Episode 28 - Ian Planchon of 515 Productions
515 Productions: The Power of Capturing the Story
Ian Planchon, half of the two person team of 515 Productions, discusses how he and his wife, Lynn got their start in the world of media, and how this led them to found their own production company. He shares the growth devolopment their business has seen over the past 20 years by continuing to follow their passion and constantly learning along the way. There is power in telling your story, and Ian proves that by documenting the values and visions of the people he works with. Tune in to hear more about Ian and Lynn's journey!
Listen to the full episode:
About 515 Productions
Ian and Lynn met in a TV newsroom in Anchorage, Alaska in 2001. They got married and founded 515 Productions in Des Moines, Iowa in 2006. Ten years later, their love for the cold North brought them to Minnesota.
Now based in Minneapolis, video production projects continue to take them around the globe. (Bonus points if it happens to be in the Arctic Circle.)
Resources
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Wow, first time we've ever started on time.
We're even a little early. Are we? 40 seconds to go.
20 seconds. Are you in Greenwich time? Exactly. All right. Welcome to the curious builder Podcast. I'm Mark Williams, your host. Today I'm joined with Ian planche on from 515 Productions. Welcome, Ian, thank you very much. I was hoping to have your wife Lynn Melling in as well. But we had a little snafu with scheduling at the end, because I was gonna ask I love it when I have a husband, wife team on because I'd love to ask the husband wife questions about owning a business together. So you're gonna be unchallenged, whatever you say is I'll try and be truthful. So let's give our audience a little introduction about you know what you do. And we'll dive in a little bit how we met and kind of go from there. But once you tell us a little bit about 515 Productions, yeah,
I'm we're, we're a production company. We started our roots are like an action sports outdoorsy type things. But then we were started in Iowa. And there's a lot of big corporations in Iowa and you know, they like to hire people and the money's there. And so we just we do corporate stuff. And that's, that's kind of where we landed, we do a lot of corporate video production. But on our in our downtime, we'd like to do more outdoorsy stuff that keeps us kind of like creative, you know. And then the benefit of that is we get to take those creative moments that we learn in those outdoorsy environments. And we get to apply them to our corporate side. So what we'd like to say is that we're a corporate video production company. That's not your standard corporate video production company.
Right? Well definitely has a life to it. We'll have everything in the show notes at the end, but people should definitely check out your website. It's a killer website. And your videos are really impressive. Thank you. On a personal note, you're from Alaska. That's right. Correct. And so my cousin's been up there. I know. We've we've tried a few times just talking about some lands, our Alaska stuff on a recent Pella shoot that we did, which is how we met a couple years ago, you came to my personal home, and we shot for just a couple hours that day. And that was the first time I had met you. But then just here recently, this summer, we were down in Pella, Iowa, again with fella and with Brad love from EFT. And of course, myself, and that was a three day shoot. And that was really fun. I think you see behind the scenes, I think one thing that I think videographers and just DVD extra sets have been on for a long time, right? You get the last DVD and you're set because do the behind the scenes, but to being part of a production team. Even though this was like small commercial setting, like watching the scale of this, I have such a new appreciation for like a what you do number one, but be like how much effort and time would go into like a full on for even a documentary about a full length movie. It's just mind blowing. Yeah,
yeah. And that one, the most recent projects, you're talking about that we started talking about that in January of December of last year. So you know, we're coming on like 910 months of preproduction production, you know, we're into the post production phase of it now. And it'll finally wrap up in like, September. It's a long process. And you know, we're only working with you for three days. And it's like all that planning and like, okay, then we're done. And at
the end of it, it might be what a series of 32nd two, I don't know what the final cut. Yeah, the I know, there's the social side, I'm more aware of because obviously, we'll be posting a lot of the shorter stuff that consumers like, but the actual movie that they're going to probably have on pelas website as well. Some maybe advertisement a couple minutes.
Yeah, a couple minutes. Not not very long. I mean, for the amount of footage that we shot, I mean, terabytes and terabytes of footage that we shot, if you guys would have been able to, if you'd have been able to nail your lines a little bit better.
Hey, I just remember someone about a squirt gun to
the dog. And I was just looking at that footage actually.
Well, for those out there listening, we will walk through because I think this is really interesting for those that are interested in doing brand. One thing one reasons why I wanted to bring you on other than to hear I want to hear your story about 515. But since we're here, right now, I want to people to understand a little bit about how brand ambassadorship works. I think there's a lot of people that listen to the podcast that sometimes wondering myself, too, as of six months ago, or even a year ago, I didn't have as clear picture as I do now. And so maybe we'll walk through a little bit of that. So, I mean, I guess from my part, I'll just and I don't know if this is true for everyone. But for my part of the story. You know, I've been working with Pella for almost 20 years now. And Brad love it has worked with them for well over a decade. And knowing that we're a friends and be both big palace supporters. He's down in Arizona and the heat and I'm up here in Minnesota. And because you're from Alaska, you know, it's like people love to think that the cold is just this crazy thing. And I'm like, Oh, come on. I can't take the heat, you know, give me the cold all day. So it kind of was born from that. So I remember talking to Pella corporate saying hey, you've got two people that are both pro Pella people you know kind of pitching them this idea and remember those hot cold sandwich bags you get at like you know the grocery stores or whatever Yeah, keep hot things hot and cold things cold Well I thought why not have these two builders come on? We'll do some product testing and just kind of see where it goes well six months that kind of went dark and then before you know it they're having conversations with you Yeah, and then invite Brad and die down to Bella for three days and you know Yeah, people will start seeing these videos here I think yet this fall
Yeah, yeah, no, it's it's all about planting the seed right and, and that's the thing with with. I'm not as familiar with it being from the ambassador side. I'm more familiar from being on the Okay, we got this cool guy who's going to tell us you know all these cool things about this product, and we can shoot it in a cool way. So that's where our familiarity comes from. But it definitely is about just saying something, right? Like, if you don't, if you don't pitch that idea, it's never gonna happen. So it's just a story.
And I think in I'm certainly not the creator of it. But one thing that I love to do even in homebuilding, I want something to have a story in it and a home is very personal, what I do, but I love the idea. Lately, I've been working with crafters or people that have, whether it's tile, or we work with a company called Hennepin made that does these handmade glass is just beautiful, it tells a story. And I want to kind of piggyback that on a minute here because I know that's really key to what you're trying to do and your cinematography is you're telling a story, and people just gravitate if you can get that story into them in a pretty quick hook. Like they're there for the whole thing. Yeah. Yeah. Walk us through a little bit. So we can talk more I guess about how the Pella shoot went. Or maybe we'll start there. So I noticed on LinkedIn you had posted I mean, you had a 25 person plus crew. Yeah, plus the walk us through a little bit of the complexity. So you know, you've got two builders coming in, obviously corporates gonna want to have their say and what we can and can't say and I love how I had to keep looking at every time I would say something that was maybe too salesy, like Yeah, you can't say best in the universe that's unsubstantiated, whatever it is, right? But walk us a little bit through like, how, what is your mindset going into an event like that?
