that wants to produce a nice you know a nice little two minute film that is is not going to be wasted? You know you spend the hours doing all this and being quite diligent in the pre-production and the actual shooting.
Speaker 1:You know you, you kind of have a few different options. You can take audio from your actual surroundings, you can do a voiceover, you can add music. Is there anything that you think is? You know not to be a cop out, but like isn't all that hard, you're not going to mess up. That just gives like a really nice, solid, professional vibe to the video. When you know that you know your audio equipment on an iPhone or even on like a mirrorless camera isn't going to be all that great, do you stick with just one? Do you stick with just the music? Do you stick with voiceover as a combination of all that, are there any pitfalls there? What's your take on the audio aspect?
Speaker 2:It's definitely a combination to make it professional. I would say let's stick with the easy stuff right While you're practicing, just have a camera mic right Onboard mic on your camera camera. Don't try and get too fancy where you're trying to put remote mics out to get this and the other because you just you don't need it.
Speaker 2:Starting out, you do want to try and get natural surrounding sound, atmospheric sound, when you're in an environment. So if you're in a forest and the we, the wind is rustling the leaves and there are birds singing and you know, etc. Etc. Et cetera, et cetera, all of those lovely noises, natural sounds that are going on around you, an on-camera mic is going to pick those up well enough to be able to use. There are very different layers when it comes to sound and budgets right for shows. So, for instance, you can look at a professional show that has very minimal sound mixing done on it and the show's still fantastic. And then you can go to the full end of this other end of the spectrum where you've got the planet earth 3, which has got every sound you can imagine that's been folied, meaning it's been made in studio, to natural sound, to bought sounds, to archived sound, to Hans Zimmer, you know, with with an orchestra. So you know you can go to the other end of the spectrum. But it doesn't make it necessarily unwatchable if you don't have those things. So the important part is, as long as you've got something that relates to the images you're looking at. You know, if you've got some natural sound that you can put on let's say you're filming a deer and it's rustling around in the leaves in the forest, it's too far away for your mic to really get what's going on. It might be kicking the floor and you don't really hear that. It's not the end of the world if you have natural sound over the top. So if you've got some of the environment sound of the leaves and the you know just the the forest sounds and then you've got some music with some narration on it, no one will notice that you're not hearing the sound of what the deer is doing. But if you add the sound in because you have a bigger budget and you're out there and you've got remote things or you're foleying it now, it just enhances that movie. So it's really about a mix of. You know, if you've got the original scenario, so you've recorded, some comes in you need to drop that music down at the point where the person speaks and so we can hear it, with the music much lower in the background. As they finish the music comes back up right. So we're mixing that audio together as long as the images are matching this compelling story that is being told to us. And there's some nice music that's fitting, because, again, you know that music needs to fit the scenario. You don't want some you know Chinese music playing in the background when we're not in China right, you want it to match the kind of scene. And so once you put those things together, you can really start to cover up the fact that you don't have the best audio that could be.
Speaker 2:And you know, I made a show reconnecting wild uh, the re is in parentheses but it's on YouTube, everyone can see it. Reconnecting wild, restoring safe passage. Reconnecting wild, restoring safe passage. I made that for the Department of Transportation in Nevada and for a company or an organization called Arc Solutions, and they are all about mitigating road traffic accidents on some of America's busiest roads. This was I-80, an interstate that runs between Utah through Nevada into California, and it was about some overpasses that had been put in for the mule deer migration, where four and a half thousand animals twice a year crossed that road and one of the things that you know it was a small budget show.
Speaker 2:It's a great film. It's about 12 minutes long, but there was very limited audio. There's a lot of drone footage. In it there's lots of distant shots of activity with traffic and animals, and so I actually recorded a lot of the traffic audio separately and dubbed it in over the top of some of those scenes that you would never know. And then there were parts that could have used more audio, but there wasn't time and there wasn't the money to do it, and so there's just music and there's narration and there are interviews and it works, and so it's a good example of how you don't need to have multi layers of audio tracks to make it compelling.
