BEN: I would imagine that this is probably
one of the most difficult journeys or adventures to shoot.
I found Phil and his crew
and they were perfect candidates for it.
The only problem with them is they'd
never even been on a horse.
TOM: It takes a little more time when you stop and set up shots
and it's more gear to lug around and pack on the horses.
JONNY: Out of that 160 days we had a cameraman
with us for about 130.
TOM: Where's my boy, huh? Huh?
BEN: Deal with that.
I finally figured it out.
This is what you get right here for filming out in the lake.
Little leech action.
BEN: He's got, he's got a pretty good hold on there.
I first heard about 'Unbranded' when Ben Masters gave me a call.
He was looking for outdoor filmmakers to work on
this project of this crazy idea of adopting wild mustangs,
training them and riding them from Mexico to Canada.
BEN: Put this really good team together, bought the gear,
didn't really know what we'd get along the way.
PHILLIP: The biggest concern for me was,
I didn't know how to ride horses.
For whatever reason he didn't think that was a concern at all.
BEN: Well Phil, you ready to get on?
So, it is day two, Korey's first day riding...
This should be very interesting, let me tell you.
Ten years since I've been on a horse.
Pretty obvious who is the cameramen
and who are the cowboys.
Geeky cameramen...
BEN: Cowboy, cowboy.
PHILLIP: ...cowboy.
Val saw that I was all hooked up in the trees
and he started giving me pointers.
VAL: Put pressure when you want him to direct some way
or another.
KOREY: I just started driving this puppet.
BEN: We had all these completely green mustangs
and a bunch of cameramen who had no idea
what to do around horses.
That was kind of a disaster watching it
the first couple stretches of the trip.
KOREY: That day was brutal, my first day riding was 40 miles,
we got lost many times and
I think it ruined me for two weeks afterwards.
And this is me standing straight up and down.
I am cramped up, big time.
VAL: I know you're cameraman but you hadn't rode
but I tell you what, you sure have,
you sure have kind of proven yourself to me and the guys
that you'll do what needs to be done and get after it
and I'm real proud of you for that.
I think the thing that really intrigued me
was just the whole idea of this epic journey
You know, it had ramifications and resonance of things like
'Lonesome Dove' and westward expansion
and all sorts of things that when you live in the West
you kind of get very used to hearing about.
CINDY: The other thing that really attracted me to this film
is all these guys went to Texas A&M
and my father loved Texas A&M, he went there
and he's always been a huge supporter of that school.
BEN: The impossible task,
making the 'Unbranded' crew look professional after 45 days.
SCOTT: The ride itself is interesting
and it's a good motor for a movie
because you've got guys who are facing a challenge
and there's a goal and the goal is apparent to the audience.
You have some investment in whether or not
the guys are gonna make it.
Ben: This is a bad spot
DENNIS: Any extreme filming has a certain amount of risk to it.
You know, we had people getting sick with digestive problems.
People can and will get hurt, and we did have some injuries.
PHILLIP: I'm walking down the path,
talking to Korey behind me, not looking what's in front of me.
Next thing I know I just, I just feel a whack.
PHILLIP: You can shoot this.
BEN: You all right, Phil?
BEN: Did he kick you?
My first thoughts were, I broke my femur
and how am I gonna get out of here.
The guys rushed over me and soon enough
I could kind of move my leg and I knew it wasn't broken.
PHILLIP: First week, working the kinks out.
Don't walk behind a horse.
PHILLIP: We were five miles from camp,
so I still had to ride home that night.
CINDY: He got kicked in the first two weeks by a horse
and he hung in there.
I was like, "Oh my gosh," we almost lost the film then.
PHILLIP: I felt like from there it was going to be okay.
I did have to take a couple weeks off the trail
which was a bummer.
KOREY: Five thousand vertical,
tough keeping up with the horses.
CINDY: I was questioning whether we could actually make this film
because technically, the more I heard about it and realized
where they were going and all they had was horses.
They didn't have an office, they didn't have electricity,
they didn't have a lot of things that we take for granted
when you make a film.