Yeah. Our mindset always starts with how, how easy, can we make this right? And we start there? And they'll say, Okay, well, we can make it really easy if we had this amount of people, right. And so taking pillows, an example, that's a huge corporation, it's a huge building. And so we knew, typically, we have like a four or five man crew, that's like our bare bones crew, and we were really light in our feet. But if we have to move all these lights, and we need more than four, and so it just, we just take this, this equation, we plug in, we know we have three, three days to shoot with these two guys, we know we have this much footage to shoot now, we just have to throw everything at it until we get the right formula on the other side. And so that's where we started, we knew we had a set we had to build at a different studio, we know we had to be at all the corners of the plant, you know, in one day. And then we also knew that we had to be lighting inside, we had to be like controlling light outside, we had to be shooting these experiments that have never been done before. And so it's like, oh, how many people? Do we need to actually pull this off without going over the top? And 25 apparently was the answer. That's funny.
Now how many of those people would be on your inner team? Versus like, contractors?
We don't have any employees. Okay, so yeah, we it's Lynn and I, we started the company in 2006. And we started with the idea of that we never want to have an employee because, one, we're terrified of that. Yeah, you know, like it like if their careers is on our shoulders. That's kind of a scary prospect. But we've been in business for 20 years, so maybe we could have pulled it off. But we like the we like to have our subcontractors have the ability to go work out with other people. Because if they're learning from other people, then then we can learn from our people to write you know, and so we're constantly having these new creative people come through and working with us. And we're always learning from them. Bruce, who is the cinematographer on this shoot, he was the head camera. Yeah, so he was he was he and I kind of code Director of Photography, the role, I was the main director, and he was the director of photography slash camera operator. He just got a mentorship with American cinema Society of cinematographers, ASC. It's a big deal. And so he's going to be learning from people who are within that group of people. And he works with us. And you know, it's like he's going to, he's going to learn so much and be able to bring that back to us. And that's why we don't we don't want employees because they get stagnant working with just us, just with our clients. You know, it just it we never grow that way.
Is that pretty common in the film industry? In the film industry? I
would say yes. Because it's hard to you can't keep 25 people on on staff are the right asset, right? Yeah. And like, what are they going to do when we only need four people? Like, you just need to be able to scale up scale down whenever you need to? And so that's kind of an industry standard thing.
Interesting. Yeah. How do you when you go about doing, let's say, a bid for Pella in their, their writing, who writes the script, and, like walk us a little bit through of that the maturation of how a brand comes forward with you know, obviously, you have, let's say, in this case, you have two ambassadors, Brad and I, we have we know, we're going to be talking about Pella windows, you have a few things that you know for sure. And now you're being hired to do it walk us through, like when you're looking at is that just something over experience and like, you know, even like building a house, right? I guess maybe it is the same like I have a plan. Then I go get bids from my various subcon I have my preferred vendors, right. But I guess if you you know, Bruce is, you know, in Argentina filming, you know, Penguin migration. Yeah, you know, you're gonna be here. Yeah. So walk us through like how do you actually formulate a bid and then timings got to be a nightmare? Getting everyone's schedules is a lineup.
Yeah. So I will say without a doubt Pella has been The best client we've ever had. They're an amazing company, but specifically our our one person we work with there. Who you know Laura is is she is the most amazing person we've ever worked with, like in terms of just compassionate being in like a person first and then a client second, you know, friend, obviously top of the list as well. But she has always known that if if we're going to do good work, she needs to rely on people to do the good work. And she also knows that okay, well, Ian says Bruce is the guy for the job. And Bruce isn't available. All right, let's move the dates. Sure. Right. And so they've always been really good about being flexible with dates. Now, your shoot, the dates were a little more strict. Like you had some scheduling issues. Brad had some scheduling and we had some skits. So it's like, we finally nailed down the dates. And I just reached out to everyone, I was like, these are the dates, right? Whatever you got going on, cancel it. These are the dates. And that was really hard. Yeah. And again, the my crew is amazing. We've been working with all those guys for Rob, who's the lighting guy. I've been working with him for 17, almost 18 years now. And so he was like, Yeah, I'll be there. He then he had to leave on the last day. But that's, you know, anyway, so with like, the script process and everything, it's always a collaborative effort, right. And so they'll they'll, like one of us will throw out a rough idea. Like you throw out a rough idea. And they say, Okay, well, let's get our copywriting team to start drafting up some ideas and and then you spend eight months, finalizing those ideas, and then you get on the day. And you saw how much that script changed?
Well, and it's funny. I mean, I'm really impressed for those that you know, can't see. And I mean, you got to see that the sparkling skies eyes like he's, you're really good at keeping light touch on the ground. I have no other comparison. Like I've not done any other movies or anything like that. So I'd have no idea to know how normal that is. But something Brad and I commented on a lot is what a good director, you were because, you know, obviously, we're not paid actors. Well, I guess we are paid. Yeah, one moment we are. But the point of it is is like you know, it's not our normal day job. Right. And so like you I thought you were so good at, you know, sometimes you got to soften up and Dan, obviously one of the Pella guys there, we had such a good time, you know, telling jokes. And, you know, you're obviously whispering in people's ears, trying to make them mess up in some ways that kind of breaks the tension. Like as a director, I got to believe like, Hey, you, you need to get the ship moving in a direction. But you also need to be light enough. And let the let the, I guess in this case, the actors and actresses relax enough that they're real. Otherwise, it's going to come across as really stiff. I felt like I feel like you have a very awesome pulse on like, Nope, that's not that. Yeah.
I appreciate that. There is there is no reason. And we believe this from day one. There's no reason not to have fun while you're doing this job. Like we we get to do this job, right. Like, it's a like, we are so extremely lucky that we've been able to be in business as long as we have and we're still out there having fun. But I think if we took it so seriously, that we're just not out there. Having fun on these shoots, we would have been shuttered a long time ago, right. Um, because people, people like you, you feel it, right? You get on set. And if I'm just like so uptight that we're not going to get the job done, and I'm just a jerk to you guys. Right? You're not gonna come back. And you're gonna tell the clients about that. But we didn't know what this shoot. timing was critical. We only had three days. And so typically, Lynn actually wouldn't be on set with us. My wife Lynne would not be. But we brought her in as the assistant director strictly to watch the time. Yeah, because I knew that I would start having too much fun with you guys. And I needed someone to rein me in. And so she was our insulation. Well, for those
listening we show up in the scene to was like my dream, it was like, I got to use a fire hose and shoot it at a window with a 65 mile an hour fan. You know, that guy back that trailer up at this giant testing fan, and he's blowing this the power I don't mean your fireman what kind of psi is coming out of a fire hose like that.
That one was strictly off the hydrant. So it was only I think that hydrant was only pushing 80 psi. So it really was not that much. But still, it's a lot but I was impressed
that never having operated a fire hose before is the water couldn't actually escape the wind, the 60 fall 65 mile an hour wind was strong enough to knock that wind right into the window and not let it pass it not I was just I was gonna say and also back into you.
I was drenched. I was having a ball. And that was something we were not planning on like I looked at you as you're like, Oh crap, He's soaking wet now. And we have to go inside and shoot a scene as if this never happened. And
you just saw on my face like Well, clearly mark doesn't seem to care.
I just edited that scene the other day I was putting it in because there's the scene where your scream and you're like, Yeah, and I was like, that's gotta go in. No, I can't wait for you to see it. Because there's a couple other shots in there that that I was like, Well, this has to go in strictly because we were talking about this on set or this joke was happening. And so this shot has to be in there now because you guys will get it like the timing of it. Yeah. So it's all it's all great. It's we're having a fun fun time editing.