Speaker 2:But certainly if the budget was twice the size, I would have had probably five extra tracks of audio in there. That would have just made the whole thing more compelling. Sure, yeah, so audio is an interesting one because it's an art in itself. Actually, one of the people I just interviewed for my podcast it's not out yet, but it's a guy named George Vlad. He is a sound recorder. He travels the world recording environments. He actually I can announce it now because I couldn't when, I couldn't before now, but the movie's out he actually recorded desert sounds for june part two, which is now on the cinema right now. Oh cool. So, yeah, he was responsible for some of that. He's done incredible stuff on Planet Earth 3. And his whole career is based around going out and recording environment sounds. It's an art form in itself. So when we try and add that into our filmmaking, it's a lot wearing many, many hats for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, it's a great answer and it's one you know. I would love to just hear the easy answer of like, oh yeah, just, you know, slap some banjo on top of it. But the reality is it's not. It's way more complex. You've got to figure out, you know, where are you, what are the natural sounds, what are the more potentially cultural sounds, having a mix when you are lacking in one area, making up for another? So yeah, it's a real science and I think just hearing that from you really helps wrap my mind around that that's what moves the needle, you know, between amateur film and professional film.
Speaker 2:Certainly, though, I would say, to start with, just record natural sound while you're out and about. Here's a good tip for you Make sure your microphone is, you know, pointing. If you're using a shotgun mic, ideally, because that's picking up most of the sound in front. One of the things if you use any other type of omnidirectional mic, it's going to pick up your hand noise on your camera, which is the last thing you want Um and you've got to be careful if you're using long lenses.
Speaker 2:Just to be very careful when you're, you know, focusing with your hand out in front of the mic, cause don't want to hear that either.
Speaker 1:So yeah, fantastic, jake. Well, switching gears here, you have been working on some really impressive projects, including planet earth 3 and some other things with bbc. I was wondering if you could just talk a little bit about those, what you've been up to with them, and also, uh, kind of talking about some of the things you learned. We're always know we as photographers and filmmakers are we as the general kind of wildlife filmmaking community out there.
Speaker 2:Something we relearn every time we go out is it doesn't matter how big the budget is, it still doesn't mean you're going to get everything that you hope to get right so just, you know, I filmed urban black bears, which I've been filming for many, many years, and so when the BBC came to me, they they wanted very specific sequences of urban black bears in Tahoe Lake, tahoe, which is where I filmed the bears. And when they came to me they had a set sequence they wanted and a shot list and they said, you know, but do you think you can get this? And I said, well, 90%, maybe 95%, yes, because that's repeatable behavior that I see. But you know, the other 5% was like, if we're really lucky, and we never did get that and so you know again, it's knowing.
Speaker 2:You know it's just because the budgets were there for me to stay out of. First, they hired me for a week and said you know, head out for a week and see what you can get. And I went out for a week and I got some great stuff and they said this is so good, we want you out there for another two weeks because we can only imagine what you're going to get. And so it ended up being a three-week straight, 21 nights. It's all filmed at night.
Speaker 2:And just knowing that it's irrelevant, even if you keep getting sent out, just knowing that it's irrelevant, even if you keep getting sent out, I mean, at the end of that three weeks they actually said to me if you continue going out, will you get anything more? And at that point I had to say not really as much as I probably should have said oh yeah, yeah, keep hiring me. It was a case really we're not going to see too much different at that point. So you're always relearning that different at that point. So you know, you're always relearning that there's only so much that you know you can be there, but whether the activity, the behavior happens or not is just down to the reality of wildlife. The other thing is that I shot more recently on the new BBC series called mammals, which has just been announced and it's due out in the next few weeks, certainly in the UK. I'm not sure when it'll come over here, but it'll probably be on bbc america before it hits anything else and that's david anbera's latest series.
Speaker 2:What I learned with that is that you know, we've just been through a big bubble with natural history filmmaking. There's been this, this huge buildup of these streaming companies that all wanted some natural history content and so there was huge demand for natural history content and that meant that people were being hired willy nilly all over the place to go out and get stuff. And for the BBC series we were sent into the field with a producer who didn't have much experience and it was a bit of a trying time, purely because they didn't really understand continuity, and it was a real eye opener that we could be in that situation. But I think it was just supply and demand right, try and get what that, what you can. And because of that the sequence took a hit, because we were filming things that we really shouldn't have been filming at the time of, because we were filming things that we really shouldn't have been filming at the time of day. We were filming on the days we were filming that wouldn't match other days, and it was just a big learning curve for me that just because someone is working for a big network doesn't actually mean that they understand the process, and that's a shame, you know.
Speaker 2:I think that is just a sign of the times and that has changed now, because we're in a very big slump when it comes to broadcast natural history programming. That bubble has burst and now, you know, there's. We've probably got a quite a few months before things start to build back up. But those were two things I learned in terms of filming. I mean, what an incredible privilege to film for planet earth. Three was a dream come true for me. Not only was I filming the bears that I film have been filming for about 18 years now, because I filmed a similar thing for a show, rogue Raiders that we did for National Geographic Channel about 15, 20 years ago 18 years ago.
