James and I are a little like the Odd Couple. Both native Texans, I live in a suburb of Dallas while he lives in the country outside the small town of Seguin. He has been an avid hunter and outdoors man his entire life while I had never shot much more than a BB gun. After hearing tales of James' exploits through an old friend, the budding videographer in me became fascinated with the possibilities of capturing them on tape.
When I first phoned James to ask about videotaping his hunts he was openly skeptical. He had tried it before and was never satisfied with the results. Eventually agreeing to take me on a hunt, the chemistry worked from the start. James is a natural in front of the camera and this, along with the latest camera technology, has allowed me to capture the excitement and many facets of his hunting techniques without interfering with what is going on. We are both very pleased with the results of our hard work and hope that our lasting friendship will give rise to more exciting video productions.
James Land is a middle school teacher specializing in science and Spanish. He and his wife Sandy have 3 grown kids and 6 grandchildren. C. David Young is a software engineer in the field of tactical military communications. He has a school-age son who enjoys dirt biking with his dad!
The Making and Marketing of the Hogs and Dogs Video
The making and marketing of this video has been a real learning experience. First I had to learn to hunt, which is something I had never done before. From what hunters told me though, it didn't sound all that exciting. Sitting in a blind waiting for some poor critter to show up just didn't appeal to me. (Having said that, at the beginning of April (2004) I shot my first turkey from a blind with some old high school buddies. Right through the neck at 70 yards! It was actually a lot of fun!) But really, this has little to do with the type of hunting James Land does.
When James hunts hogs it involves planning and strategy, which requires a thorough understanding of their habits and habitats, the availability of food sources, the type and current conditions of the terrain, and the role of the weather and how to use it to his advantage. His type of hunting requires one to be able to ride horses and mules through very rough terrain and jump them over fences. With James you have to be able to drive down dirt roads at night with no lights except that coming from the moon and stars. The equipment he uses ranges from a plethora of firearms and knives to tracking collars for the dogs and medicines and instruments to treat their wounds. The rapport he has with the farmers and ranchers is a complex symbiotic relationship requiring frequent consultations and sometimes delicate negotiations. I have learned that not all landowners appreciate having a pack of dogs running across their property. I have had to learn about all of this and much more to make this video. In fact, I knew so little at the outset it is amazing that James ever bothered to take me on a hunt!
But after a few hunts we actually started to get some pretty good footage. The question then was what to do with it. Prior to this I had only produced home videos. Nonetheless, we set our goals high and decided to create something that might be good enough for one of those hunting channels on cable. However, after searching out and talking to a couple of people in the business of producing hunting shows, I found out that the cable channels don't actually pay them anything for their shows. In fact, the producers have to pay the cable channels for the airtime! The only way they make money is to get their own sponsors and sell products and advertising. James and I quickly decided that was more than we wanted to tackle. Thus, we set our sights even higher and decided to produce a quality reality adventure series that would be suitable for commercial TV networks. That's where the big bucks are! Yeah!
So I once again sought out help from people in the business and found a real nice guy in Hollywood by the name of Ken Latka, who has worked on many shows including the Survivor series most recently. Ken expressed a willingness to take a look at some of my early editing attempts and critique them. I'll spare you the details of his scathing review, but needless to say, I was pretty humbled. He did however offer to help me start over from scratch and get me on the right track. The first lesson he taught me was that a good production starts with a good script for the narration. So after researching how to write a script I created the narration for the first 22 minute segment. Ken was very candid with me. It was really bad! Fortunately, he was also very patient and helped me revise it numerous times over a period of several months. Finally he wished me luck and said I was going to need it! Thanks, Ken!
After the narration is recorded you are supposed to start laying the video on top of it. Then you add in the transitions and a little music, titles, and credits and you are done. It sounds simple but it took me almost a year to complete the first 22 minute show. Then it was just a matter of submitting it to the networks. In this age of the Internet this is actually not too tough, especially for the Discovery Channels. However, I was politely turned down and told, among other things, that the subject matter was too much of a niche and would not have broad appeal. It was then that I began to realize that not everyone finds chasing hogs through the brush as compelling as I do. Still, all the hunters I knew and even most of my close friends and family thought it was great (thanks, mom!). So, the question still was how to make money at this venture.
Well, somebody must be making money at this considering that all large outdoor sporting goods stores have a large selection of hunting videos, right? So, once again I set off in search of a store that might be interested in my video. Not surprisingly, they buy their videos from distributors and not from individuals. Thus, I contacted a couple of distributors and sent them copies of the DVD. Believe it or not, the first distributor I heard from said he was only interested in VHS tapes because "bubba was not yet into DVDs". Strangely enough, all of my hunting friends had DVD players so I didn't pursue that contact further. Then I found a very reputable distributor that was just getting into DVDs and saw that as the way of the future (duh!). They said my timing was perfect and that they needed a good hog hunting production to add to their line. Great!
Of course, there is always a catch. The distributor explained to me that the video market is so cutthroat that after he and the retailers take their cuts, there is nothing but a slim royalty left for the producer. It was certainly not enough to cover my production costs, which consisted of many trips to South Texas, expensive camera and editing equipment, and hundreds (thousands?) of hours or work . Well, I asked him, how does anybody make money selling these hunting productions through retail outlets? The answer is, they apparently don't, at least not much. Once again they make money by getting sponsors and featuring products in the video. They make money by promoting guided hunts with celebrity hunters. They make money by producing cheap (and mostly very bad) hunting shows for cable (see the previous discussion on this topic) that are paid for by sponsored products and advertising. Then they just dupe these shows straight to VHS or DVD and practically give away the distribution rights to further promote their products and services.
The bottom line is that we spent way too much time and money making these productions and we will apparently never make any money at it. But you know what? We don't care, really. We have had some incredible hunting experiences. These will be things that we will remember for the rest of our lives and tell our grand kids about. How do you put a price on that? And to top it off, we frequently hear from people that purchase the Hogs and Dogs video that they really enjoy the show! That is just icing on the cake!