So I mean that that was I mean, it was actually kind of a side note, I don't know if you know this. So obviously I got completely soaked and we have to we ended up keeping the same clothes for all three days of the shoot. Because obviously for the 62nd video, you know, you're gonna want to be dressed the same. So I went into corporate and of course, I'm just dripping head to toe and I think I actually took my shirt off on the way to the parking lot thinking like, I gotta try this. So first of all, you know, I'm not a small person. I'm six foot two and I'm walking in and everyone's like looking at me like what why is this I have a shirt off. I walk into the bathroom and I sit on the floor and I had to go into switched into some pink shorts that we use later. And I had I think wardrobe was helping to get a little hairdryer but I'm sitting in there in pink shorts and a tank tops. That's all I had to drive. I mean, kudos to the people of Pella you guys can roll with like, whatever. Whoever sitting in your, your lobby. They're just like, Oh, hey, how's it going? Welcome to Pella. Yes. Anyway,
you stood in front of fan for a little bit, too.
I did. Yeah. I know,
legal was really nervous about that. Because I mean, that thing was she could shoot projectiles out. But yeah, it worked out. Well.
I think what was legal guys named Jesse. Jesse. I had the funniest video that I took. I don't think I've posted it yet. I'll post it when we start posting the videos. But as basically we doing a little spoof with them like, hey, Jesse, we became really good friends over the last couple days, I think more so than Brad. I was more of a loose cannon. Yeah,
he was I think he wasn't realizing how important his job was gonna be because there was a there was a quote unquote, approved script as we went into it. But then, you know, as things do, they just change. And that's when he really stepped up because he was like, Hey, can we say this? And he's like, you can say what was on the script? Like, yeah, we're not saying that anymore. Can we say this way instead? And he's like, oh, man, this is terrible.
Have you been on other? I mean, have you ever? I know. You've done documentaries? I want to talk about that in a little bit. We'll say that towards the end. But have you been on let's say what people would normally think of as like as movies like how similar is let's say, a promo ad for a corporation, just a different scale and size to let's say, a movie.
So I went to film school. And so my, my introduction to films was shooting on sets. And so but that's where I left it. I knew I didn't want to do that, because it was way too rigid. And then I ended up putting myself in these other situations that are similar. So it's not that much different. It's just the scale is much smaller. So while we had 25 People for the three days, they could have upwards of 150 people for three months, you know, and so keeping track of those logistics is insane. But it's similar. It's, you know, you still have to scale. Yeah, it's always about scale. Yeah. So everything in this industry is about scaling. It can be really big, or it can be really small. And the really small ones can be amazing. And the really big ones can be really bad. And it's just about who's doing what right
now, we've done a six hour shot before it was a four man crew up at my personal house, then this one is a 25 person crew. Is that typically your range of crew sizes, or what would you normally find on a
we try and average? Like five to six is our smallest crew. I think actually your house, it was technically only a two man. Was it only two? Yeah. And Laura was there. She didn't count because she wasn't she was sure she asked him questions. But she's corporate, she's the client. And but we just had, they're like, hey, we need we have a small amount of time. And here's what we got. And I'm like, well, we can meet another guy. Yeah. Um, so that's the smallest said it's something we do not like to do. Right. But we like average, about five to six people is kind of what we stick with.
Okay. Walk me through a little bit. Switching gears? Well, first of all, what percentage you had mentioned how there's a kind of a good blend between your corporate clients and kind of, you know, in the wild documentary? What, let's talk a little bit about that. But what percent right now, what in a year would roughly be the split? Is it 5050? Is it
God? No, it's It's like 90%. Corporate? Oh, interesting. Yeah, yeah. And that's, it's, we get nervous about that at times, just because we do like to keep our creative edge. And it's kind of hard to stay creative with corporate because there's, there's some things in there. But again, Pal is really amazing about keeping their minds open and, and allowing us to do fun things. But we actually, the outdoorsy stuff is those have been things that we've done on our own. Right. And so those it's like, we know, we needed to step away and refresh ourselves just a little bit. And so we did the survey.
No, would it? Yeah. Would it be called a passion project? Are you getting paid for that? Like, why? No. Why? Because walk us through that. Yeah. I mean, people need to check that I haven't watched the full feature of it. But you guys are on the north shore in the wintertime, right?
Yeah. And we were there for three years, we went up and back, same crew, same small barebones crew, the five or six people I call them and said, Hey, this is what we're doing. And yes, it's called the passion project. I wanted to do something that was going to help me inspire myself again, and be creative again, and just have some fun with what we do and get cut kind of back to our roots. And I was with Lynn, one morning, we were out in Iran. And I was talking about surfing on like spirit, because we happen to see it one day. And I was like, I think I wanted to do something about that. She was just do it. And so I reached out to my guys, and I was like, here's, here's what I can do, I can I can pay you guys for four days total. And not necessarily all four days at once, but four days total, but I got budgeted for each of you. Once that money is gone, I got nothing. And then it's strictly volunteer and you can walk away at any time. And each and every one of those guys that I reached out to they stayed with the production for three years. And that's not like we were shooting for three years straight. But I want to say we put in maybe two and a half, three weeks total worth of actual work work. And they only got paid for four days, you know, and that's that's, I think they recognize pretty quickly that it was a passion project for them to like they're getting out into the elements in environments they don't normally see themselves in. We got to go out and research vessels out on Lake Superior and you know, we got to hang out with really cool people until really cool stuff. Freeze? And then ultimately it did really well. It's been it's been running, you know, and doing really well on all the film circuits. And it's done now, which is great. I got really tired of it. Yeah. But it was it was awesome. And that that helped kind of put the spark back in us a little bit,
you know, and partly in some people, and obviously, the tie in here on the podcast is a yo business, I do want to talk some business stuff because I just think it's interesting. And also, you know, the tie in, of course, how we met, but walk me a little bit through so you have this film, you are self funding it or you know, however this is happening, once it starts getting picked up by different, you know, cinema, film festivals or walk us through that. Is there any money involved with that? Is it sponsors that get picked up? Is it like what is there's
no money in this? There's no money, okay, the end goal, obviously would be to get it picked up for distribution. Okay. We knew early on that our film was so so niche like it was your surfing on Lake Superior. And there's not many people who are going to be interested in that outside of Minnesota. We have been actually really shocked about the the reception has gotten and film festivals across the country has done very well in those. But it would never like if you put it on Netflix, I don't think it has many people watching it. I could be totally wrong. Maybe I'm selling it short. But
I think you're selling to Washington, I'm seeing your your cinematography is beautiful, but to is actually today in the paper. So there was a relay team that just broke the open water record. Did you read that? Yeah. So these long distances? Actually, I forget her name. But she has the English Channel record for women above I think 50. And so it was her on a, let's say call a team of four swam from split house or Lighthouse down to canal Park. Yep. And, you know, they're trying to bring awareness to climate change, which I'm guessing you know, we can that's what ours was. Yeah. And so there's obviously a huge market for that kind of awareness. And because Lake Superior has more surface water for freshwater lake in the world, you know, it's a pretty well celebrated,
it's 10% of the Earth's freshwater. I mean, that's pretty nuts. It's 10%. And it's like two hours north of here, right. And but that is something that this, this whole thing started out as, like, again, my background is actually in sports. And so I was like, I'm going to shoot cool video about surfing Lake Superior, we're going to set it to music. It's going to be five minutes long. And that's all we're doing. And then we went up there and met these people. I'm like, man, these guys are awesome. And then we met the one guy, one of our main characters, Eric Wilkie. He's like, You need to talk to this dude over here. His name's Christian doll back. And if you look him up, he'll blow your mind. He's an underwater photographer. And he gets in the water every single day in Lake Superior. He just takes photos every single day. He's got an awesome backstory. I was like, Okay, well, now it's not just surfing wetsuit or drysuit. He wears a semi dry. Okay, yeah. And so we're like, okay, so we got this surf film? Well, I want to talk to Christian. So we're going to include his little story. And then Eric, our main character is like, Oh, and you also need to talk to Stephen over here, because his son is eight. He was eight at the time, or 10 at the time, or something like that. And he's over there right now getting in with a boogie board. I was like, what? That's insane. And so we're like, alright, we'll talk to Stephen and Caspian is his name. And then that is my killer name, right? And so we kept talking to these people. And like, these are so many awesome stories. And then then we started asking ourselves, well, Lynn likes to learn things when she watches movies. And she's like, What are we gonna learn? I was like, Well, I guess we need to explain how, how are you able to serve on Lake Superior? So let's reach out to a scientist. And my neighbor. He works at the U. And I was like, Hey, do you know anybody that we could talk to about Lake Superior? And he emails back he was with these people work. And it's the Large Lakes Observatory, their whole job is studying the large freshwater lakes of the world. And I was like, yeah, that worked out really well. And so were they based in Minnesota, they're based in Duluth, sir headquarters there, their whole job is studying Lake Superior and all the other freshwater lakes. And it was during COVID. So we couldn't actually connect face to face but then COVID ended. And they're like, get on the research vessel with us. Let's go talk. And so they connected us with all these scientists. And we started hearing all these facts. We're like, oh, man, this is a whole nother story now. And so our movie went from a six minute serve film to a 15 minute feature film, about Lake Superior is what it ended up being and how people connect to Lake Superior. So whether it's surfing, or getting in there to take photos, or researching it, so you can save the water source. Like those are all amazing stories that we were able to tell.