Speaker 2:And then to be back there and actually met my wife, who was studying bears at the time, on that original shoot. So to be filming bears in the same area for really the you know, the top of the top when it comes to natural history shows was an incredible thing there at Tahoe. With the habituation of these bears to human activity and how they're coming in for our trash and how there are lots of things that we need to be doing to eliminate that problem, mitigate that problem was incredible to get the opportunity.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, you know it's even for someone like myself who's worked for the last 20 years in broadcast TV. There's still moments where you pinch yourself and go, wow, is this real? And getting to film for a show that Attenborough is narrating that? I grew up watching Attenborough shows as a kid and was just fascinated, so it was a dream come true.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's incredible. Yeah, big, big congrats on that, jake, well-deserved, well-deserved. Okay, cool, we're going to switch to a little bit of rapid fire questions here as we round things out, sure, yeah, so let's just kick right into it. First thing, what is the Jake Willer's video style and why? So this is usually more of like a photography question. We talk about the lighting and are you like a big contrast person? For those in the audience that don't realize it, you know a lot of the. You know same capabilities for photo editing appear in video too, so I think this is still entirely appropriate. So, like, what is your style? What's the look you're going for?
Speaker 2:You know it changes. So there's certainly the style I like to aim for, but it's not always what happens, because I'm not in charge of the final edit. But, I like scenes that play out. I like you know my favorite film is 2001,. A Space Odyssey. I think that says everything about it, right.
Speaker 2:I like being captivated in a moment and expressing that moment for the beauty of what it is, without having to jump away from it instantly and I think if we can you know, if I can create shows that have an appeal, with those longer shots that really tell a story, that's I'm doing the best I can. You know, I think it's easy in this day and age to one be forced to, but to make these jump cut shows where it's all very fast, all very fast, faster music jumping away here, keeping the eyeballs on it. You know I get tired of that very, very quickly. So for me it's about really drawing these shots out and making it as beautiful as it can be, so that people are drawn into that scene as if they were there, sat with me at that time and seeing that beauty. Lighting wise, I love playing with lighting.
Speaker 2:The hard part with film is that, unless you have big budgets and you have lots of time, you know it takes a lot longer. Obviously, if you're going out to get a photo and you know you're going to go out for a set hour because that's golden hour and you're going to take photo, that's great. But when you're filming, you need a lot more footage, and so it's inevitable that, unless your budgets are huge and you can go out the same time every day, you end up filming at times you don't really want to film. So then it's about how can I make the best of what I've got? And that is, I think, my mantra really as a wildlife filmmaker is you're always having to make the best of what you've got, because you're not always, you don't always have the opportunity to choose everything you know in the best way, and I'm sure that's the same with wildlife photography, as well.
Speaker 2:Sometimes you know you're there and it's not the ideal. But with filmmaking it takes a lot more time and you're having to make those compromises as you go. But style wise, I think it's more about timing for me. I want things to play out, I want it to be slower, I want people to be captivated.
Speaker 1:I like it. I like it. Yeah, we're all making lemonade. I'll put it that way right, yeah, exactly. It's hard to say you're ever in a real ideal condition because something's always going on. But yeah, that's a great answer. Okay, talking a little bit about gear putting you behind the camera, what is your favorite lens for the type of cinematography you focus on?
Speaker 2:canon cn20. It's a specific. It's a cine lens specifically built for wildlife filmmaking.
Speaker 1:Its price tag is 70,200 is that 50 to 1, 1000 millimeter 50 to 1000. Oh yeah, I've heard it.
Speaker 2:It was um. Actually on my podcast there's a uh. One of my guests is Ivo Norenberg, uh, and he was the guy that actually proposed that lens to Canon and said we want a lens. It's no more than 16 inches long, it's a cine servo zoom lens that has a doubler in it. It's 50 to a thousand. They laughed at him and then a few years later, with his help, they built that lens and it's an astonishing lens. I mean to have 50 to a thousand, you know, to have that range and then double it and for it to work on 4k, you know, five, six K, you name it. I mean it's an astonishing lens. Still weighs quite a bit, obviously, but it's still very compact for what it is. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I love that. Here's what I want you guys to engineer, and they did it. That's incredible Well as a Canon guy mad props to Canon for that, because that's just a really cool way to do things.
