- Hey, good morning, everybody
and welcome to the vlog
or whenever you happen to be watching this.
I hope that you have an absolutely amazing day.
We're gonna have a good time today,
at least I'm gonna have a good time today,
because I've got a little gift, that's right.
A pre-Christmas gift that I'm excited about
and I hope that it's gonna help the vlog
look even better than it looks now.
Let's just go ahead and open this up
and explain what I mean.
(whoosh) (swish)
(swish)
You guys know that we are always trying
to take the vlog to the next level.
And of course, when I say we,
I mean myself, Anthony and Jay.
And, you know, just trying new cinematic stuff.
We don't want this to just be a vlog that is about animals.
We want it to be cinematically beautiful, right?
So I'm excited today.
We have a new little gift here.
This is actually called a WIRAL.
I think it's a WIRAL, or WORAL, I'm not exactly 100% sure,
but you know it's like kind of like
places you want to fly a drone, but you can't fly a drone,
so use this cable set up to actually run cables
and then this little thing here runs up
like a trolley system runs and there's a camera
on the bottom of it, it looks super cool.
And it's just going to take things to the next level.
Again, we want this to kind of be
visually awesome too, right?
We put a lot of energy into it.
You know, thankfully myself and the crew are super excited
about, like, new gear and trying new things.
And I hope that you guys appreciate it
because we put a lot of energy
into trying to make this thing look...
And I can't open this.
I don't know how to open this stuff.
I don't want to rip it,
but I'm about to rip it because I'm so impatient.
I don't know why this thing doesn't want to come...
(frustrating growling)
Okay, well, you can see how I was as a kid.
Oh, I think I got it, I think I figured it out.
Ah, look at that!
I think that's it.
You can see how I was at Christmas morning, right?
I get excited about this stuff.
So we are going to set this up
and just do some kind of cool...
Oh my gosh!
These things will drive me crazy!
How many times they have, it's just,
it's not an animal for gosh sakes.
It's just this.
So basically what happens is that this,
actually, camera attaches to the bottom of this.
You run cables.
This cable is again like a trolley and just goes
(motor sounds)
and then you can actually do things where you can't really,
you can't throw fly a drone in doors.
I mean, you can, but it's not very easy.
You could definitely crash.
We don't want to do that.
Also there's some tight areas where you wouldn't want
to fly a drone through, but you can run a cable through it.
So let's just go ahead, play with this,
and see if we get some awesome shots.
(dramatic music)
So, as you can see, we could do
some pretty cool stuff with this tool.
You know, take the production to a new level.
I think it's pretty awesome.
And again, after 1,550+ vlogs, every single day,
we have to come up with things that, you know,
we can tell the story at different way, right?
Show new tools, kind of stuff.
Not to mention Jay, Anthony, myself, the production crew,
we want to be excited about things too,
and do things different and new.
And I hope that you guys appreciate all the work
that goes into it, because trust me,
sometimes we'll spend a ton of time on a shot,
like that last shot right there
was about 15 minutes to set up
for about 10 seconds of actual footage.
And obviously this is our camera room.
You guys can see, we have a lot of gear.
We have a lot of lenses.
We have a lot of different things.
Anthony over here with his gimbal.
Of course, Jay, over here.
- Hi guys!
- So these knuckleheads are always
coming up with great things.
But, you know, we're always adding
cause we like to kind of up the production.
But the truth is it's really about storytelling,
and it's about doing what you need to do.
You don't need to have all of this gear
to put out cool content.
As a matter of fact, I love this little tool here.
This is actually a little Osmo Pocket.
It's like a couple hundred bucks.
And it's amazing the shots that you can get with this,
especially, you can put this on an extension.
Let's go play with it and see what we can do.
(dramatic music)
So as you can see, you can get some pretty cool shots
with something even like this.
And what's nice is because it's small
and we can put it on a longer stick,
things that are a little bit more flighty,
like the green basilisk, aren't really intimidated.
We put a big camera in their face,
they're running around, right?
So we can get close to animals and not freak them out,
which gives cool footage that you couldn't get
any other way.
Speaking of things that you couldn't get
without a special tool, this may look like a rifle,
but believe it or not, it's called a Laowa.
And when you're shooting, like, little turtles
and you want to get really close to them
you can get some really amazing footage with this.
Now, not to get all geeky with you with camera stuff,
but basically what happens is, when you get macro,
you actually have to have a pretty narrow frame of view.
And you also have a shallow depth of view,
meaning that the front will be in focus,
but the back will be out of focus.
With the Laowa, you actually can get that macro shot,
but it's a wide angle shot.
And it's got like this really big depth of field.
So you can see the front and the back of animals.
Just completely weird.
We actually got this to enhance egg cutting this year.
And the truth is, is that we'll probably do something else
better next year, but it really has become
a tool we use an awful lot.
Lori, guess what?
- What?
- We're almost at 3 million subs.