You know, that's interesting about I was just thinking about learning. That really resonated with me what your wife said about what she learns. One of the things about the podcast, one of the things that attracted me about certain podcasts is if I can listen to podcasts and get two or three business ideas out of it, I feel like it's time well spent. And I just I find now I'm 42. But I'm way more interested in learning now. And it wasn't that I wasn't interested in learning. I just, I'm just savage with book tapes. And like, I just want to consume knowledge because I just find it so interesting. Your your job is fascinating to me. And I'm sure it's a little bit like any job that is a little grass and the greener on the other side. Right? And so but even so it's like those three days down. Now. It was exhausting. It's interesting. I don't think you know, I think I mentioned before I'm there was training for an ultra marathon so as to go run in the mornings, but all the standing around even though it's like standing, but just being on your feet for like 910 hours straight, like, I mean, I'm in great shape because of this trail race I'm training for but I was wiped out at the end and a lot of is talking, it's getting on and, and so but I remember talking to Brad, as we left that night I said, you know, I could do this like three, four times a year like I really had fun and I just It filled my emotional bucket because you get so much energy out of it. And Brad's like, I don't know if I could do it that often. Like he liked it. I mean, it's exhausting. But it's it is fully in his schedule is way more crammed with other commitments that he has, but I loved it. Like, you know, we're telling a story, you know, for pellet in this case, but I just I love being a part of this production. And so hearing you talk about stories, you know, going back to Lake Superior, like I love the idea that you get to your job, I guess fashion progress, I guess you're paying for, you know, you're good to tell the story. But you get to wherever you're interested in going about you can kind of just follow that vein and kind of opened up like you said, from six minutes to 50. Yeah.
And the key is right, you have to be able to step back and look at it and not get tunnel vision. Because if we had to just be like, No, it's a sort of fill in this entire it's going to be a sort of film, it would have died on the shelf, it never would have gone anywhere.
Do you think you would have got sued if you'd call it endless winter?
No, I don't think so because I get texts, the guy who owns a copyright. And he's actually so we worked with Red Bull a lot. That was when we first got our starting action sports. We were for the Red Bull. And my dream. There's this this documentary that came out by Dana Brown called Dustin glory. And it's about the Baja 1000. And it's just it's an awesome story just about this endurance race with with motorcycles or trophy trucks or buggies or VW beetles. But I was like, man, it would be awesome to work with Dana Brown on a documentary. And then I got a caught wind of this project that Red Bull is working on it. They're like, Yeah, we're gonna Dana Brown, I emailed the guy and he's like, I'm on that whatever you're doing, I'm on it. And he's like, cool, you're on. And it turned out to be a motorcycle documentary on like, these various aspects of the motorcycle and how it's like in you know, it's racing, or it's using it to deliver medicine in Africa, or it's just a way of transportation in Vietnam, anything like that. There's just as wide aspect thing about motorcycles. Well, Dana Browns dad, Bruce Brown, he made the original on any Sunday, he invented the action sports documentary. And Endless Summer is one of those things right? And so that's that's his trademark was endless summer. So my dream was fulfilled right. Then I got to work with Bruce and Dana Brown on a documentary. And I was like, Cool. I'm done. That was it. I hit my peak.
Wow, that's amazing. So Red Bull. You mean, obviously they're very well celebrated. Yeah. What have you done some? Like, how does that relationship work? Exactly. I mean, they're a huge multibillion dollar company. I mean,
billions. Yeah, yeah. Billions. Now, yeah, they're there. They're an amazing company to work for. But we don't work with them anymore. We kind of went our different path just because there's, there's, it's a young man's game, you know, and that's a different environment to work in all the time. And I was like, I was getting too old to be hanging out with a bunch of 20 year olds all the time. So it's like, you know, they just it's always 20 year olds, you know, trade
up for servers from like security and 42 year old buildings. But we
worked on some awesome projects with those guys. It was a ton of fun.
We, the gentleman over at modern craftsman Tyler grace and Nick Schiffer. I don't they're friends of ours. And they have a podcast but this game on recently, it's going to tie back to Red Bull, but he is a really calm, dude, super chill. And the first time he met me as he left, he told Brad love it. He goes, if you could create my polar opposite, it'd be Marc Williams. He goes, That guy looks like he just had six Red Bulls in a line of code. The point was, I was so elevated because I was just very excitable, right? Yeah. So as a spoof, I was going to come on their podcast. So I actually had custom shirts made of Red Bull, six cans of Red Bull and a line of coke. And I had them open it up on on on air. And what he really left, I actually sent an email to Red Bull to be a sponsor of the curious builder podcast, and they never responded. And he goes, I don't think it was the Red Bull. I think it was your line of code. That was just a line.
Yeah, exactly. So yeah, no, that's it's a crazy company. And they they do a lot of cool stuff. But yeah, that we went our separate ways. We just started doing our own thing and ended up in corporate land for a little while.