Speaker 2:Okay, so similar with gear what is a piece of gear for your videography that know if anyone you guys use v-locks in the photography world. They're a much bigger battery. It has a v on the back and it's you kind of click the v into the v mount plate.
Speaker 2:Oh interesting, no not that I personally know of but well, these things are like a brick, right, and the idea is you that you can pretty much you know power anything off them. They're so versatile that if you have a many cameras come with the v-lock mount on the back of the cinema cameras. But small rig. I have a small rig, one couple of them, but other manufacturers make them that it's basically a plate that you can slide onto your 15 inch or 19,.
Speaker 2:Sorry, mil and 19 mil rod system and you're basically putting a battery on it and then you're wiring the plate into your camera and the plate actually has multiple connectors on it so you can have, you can charge your phone on it, you can power monitors, lights, microphones, all sorts sorts, including your camera. What it does is it takes a camera like if I'm using a small, I use a sony a7s right for the sense, light sensitivity, small camera. Those batteries typically only last anywhere from 20 to 35 minutes. If you're lucky, I power it through the v-mount battery and'll get three, four hours out of it.
Speaker 2:So, that's a game changer.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is a tool that just gives you almost unlimited battery, or like okay, yeah, and then if you have a, it's what you can do is well, actually, you can't with that one.
Speaker 2:With my larger camera, I can have an internal battery on the camera as well, and so it's actually charging that at the same time. When the V-Lock battery goes down, I can take it off and it's now running internally, so it basically gives me constant power, and then I could swap out that battery and I'm good to go again.
Speaker 1:So yeah, Okay, I'll take it. So last question about gear, and this may not be as pertinent if you're rocking the 50 to 1000 as your choice lens, but in my world I always recommend folks, on each trip that I guide, consider what I call an X-factor lens. I don't know if this is universal terminology, but it's just a lens that you may only use for a handful of shots, but whatever you get from it could potentially, given the lens, the parameters of the lens, give you some of the shots of your trip. Do you have your favorite X-Factor lens?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think probably the 400 mil 2.8. You know that lens has enough range to be able to get in there and get a tight shot at 2.8,. You know which is for me, filming at night, having the ability to do that, the biggest issue that I have with a lens like that is obviously the inability to be able to choose your shot Right. So you know the only way to do that is to run backwards and forwards to to change the shot. But you know, if I have I mean if I had an unlimited budget two cameras one with the CN20, one with that 400 on there that really I can then just get super low light shots, I mean with a 2.8, with that distance, that focal range.
Speaker 2:And then you know a sensor like the a7S that is really letting me see in the dark and that, yeah, it's a super crisp lens. I mean it's a super crisp lens. I mean it's beautiful that the. You know the one thing about zoom lenses you're always compromising some degree because of the amount of glass in there. The fact that that 400 just gives you a super, super, you know, crisp shot at that aperture is a dream. So yeah, I just I can't. I've used them on a few shoots, but it is so limiting for filmmaking that you have to really have either you've got to be quick at changing your lenses and there's nothing quick about changing big lenses on big cameras because of the support systems or you've got to have two cameras and be you know swapping out.
Speaker 1:So I'd imagine big primes are quite different in terms of utility and usefulness when it comes to videography and cinematography. Right, because for photography, you know, depending on the use, we can always crop it in. We can, you know, but you guys, you know, doing what you do, you can't really crop a whole lot.
Speaker 2:So I'd imagine that if you don't have a zoom, very, very limiting yeah you know, I mean we can crop when we, when we're talking about filming with red 6k cameras and 8k now you start to be able to crop and get that extra shot.
Speaker 2:But no, you're. You know the times I've used one is when I've gone out with a zoom lens and I go out and I film the footage I need right from the essentials list we were talking about. And then what I do, if I have the 400 with me, I'll then go, okay, I've got that stuff, but now I want to get the better stuff on the ultimate. So I'm going to put the prime on, because now I know I don't have to worry so much about variation of shot.
Speaker 2:All I'm looking for is those 400 mil close-ups and I can put a doubler on there, you know, and get 800 mil and and but now just have the ability to have a much wider open aperture and just get crisper looking images that are just going to complement everything else. You know, with filmmaking, if you have some really high-end shots in a film and not everything else is like that, it helps build the quality level overall, right? Not every shot needs to be like that, because sometimes it's understandable that there's drama happening and you know it's just not going to be crisp and you know, sometimes it goes out of focus and that's just because, even you know, if you're a fantastic focus puller, sometimes you just can't keep up with it. You know, and that's just because even you know, if you're a fantastic focus puller, sometimes you just can't keep up with it. You know that's understandable if the shot shows that and people, people don't mind. Again, it comes down to it Is the audio good? If the audio is good, people won't care.