I've worked on larger productions
where a film like this would have had,
you know, a crew of eight to ten people,
they would have brought in big jib arms,
would've brought all sorts of things and we had none of that.
And it looks as if we did.
PHILLIP: We had to be the director, the cameraman,
the audio guy, the everything basically out there.
Luke, our audio horse, worked out
because we had this external recorder
taking all the guys' wireless mics.
PHILLIP: And all I have to do is turn it on,
record and then I can jump off and get shots from there.
There are many shots where you see Luke
following the pack string with no one on the saddle.
This is kind of our B-camera in case things happen quickly.
This is our main camera we've used on the trip.
It's the Canon C500.
BEN: They were running up and down hills.
They were probably putting two or three miles on foot
in addition to what we were doing that day.
PHILLIP: We also had GoPros on horses,
on the guys' heads, in creeks.
The guys had a few trips where they had no cameramen,
so we got them this Panasonic, throw it all on auto,
for them to use in case something went wrong.
KOREY: Day in and day out,
we'd be sticking cameras in these guys' face
and being a cameraman,
we don't think of how intrusive it really is to like
come up to someone in their sleeping bag,
they're just waking up
and all of a sudden they have a camera in their face.
BEN: This is a documentary, I'm not acting.
PHILLIP: Definitely the biggest challenge was Ben Thamer.
BEN: Get that s--- off me.
You're gonna try to make me feel like a...
for being asleep right now?
What?
PHILLIP: Can I just film?
BEN: You guys just filmed what you saw.
JONNY: Korey, how do I look?
KOREY: Good, man.
BEN: They couldn't just go there and be cameramen.
They had to go there and be part of the crew
and by the end of the trip becoming almost as close
with the cameramen as we did with each other.
KOREY: Breakfast and lunch we'd get a couple granola bars
or whatever little candies left over in the snack bag.
PHILLIP: Burning calories.
Gotta work off that one granola bar!
think it's a good idea to pay off what you set up rather than starting with the beginning and
Working to the end. I started the end and worked toward the beginning
the bigger challenge becomes
Not looking through all the material which most people assume that it is
The much bigger challenges is how do you decide what to use out of that to create a 100 minute movie?
Seeing what Scott did to weave this story together
With these guys with their mentor Val with this Mustang story in her inner cut is better than I was
envisioning from day one
John Bissell our music supervisor introduced us to several composers and
One of them whose music we checked out happened to stand out to us was no us wrote
he was able to send his tracks that were fully realized orchestra tracks and
Suddenly it became clear that this guy is we're really what he does is he's what he's great at
There's a lot of stuff in the scores kind of rusty dirty kind of guitar
Drone elements, but there's also the orchestral component which really opens it up and has that cinematic feel to it
We went to LA to record the score Noah had it worked out for an orchestra in Bratislava, Slovakia
to perform the score that he had rib
It's pretty great to see these
Vast landscapes with French horns and strings and this was really a thrill
Five dollar boys the God dinner
I'll tell you where I was riding down the road me and smokey there a little while ago and this they ran from me why?
Gesture count Mon 30 20. I'll plug dumb. Dad ready sugar. I
Went about fifteen hundred miles on this trip and definitely been
The most challenging project I've worked on and most rewarding and I'm glad we made it's Canada
To go out for five months and you know not have to go reshoot or stage anything and come out with a an awesome story
You know, it's something to be proud of
Its accomplishment to have done this film and being able to totally complete it pull it off and also
The fan base is just fanatic people love the idea
There's something about the Wild West and the Lonesome Dove story
It's all been very exciting for people so I can't wait to see what happens to it
What I've seen when I'm branded is that this is really a collaboration among graduates of two great land-grant schools
Texas A&M for the riders and Montana State University which graduated essentially all the filmmakers as the head of the school?
I am incredibly proud of that. You think you gonna get begins even if I can't ride? I'm branded one of a kind
the trips one-of-a-kind
Films one kind of this core is amazing
From beginning to end to stick with it for two years from riding on the trail to spending another year in post
To seeing it through all those hard stages and finally coming out with this product this end product. That's a that's a movie
It's something we created. I'm super proud of that