What does when you think about creating a story, just because I think that resonates so powerfully with people. And I've talked to a few other videographers, even here locally, we're trying to do something. And I don't know what shape is at this point is just the idea, right? And it's, I've got maybe four or five builders. We want to go to high schools and start doing like tours and educate the whole point of our story that we're trying to celebrate is we need more youth in construction. And there's no I mean, across the country, we're seeing declining obviously, we have had declining birth rates for a while in the United States, as well as obviously a lot of developed countries in the world but we're going to have a major workforce problem specifically in construction already do. Yeah, we already do. Well pass it in. I've talked about that in previous podcasts where things like for every seven Master Plumbers only one journey Minister taking their place. So for the next two decades, it's going to be Oh, huge, huge issue. High level, how would you create a story around that? Is it? You know, because the whole point of it is and like, who is there as their governments? Is their? Is their state grants? Like how would someone go about, you know, other than a passion project? How would you create a story that would then in then, how would you distribute that to, you know, based on what's kind of like workshop ideas here with you like, Alright, how you understand that? Yeah, how would I get that out
there? Yeah. And well, to get it out, there is one thing but to tell the story first is another thing entirely. And I think that that always stems from well, one, you have an idea, right, and ours was surfing. So you just have to kind of go down that path. But I think your idea is more you have the idea, you know what it needs to be now you need to find the characters. And so you need to find the character that's going to help best tell that story. And whether that's going to be your apprentice plumber, and a journeyman plumber, because you need both sides of this, right? And you say, Okay, this is the guy, it's about to leave. And this is the guy that's gonna take over and tell their sides of the story, right? And what did it take for this apprentice plumber to get to this point? How hard was it to get the jobs? How hard was it to study and do all these things. And then then you'd compare and contrast it with the journeyman. And, and I think the stories you're going to find are going to be there just like, you know, in my day, there was this and this guy's gonna like, Oh, I did it online, you know, like, you're gonna find some, some, some ways to compare and contrast, you know, their origin story and how they ended up and then then you can find that that middle ground of okay, here's where they both intersect. And how do we how do we make this this appealing to the masses? How do we make it so the next journeyman is going to want to aspire to be this apprentice, you know, and it doesn't matter how they learned it, or where they ended up, but it's about why they do it. That's usually where we end up is like, why are you doing this? Like, how can we tell that story?
Right? Interesting. I'm, it's funny, because my mind is like, just because I know all these people, like, I don't have any, I think finding the people to tell the stories, I think what, for me, personally would be not the most difficult part, and even production, right? So you work with a company like yourself? You know, it's like, how big is this? A series is this, you know, there's so there's so much information, there's so many interviews, it's so big. Yeah. You know, how would someone go about even funding something like that? I mean, is there like the Education Department? I mean, who How does someone go about figuring out ways to actually produce something like this
financial standpoint? Yeah. And that one, we're still discovering a lot of those worlds ourselves. A lot of that grants, like a lot of people are turning to grants, or a lot of people are turning in corporate sponsors, because there's so many corporate sponsors out there who rely on tradespeople, right. And those are, those are the ways that you would you'd say, hey, we we've got this idea. And, you know, we know that your ideals line up with this story that we want to tell. The problem of getting a corporate sponsor is now your story needs to line up with their ideals. Right, right. And so grants, they don't have to do that, depending on the grant you get, you can tell your story. And it can be a tragic story if it needs to be. And that's okay. And you get paid via grant that's a very unbiased grant and says we're looking for people to produce stories about trades, and whatever that story is, you tell that story. If you were to partner with like Home Depot, they'd be like, Oh, I can't be negative. And you're like, well, it's negative. It's not looking so good right now. And they're gonna want roses, you know? And that's, that's, that's, that's where you have to figure out like, do I want corporate sponsors? Or do I want to figure out a way to self fund this? Because the more money you accept, the less control you have? And that's what we knew with with our surf doc. It's like, we know we don't want anybody giving us money. One, I don't know how we convince people to get some money for this one. But do like it just we want to be able to tell the story no matter what that story is.
Is there out of curiosity, is there a surf shop up and like yeah, there's
a back alley surf shops up there. They're really cool guys. We worked. We didn't work directly with them, but they're always out there surfing. We talked to them all the time. There's, there's a lot of there's a lot of awesome people out there and there are definitely going to be some people who are haters. We had one who was awesome on Instagram. He loved us so much. Seriously. No, he did not like us. So much. And I was like, Man, I don't get it a heat. He was like you're ruining the sport. I was like, I don't know how I'm earning. I have zero effect on the surfing game. And he was just mad that we were there and we're telling people where it was and it's like, well, one, we're not locating this. You know, we're in Minnesota. That's all we're saying. But to the dude was mad at us. He lived in Florida, but he's from Minnesota. And I was like, I mean, aren't you you're surfing in Florida you're not from there. You can't be surfing their spot because that was his argument. He's like don't serve our spots.
Well, that is funny. I mean, not knowing that much about the surfer of the year that stuff right all the
time. And it's like I don't get it. And that's our characters are amazing. They're so welcoming and that's Eric Wilkie number one. Just open arms. You know, he's like, get in here. We're gonna
make it's like you should do a story on a pro bass fishers like you're not gonna fish in my spot my hole.
Yeah, exactly. I just never understood that. I mean, I get it because you know, it gets more crowded, but the world is more crowded. Right? And it's just is what it is.
But if your sport is going to grow, and if you're going to continue to pass it on to people, someone has to get grabbed. Yeah. didn't know. I was gonna die. Yeah. Interesting. But yeah, what? What do you what do you have coming up in terms of like what other stories or projects? Are you guys kind of?
Yeah, we just we got tapped we were just up in central Minnesota, shooting some wild rice harvesting for an Ojibwe tribe that is worried about a nickel mine going in. So we're doing a little bit on that on those that kind of the stories we like to tell like, you know, there, there's some heartfelt stories that need to be told. And those are one of them. So yeah, we're up there doing that just the other day. And then we've we've got some ideas for our next project, which trades related as well, I think we were talking about this a little bit. And that's one of our next things, we do want to kind of tell that story as well. So yeah, seems like you're the right guy to talk to you. There's
a lot of people around here, I mean, Housing First Minnesota, James was on the on the podcast. And so they're doing a whole new training thing, it's pretty high level right now, I don't know all the specific mechanics of it. But basically, the whole concept is, you know, if you're not going to go to college, and if you're not going to go down the road of you know, either financial debt or those things, but just really opening up your your world to how much opportunity is in the trades, right? And so, you know, I want to have, like you said, I would I have my plumbers, for instance, our father and son team, and I would love to have them on, I think Mitch is in his late 30s. And, you know, Rick is probably in his 60s. And you know, just, I guess what you're saying before, tell the story, and have them kind of go back and forth about it. But anyway, going back to Minnesota Housing First was such a big lobbying industry for us as well, and very pro building and pro housing in Minnesota. And so they're going to have education, arms, they have legislative arm. So they're the right people. It's just as I've also learned that you get these really big organizations, they take a long time to do stuff. And, you know, being a small company, I'm a little bit more like, a little more freelance, like I want, can we just start this next week?