Speaker 1:I love it. Yeah, no, that's a great answer. Great X-Factor lens and great perspective. That's that's exactly what I'm getting at with X Factor is like what's the thing that could just get you above and beyond, over the top awesomeness. So, yeah, very, very cool. Okay, so I know you're also a mentor to new filmmakers. We've talked about this kind of stuff a lot already, but since this is part of the rapid fire section, what is the top one? The two bits of information for anyone starting off wanting to make a big mark in filmmaking and big mark on this world you know it's um, passion.
Speaker 2:You know it sounds like a cliche, but passion is what it's all about because, uh, right now there's a, a contract. Uh, you know, the industry is contracting, right, there's a bottleneck. It's the people who have the passion that are going to pull through an era like this, because they want to be in this industry and they're going to find ways to stay in this industry. So you've got to be passionate. I always. I relate it to the real estate industry. Right, you know, when there's a boom in the housing market, realtors suddenly come out the woodwork. They're everywhere. Your everywhere, your neighbors are real family members are realtor.
Speaker 2:when there's a contraction in the market, a lot of those people who weren't passionate about bringing realtors go and get a different job and they just disappear from it and go. That wasn't for me, but the people who love it, they stick with it and they make it work. And that's the same with wildlife filmmaking. There's always going to be tough times, you know. I would say 80 to 90% of the people in the in the industry are freelancers and as a freelancer it can be extremely hard going. So you have to find ways to make it work and you're only going to do that if you're passionate about it. And so you know just aiming for the stories that you're passionate about, because that helps you stay on track. If you're passionate about marine conservation, then don't go and make films about you know, butterflies in a meadow right. Make films about marine conservation and stick with it and aim towards them. Yeah, you might have to go and do something else over here to subsidize it. That's great, but always stay you always stay focused on what your goal is.
Speaker 1:Excellent, sage, sage advice. Well, jake, we certainly want to know where to find you. I know where to find you. You have a great website, you've got a production company, you've got your own podcast. You appear in so many different areas, but let me hear from you when can folks in the audience find Jake Willers?
Speaker 2:Sure, actually jakewillerscom is the easiest place to go because it has links to everything else on there. So jakewillerscom, that's got the podcast on there, it's got my mentoring group, it's got bits and pieces about me. My production company is ninecariboucom for the website and that has other films on there, but you can also find it on YouTube. But jakewillerscom is kind of the main place and all my social media is attached to that.
Speaker 1:Okay, fantastic. Let me ask what's the story behind Nine Caribou's name, Is it Well, how long have we got?
Speaker 2:There is a story behind that one. The quick answer is that there was a series I spoke about called Wild Events Largest Spectacles on Earth. That was going to be an eight episode show ended up being a seven episode show because the eighth episode was going to be the caribou migration in the field looking for caribou. But we ended up being stranded, running out of food, having our lives threatened, and we. We obviously got out, but there was a time there that we thought we wouldn't. Uh, with all of those things going on, we also would.
Speaker 2:We were stranded so we didn't have the plane that was going to be spotting the caribou for us, and so when I left the expedition, I had seen nine caribou, not 9,000 or 100,000 that we were expecting to see. I actually saw one in camp that came through one day, and then I saw three on the ground as we were taking off, and then I saw a group of five on the plane journey out. So literally nine individual caribou. But I was the happiest to get out of that place I've ever been to get out of anywhere. So, yeah, wow.
Speaker 1:That's a great story. It's a great name and a great story Awesome Look, jake. You've been so generous with your wisdom, your time, your advice. I learned a lot. I know folks in the audience will have learned a heap of a lot and maybe be inspired. If they haven't yet made that transition from photography to filmmaking, this might give them just the needed tools to consider that. Of course, we don't want people to go permanently away from photography because there's a whole host of conservation awesome conservation implications with what we do, but nevertheless, hopefully there's some inspiration and some wisdom out for you guys in the audience today. I know there was a lot for me and Jake. Thank you so much for joining me today on the Wild Photographer.
Speaker 2:Hey, thank you, Corey, it's been a pleasure. Thanks so much Okay cheers Until next time.