- Really?
- Yeah!
We were in Mexico together when we hit 1 million.
(chuckles)
She was with me when we hit 2 million.
Now we're only like 70,000 away from 3 million!
- All right!
- So do me a favor guys, if you haven't subscribed,
please hit that subscribe button.
I really do appreciate it.
Hopefully we can get to this 3 million mark pretty quick.
And we actually use slow-mo to emphasize a particular move,
or something cool, like a snake strike or a feeding
or something like that.
It's a really cool tool to use, but I'll be honest with you,
I'll give you a little advice:
Too much slow-mo is too much slow-mo.
So definitely use it sparingly for the best effect.
(dramatic music)
A little update on those mussurana rat snakes that we got,
those pied mussuranas.
Look at how fricking cool that snake is!
That is wicked.
Again, all that kind of red pigment
is going to turn jet black when it gets older.
Right now, I kind of liked the red pigment,
to be honest with you.
It gives it kind of that tri-colored look.
But eventually this is going to be
a jet black and white snake.
And again, this is the pied mussuranas.
And then of course we have the super pie,
and that's just kind of that super white look.
I mean, that thing is ridiculous.
And they're doing really well.
As a matter of fact,
we have some new snakes that I'm super excited about.
They're coming right after the holiday.
Things I have never worked with,
or I worked with a long time ago.
I am excited about it, but unfortunately I have to wait
until after the holiday, because it's just too
dangerous to ship around the holiday
with all the packaging, FedEx and UPS is always late.
So we're going to get them right after.
So couldn't be more happy
with the way pied mussuranas are doing.
But these next snakes are coming are going to be incredible.
So stay tuned.
That's about maybe a week, week and a half away,
we're going to get some bangers coming in.
Vlogging or video making, in particular daily vlogging,
it's all about storytelling.
And, and really the tools that we use with equipment
is just all about using that
to tell a story in different ways, right?
Sometimes, you can have a shot
that is literally instantaneous,
like I'm doing right now.
Sometimes you set up a shot
that might take a half hour, 45 minutes,
and you're literally using 10 or 15 seconds of that shot.
So it's kind of, using your kind of creative mind
to tell a story as many different ways you possibly can,
because after all 1,550+ videos that I've done,
you guys be pretty bored with me
if all I did was talk to this camera, right?
So we actually will do things like when I'm going through
and checking what eight with ball pythons,
we'll do a time-lapse, because this is going to take me
a good 45 minutes to get done.
But that time lapse is going to show action, right?
And it's going to maybe only be 15 or 20 seconds,
but it's going to show all that work I've done
in 45 minutes, without boring you guys.
(dramatic music)
And that's what a time-lapse helps
tell the story of what just took me 45 minutes to do.
(muted dramatic music)
In the world of film,
there's something that's called an establishing shot.
That basically just means that you're establishing
where you're at, what's going on, something like that.
Sometimes when you transition to a new environment,
you want an establishing shot so people don't get confused
by like, "Where is he now?" or whatever.
There's no other tool I love more
than the drone, when it comes to establishing shots.
It's just amazing.
And again, when we're here at The Reptarium,
there's not a lot we can do.
I mean, obviously we can fly outside, show the road,
show the sign, so on like that.
And we do that from time to time.
But when we're traveling, hoo-hoo doggie,
I tell ya what, establishing shots with this little monkey,
in the middle of the painted desert,
or in the Yellowstone area, or Montana?
I mean this little bugger certainly could take
some beautiful shots.
And again, from an establishing shot standpoint,
you can't be a drone.
(dramatic music)
As you can see, we're always going to be evolving, right?
We're going to be adding on new gear.
We're going to be doing different shots.
We're going to try to be as creative as we possibly can.
But let me just tell you,
you can do a vlog on your cell phone.
So if you're ever thinking about doing YouTube,
don't let the gear bother you.
You don't need a lot of gear to produce really cool content.
We just like doing it and we're really passionate about it.
And we want to take things to the next level.
And I hope that you guys enjoy that we're doing that,
but don't forget: when I started this vlog,
I had one little tiny camera, one person on the team.
I did all my edits, I did all that stuff myself.
So you can do it that way too.
And as for the future,
who knows what our next toy is going to be.
For now, we're going to have a lot of fun
with that new WIRAL.
(dramatic music)
And there you have it guys.
We're going to have a lot of fun.
If you enjoyed this, as a matter of fact,
you can take a look at this playlist right here.
This goes from the beginning of 2020, all the way through.
It's been a wild year, right?
So a 2020 playlist as the year is coming to an end.
Do me a favor, if you haven't already,
can you subscribe right up here to my podcast channel?
On this side I hope that you're subscribed to this channel.
If not, help us get to 3 million, I really do appreciate it.
Also turn your post notifications on.
Have an absolutely wonderful day.
Remember, be kind to someone.
And I promise I'll see you tomorrow.