Yes, just do it. Yeah, we run into all the time where it's like, Guys, a problem with corporations and brands in general, is they have what they call is their brand identity, right? And they're like, No, this is this is who we are, this is the story, we need to tell them. This is who we have to market to. And it's like, well, why? Like, like, whatever you're doing, like you guys are, number one, whatever. Let's say pellet. Number one, you guys are doing an amazing job. You have the ability to market to these other people too. And that's what we tell all our clients is you don't you've already got these, this amazing list of clients, let's let's start telling different stories that attract different audiences. And the way we like to relate it is you want to not necessarily be the best in the industry. I mean, it's great to be the best in the industry. But if you have the most brand loyalty in the industry, that's something better. Because that that means that that person is going to from a marketing standpoint, the person who's brand loyal to you, is going to spread the word for free. Right? Yeti is the example use up and down whenever we're talking to people that when they came out and they had this cooler, that was a bajillion dollars, you know, and everyone's like, why is this cooler, so expensive. But they came out of the bat telling amazing stories, like just stories had nothing to do with coolers. It just had cool stories. And people are like, man, that's awesome. I want to do that. I want to be like that person. And I should probably buy that cooler too, because it looked like it was working well for that person who's living a good life. And they launched this amazing campaign where they just shot these videos and they never once never once sold their cooler. It was just like, hey, he I can't remember her name, or the first one they had was called incurrent. And it was about a woman who wanted to be a RAFTING GUIDE in Arizona. And all she wanted to do was paddle there. I think they're called Dorries the wooden boat Yeah, and those are like the back doors. Yeah. And that's all she wanted to do. And and they just told her story about learning how to be a RAFTING GUIDE and end up in this this this Dory? Not once did they say and the only reason I was able to be a Dory pilot was because of my Yeti cooler you know, like they there was there was a lot of brand placement, obviously but no, like overt by our cooler.
I think it's interesting because I would agree with that. I would say someone who very much pro sales, it's, well, my own personality, I am not a very subtle person. So it's hard I can see like a corporation to be like to be subtle to be intentionally subtle. When your goal is to sell more like I could see how that's a tough ask even when you believe it and like I'm gonna go by that because it's not in my face. Yeah. I can see why that's hard.
It's almost impossible to believe it. If you if you've already heard number one and you don't want to be less than number one. And you're like, wait, you want me to do what no, like Yeah, I want you to make spent a bunch of money shooting a video and you never want to do sell your your brand. And they're like, No, that's the
thing to think of how successful remember the old Budweiser commercials the real men of genius. Oh, yeah, yes, it's the first time that the here's builder's ever song and that'll be the last. But anyway, the point of it was those were amazing. They were such sticky lyrics. And they had nothing to do with you know, drinking beer. There were just these amazing stories that people were laughing because the humor of it was so catchy and you'd send it to your friends or you I remember that was back in the day when I would quick run over the radio and I'd hit the record button. On your your, your cassette tape because I wanted to record the commercials because they were so good. Yeah,
that's an interesting industry. They were forced to be creative right off the bat, because there was it wasn't. I've since learned it was never a rule. But there was like, there was an unwritten rule that you could not show people drinking alcohol on TV. And I don't know if it used to be rolling out it's not but the if you if you pay attention, you'll see not many people drink on TV in a commercial. That's and so a lot of companies always like popping the top. Drink getting it? Yeah, exactly. So they shouldn't leftover. Yeah, something like that. I think it was just like a like conservative, conservative effort, you know, just to be like, let's not really overtly say, start drinking our booze even though we're trying to sell our booze. But I think when you're when you're hamstrung like that from the get go, like you can't actually drink this, you know, you can't show anybody to drink. You have to start thinking outside the box. And so they were there. There's a lot of amazing marketing that comes around alcohol.
Massive budgets, right? Yeah. Any alcohol companies are out there hire 515 passion project. Yeah,
yeah, they're Jeep Jeep was another one that did a couple of really good spots. I haven't seen any in a while, but they had some amazing spots. It was all it actually ended up being all about the trades. And it was just like, you know, we used to, you know, make things like, you know, amazing back in the day, and we like bend the steel with our bare hands and make this amazing Jeep and I think
there's a deep hunger and thirst for that kind of real tangible, especially in a world that's so digital. Anytime you can show like that. I mean, your your cinematography is so beautiful. Now. I mean, you can show like, you know, sweat pouring down someone's faces. They're bending metal, like, you know, a slow motion of like sparks flying off in a settlement torch. And like, I think people resonate really well to the high definition graphics. Yeah, because it's, it puts you right then and there.
It definitely helps. It helps. It helps to have the right tools. But the story is, stories got to be the stories always number one. We were very lucky right now, when was just reading an article about this the other day, but, you know, six second reels. What's the one? No, maybe it's tick tock. It's like short, short, little reels. And it was like six seconds as when people are posting and so all the brands are like, Oh, we can only do six second short videos. There's been a study that's been released. Now they're like, No, those are done. People People want actual material they can watch and they can learn from and they can ingest.
That's funny, you said that. So we have a fairly small Instagram following by, you know, the big one standard. You know, I mean, they're bigger than we were and not as
big for sure. It's bigger than ours. Yeah.
The point is, is like we've noticed a huge trend over the last couple of months, that if we post a video, or we're explaining something that might be very common, right, you know, like a dovetail jaw, nothing rocket science about that. But you know, just explaining it. I mean, people want to learn something went back to your storytelling. And so we've kind of taken a new rule when we do, you know, kind of self documented or, you know, I'm on Mike just talking about our homes people want, I think that's why there was such a huge proliferation of, you know, the DIY videos. And I mean, there's so many shows out there. I don't watch them because they're crazy and not always accurate. Yeah. I can't take it. But the point is, is like people want to hear about it. People want to see it happening, and they can relate to it. The thing about a home as well, is that everyone, you know, most people have a home or live in a home or they're aware of what it is obviously. Yeah. So it's a crazy relatability. And like, oh, I want to do that I want to achieve that. Or I'm in this right now. How do I get out of this? So there's a huge appetite, of course around the homebuilding industry. Yeah, or anything associated with it,
and you can't sell it in six seconds, you have to be in depth. And that's okay. Yeah. And that's, that's what we're trying to tell people is it's okay to be long winded these days. Like, there's, there's people out there who are willing to watch that, and they're gonna invest, and they're gonna say, No, this guy knows what he's talking about. And now you're building your brand loyalty, not to bring it back to brand loyalty. It's all about brand loyalty. Well,
I do want to talk a little bit about some business stuff, as we roll it in here to that the homestretch one is your name, I think is really interesting. So tell us the history behind 515 production
was the least interesting part of our company. I think it's kind of cool. We, so I met my wife in Alaska, I worked at a news station up there, and she got a job at the new station. And there's a saying in Alaska, and you might have to edit this out if you don't feel it's appropriate. But the Do you want me to say, all right, they say, you don't lose a girl, you just lose your turn. Because there's so many men to women, Alaska, right. So if you mess up with your girlfriend, and she's gonna get snatched up, and then the opposite side of the saying for women is the odds are good, but the goods are odd. And so So basically, when you find someone that you actually love, and you want to spend time with, you got to move out. Yeah, because otherwise, things might go wrong. But that's that's all joking aside. So we met in Alaska. She got a job in Des Moines, Iowa, and she calls me up and she goes, Hey, I just got a job offer in Des Moines. And I was like, Okay, we're just dating at the time. It's like Can I come with then she goes, Well, yeah, I was hoping you would remove that to mind. It's like, where's I have no idea where no one is. So I'm looking it up. I'm like, oh, man, that's, that's way over there. And that's like, it's actually pretty far south compared to Alaska. pretty different than a lie here. It's hot. So we get there. And I work at the news station there for about six seconds. And I was like, the stories they're telling again, it all comes down to stories. For me, the story is in Des Moines, Iowa are just not as cool as they were in Anchorage, Alaska. And so I was like, this isn't for me. And I quit. And then Lynn's, like, well, so what are you going to do now? It's like, oh, I think you'll freelance. What are you going to call it? And I was like, oh, what's the area code in Des Moines? Let's just start there. It's easy, because in Alaska, it was everyone loved 907. That was the area code there. So it was 907. You know, fabrication or 907 beer or whatever it was? Yeah. And I was like, I mean, makes up for all of Alaska, by the way. Yeah, yeah. There. Yeah. Should we all have Alaska? Yeah, one one state one area code. Um, but so I kind of assume there's some some area code pride in Des Moines to maybe and so we just said it was either gonna be 907 productions with no one would know, or five and five productions. It worked in our favor, because SEO was still it was good. It wasn't as good as it is now. And so 515 appeared at the top of a lot of searches, because it was numerical. Right? So that helped us a lot. So that's it. That was we area code?
Yeah. I mean, I think it's kind of cool. I just I like I like stories. I mean, hey, there you go. You got a story. Yeah. Especially like the Alaska and I have family and cousins that still live up in Alaska. So it's yeah, I definitely get that thing. Yeah. And
it's, you know, when we moved to Minnesota, everyone's Oh, you're gonna call 612? It's like, well, no, it's, it's our name. Like, you can't change your name, you change a name, you lose the entire identity of that company. And we're proud of it. It's we've had it for 18 year coming up on 18 years. And we've done a lot of really fun stuff. And I think this, this gets to a question you're gonna ask about. So Lynn recently just came with us full time. So two years ago, she started full time with five and five, she's always been in the wing. She's always been helping out, you know, but she's always had her own. She was a news anchor for oh, man, like 15 1617 years, somewhere in there. And then when we moved to Minnesota, she's like, I'm done with news. Because we got a family. She wants to spend more time with the kids. And so she gets a job at a PR firm and then a corporation. And then then it was just like, You need to come work with us full time. Yeah. Because she just got all these amazing talents. And it's like, we need those full time. Because I can only do so much. Right. And so she works with with five and five full time now, which has been amazing. We've just had so much fun, but it's hard.
What so she's not here to defend herself. Question I love to ask husband and wife. So what is it like working with your spouse?
Oh, it's obviously frustrating. Yeah, like, the way I tell it is I have been in a home office for 18 years. It has been just me for 18 years. And when the kids are in school and Linds at work, it's just me in the house. And it's amazing. And I have a workstyle that it's very unique to me, and I'm sure a lot of other people are like this, but it's not Linds. workstyle, right. Like I will get distracted, or I'll take a break. I'll work for like seven minutes and like it and that was it for me, I'm gonna go take an hour long break, you know, but it's, it's how my creative brain works. It needs like short stands, and then long breaks. Lynn likes to, like, hit the hit the pedal and go. And that's not what I like. But the funniest part was, I have my home office downstairs, and it's mine, it's all dialed in, and then COVID hits. Now all of a sudden, everyone's at home all the time, like, Oh, this is bad. This is bad. And then then the kids go back to school finally, and then COVID ends. But then Lynne joins 515 full time and I'm like, oh, man, she's here all the time now. And then next thing, you know, she ends up in my office downstairs, and she's taken over half the office, and I'm like, I can't, you're like right over my shoulder all that I can't do this. And so I move my out of the office out to the living room. Like I'll be working out here now. And then But then I still can't I feel like I'm being watched all the time. Like, alright, I'm building a backyard office. And that's where I'm gonna end up. So I'm working on that now. But it's obviously it's hard, you know, but like we, like everyone says, you know, we balanced each other out. Um, she's the strict task keeper, which is why we brought it down to Pella because I knew she'd do that. And I'm the one who likes to have all the fun. Not that she doesn't have fun. Yeah, but it's a compliment, right? Yeah, it has. I have to have someone like that in my life. So I'm glad it's her. That's funny.
Do you Do you often find that you guys talk about business? Not in the business setting, like at dinner on vacation? Or how do you prioritize? You know, kind of like you guys seem, I'm guessing that you probably like to escape to the wild and go camping with the kids or the Boundary Waters or just kind of get out of the I mean, I assume that's what you have to do. So how do you how are you able to set boundaries or is it not boundaries? You just it just kind of organic?
I think we both feel it. We actually even got in an argument the other day because she was trying to talk about work. And I was like, I can't do this anymore. I'm done for the day. And she really wanted to keep going. And so we were sniffing each other about that. But I think Boundary Waters is like sacred to us. And so we just don't talk work. In the Boundary Waters and like I set up so my guys are in town they can handle any work that pops up. And we go up there to unplug. And so that's like an unwritten rule Boundary Waters. No work. You guys too good. Just the two of you to go with the whole family. So myself Matlin and our two kids Jack and Aubrey. Yeah. And it's been amazing. They've been going up there since we moved here. They were Jack was seven when we moved here, okay. And Aubrey was five. And so they've been going since they're five this year. Yep. We went earlier this year, because Jack just started football. And so his football schedule is a little wonky.
Is the smoke still prevalent up there at that time or do bad? Actually, we got lucky
in Duluth, it was really bad. But where we go up on the gunflint side, it wasn't bad at all. Yeah,
there's a good we have a group of cousins that are like brothers, we try to go every year this year, we missed and but to your same point, I mean, I just find it so relaxing to I wish we could go longer, we only end up going for four days just with all the kids and be nice to go for a week or longer. But because that's by the last day, it's like third day and you finally finally relax. Yes, it's like, you know, there's no clocks. And I kind of make a rule with the guys because unfortunately, now you can get cell phone reception up there someplace. So I just make sure everyone has them. Often the plastic bags, you can use them for pictures, or I'm pretty strict about it actually, like the whole reason for coming up here is to like completely unplug. Yeah. And so if you don't have that downtime, you can't really be refreshed. And whether it's, you know, mountaineering or the Boundary Waters, and I feel like the Boundary Waters a session on it's not unknown. It's very well known, especially for Minnesota, I feel like for how incredible it is. And it's just different, right? I mean, there's not many places that I'm aware of, in that sense, where you can just go canoe for a summer, you could literally canoe for three, four months. No problem. Yep. And so I just think it's such an incredible place to visit and go,
Oh, it's amazing. Yeah, yeah, no, and Lynn hadn't gotten there. She's from Minnesota originally. And she's in first time going to the Boundary Waters was when a guy from Alaska was like, We need to get away from people where, where do you do that? In Minnesota. She's like, Well, I heard of the Boundary Waters. Let's go. Let's go. Yeah, we'll go up there. Usually we go for a week. This year. We only got to do four days. But we'll try and do three trips a year. So we'll do one in the summer. And one in the fall and then one in the wintertime.
Okay. Oh, wow. You get up there a lot. Yeah, we try. The wintertime is really cool. I've not gone up but my dad likes to winter camp a lot. So they'll go up there in the wintertime. But it's no joke. I mean, you got to know your stuff. But yeah, he has this big. Well, you have one just like so for those that haven't seen the video yet. Which should only be like, you know, everyone but 10 people in the world. Dumb intro. So when we did the cold thing down in Pella, Iowa so because Brad hates the cold. You know, we made him go into a freezer that was negative. And I went in a T shirt because it's not that big of a deal. And he was freezing his butt off. But he had your Alaskan big down jacket on. Yeah, my dad has one just like it and we call it Maui. There's no matter where you go. If you put that thing on. It's like you're in Maui. Yeah.
So they're awesome. Yeah, I've got so many jackets. It's not funny. Like Lynn would be rolling her eyes right now because we have so many like my Arctic gear is the depth of it is very deep.
Have you gone to a forgotten event in the polls? I think I think
I've never been to El poll. All my all my Arctic work is in Alaska. Okay. So I did I used to work on a TV show up there. It's since been canceled is called last Alaskans. And I worked with four seasons with those guys. And all our work was above the Arctic Circle on that one. That was a blast. And then every year I go up to Alaska and do the Iditarod and that's nine, nine to 10 days. Are you shooting it? Are you racing shooting it? Okay, but I'm shooting it from a snow machine or a snowmobile if you're from Minnesota.
So hold on, hold on. They call them snow machines, but not why not snowmobile
because it's a snow machine. And everyone's like, well, snow machines make snow and I say no, that's a snow maker. See a snow maker and then we have a snow machine. And then as you get further along the trail, they turn into snow goes like the native populations out there calm snow goes. But you really if you just call them sleds everyone understands. So we'll get on our sled in Anchorage. And then we drive 1000 miles at this race out to Nome. That's nine days of winter camping. And that'd be
amazing. Some of those videos I assume on your website.
Well, that one right there. It's looping right there. That's a drone shot from the editor on now. That's amazing. So yeah, we just we follow that's one of our all time favorite racers who actually is from why Zetta Brent Sass is his name. And he's he's he's always like a top five finisher he wanted two years ago, he had to drop out last year regrettably. But he's a ton of fun. And he's like one of the few reasons we continue to do it. And because he's awesome. There's so much so
obviously, it's funny, going back to the underwater so I remember going up there or in I remember my dad and cousins went in but they got some local guys that were trained for that did rod they paid him I think that paid him a couple 100 bucks cash just to help support them. They took him in like 10 Miles dropped him off. He said yeah, I'll come back in a couple days, but I'm still here. He just walked that way basically. Yeah, I mean, they knew what they're doing. Yeah, yeah, I
got a friend it might have been the same guy that fracking they live up up in Finland Minnesota. I was talking to him the other day and I was like man it'd be awesome just do that go get on dog team and go to the boundary waters gonna camp and so we got to work that out. You know,
you see that Iran. Obviously well regarded as one of the hardest races on the planet. Right? And but I remember my dad and I went up to Ely. And I think it was wintergreen was the name of outfitter. Yeah. And we did dogsledding for like two days. Yeah, I was bored out of my mind. It was so slow in my mind. I'm guessing I was late 20s At the time, I'm thinking like, I gotta lean into the curve. And it was all like seven year old, you know, retirees. And I was like, I got officer running next to the dogs, and it's like, the dogs are you become such fans with the dogs. And so, anyway, that would be fascinating to shoot some
Oh, it's amazing. And like you said, people are fascinated with the dogs. But that's also a reason why they're struggling a bit right now is because they're getting attacked from the animal rights activists who are coming after him. And so they're, they're struggling. Yeah, sponsorships are dropping out a lot. But if you meet people like Brent Sasse, who's from here, Minnesota and how he handles his dogs, he, they're not abusing the dogs. And this is what the dogs want to do.
Well, that was funny. You say that so that the instructors up there and either we're saying the same thing, that particular march was pretty warm, and the dogs actually like it a lot colder than that. Oh, it's too warm. That's actually hard on him. Out of curiosity, just because we're recording this in downtown Excelsior every winter, they have the downtown Excelsior dog sledding race, I always have gone that weekend. But is that the one that runs around? Mintaka? Right. Yeah, I think it finishes right here. Just a street away from where we're recording right now. Did you do any shooting with
no, I've never done any I want to go and do something up on the bear grease when that one happens this year. And then there's rumors of a certain Minnesota coming to do the one you're just talking about. Okay, so if he if he comes out, I'll definitely be shooting that one. Sounds cool.
Yeah. Have you done any? Because I know they have. You know, the, you know, your sport. Interests. Have you ever done any of that? What's the one up in northern Minnesota just over the Canadian border? What's like 135 mile?
That's the bear grace.
The one No, but it's a running race.
Oh, you can Oh, the arrowhead there? Yeah.
I think you can run it bike it or ski ski? Yeah, yeah. Have you ever done any
shooting of that? No, no, no, that's, that's, uh, we just saw there was a guy who just did a documentary about it. It was in a film festival, one of our friends wrote, she just did the itI, which is 1000 miles on a bike. So they run the same exact trail as the Iditarod. But she's on a bike. And she's one of the featured athletes in that documentary. And that's just crazy, like, but the idea is, that's 1000 miles.
Well, we definitely need upper game with a storytelling world. So look for some cool things from I'll let me work on some grants and spots. I love it. Yeah, it'd be a really cool collaboration to see how we can tell the stories that needs to be told, frankly, across the country. Yeah, I mean, this thing could be, I think
the to wrap it up, I think the one for the trades, the one storyline, that it's not an original storyline, but the one that we really want to harness and really tell is the pride, right? Like, and an apprentice plumber is going to be proud of what he's done. But what we want is we want, we want the rest of America to be proud of that guy. Right. And that's the story we want to tell because it's like, that's our foundation. That's where we started, we had these amazing craftsmen. And to get back to be proud of craftsman is the story that we want to tell. And
I 100% agree with you someone said it better than I can. But they're basically saying like over in Switzerland, a lot of framers go to, you know, trim school or framing school for several years. And the comment is, is there is no blue collar or white collar, you just have a collar. Yeah. And the idea is that you can make a good living be well respected. It's not a taboo, it's not like you dropped out of it's not a negative thing that you're in the trades. I feel like right now, over the last 20 years, however that changed. It feels like a lot of people looking on have this, I think it's changing, because I think honestly, video storytelling is helping it a lot in the proliferation of Instagram and all even other short videos, that people are being very well celebrated for seeing how these homes are constructed and built. I think that narrative is changing. And I think it needs to change, you know, way more than it currently is. Because the whole point is, is when I talk to my framers, I'll sometimes ask them, what's your favorite part of your job. And they'll say, when I leave at the end of the week, and I look back, as I'm leaving in my truck, which is stereotypical, but it's true. And they can visually see how much they have done in a single week. There's not very many jobs. So the more that you can visually see signs of progress, you know, building skyscrapers, buildings, whatever you're building and crafting. I think there's knowing that there's that kind of self pride from the people in the craftsmen doing it is super cool. And that's actually been the number one reason that I've just as I've asked people, I'm not the only one, but it's more than the pay. They feel a deep satisfaction in creating something and being part of something. Yeah,
for sure. It's nerdy, because my favorite part of the job is when I look back and the room is empty. Like we've been there. We've absolutely destroyed this place. I mean, put it back the way you found it. I don't know why I like that. It's so cool. You can't even tell where you're here. But no, I get what you're saying. Yeah,
there's still not a bunch of others not jungle safari. Yeah. Write that in there. Hold them all out. Yeah, there.
Yeah. Well, thank
you very much for coming on. to work with you and I hope to do so again and again. Where can our listeners if they want to reach out to you to either work with you or to find out more about you what are some good platforms to
go to 515 productions.com That should be a contact us page or connect it looks like it says there or Instagram 515 on Instagram.
You'll find our numbers out there somewhere Google us we should be pretty high up on the list. Yeah, especially if you're in Iowa. Yeah, exactly. Very good. Thanks for joining the curious builder podcast if you liked what you heard, please give us a five star rating and like and rate and review. Thanks for listening. One minute, that's that is the most that was like, that was like, hey, Lynn Lynn wasn't gonna keep this Hey, Lynn. Even though you weren't here somehow your spirit kept.
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