Wildlife Filmmaking can be exciting, but it comes with a set of unique challenges most filmmakers don’t experience.
This week Alex Goetz, Wildlife Filmmaker, shares how he broke into wildlife filmmaking for the BBC, Nat Geo, and PBS.
In this episode Alex shares how to get started, how filmmakers get paid, and the gear he uses to capture animal habits in the wild.
Listen to learn how you can get started in wildlife filmmaking.
Key Points:
1:32 – Getting into wildlife filmmaking
7:14 – Crew in the field
10:34 – How to get started in wildlife filmmaking
16:17 – Wildlife Film Festivals
17:42 – Union for Wildlife Filmmakers
21:44 – Gear he uses
27:05 – Oh no moment
31:50 – Favorite story from the field
35:27 – Upcoming projects
Links:
Running Wild Media
Staff Me Up
Jackson Wild Film Festival
International Wildlife Film Festival
Wild Screen Film Festival
A Goetz Film
Alex Instagram
Full Transcript:
Alex Goetz (00:00):
They did something that’s pretty frowned upon, which is they tried to basically like get the animals to move for their shot. Of course, they got them to move like in our direction and so, all these bison started coming towards us and then they got spooked by us. They literally started running a circle around us. My camera assistant was like freaking out. I was still seeing things like through the lens so I wasn’t as freaked out, but he’s like, “I’ve got an air horn ready if we’re going to need to clear this, like I can try and blow this thing.” We were literally like full camera set up, backing up, like walking backwards as this herd of bison just kept coming towards us in full defense mode.
Tanya Musgrave (00:41):
Welcome to The Practical Filmmaker, an educational podcast brought to you by The Filmmaker Institute and Sunscreen Film Festival, where industry professionals talk nuts and bolts and the steps they took to find their success today. On today’s show, Alex Goetz takes us into the wild world of wildlife filmmaking, telling us what it takes to get into that corner of the industry and some of his favorite stories in the field. Find the full transcripts and more @thepracticalfilmmaker.com. I’m your host, Tanya Musgrave, and today we get to chat with wildlife filmmaker and co-founder of Running Wild Media, Alex Goetz, who has done work for Nat Geo, the BBC, PBS, and many more. Welcome to the show.
Alex Goetz (01:19):
Thanks for having me.
Tanya Musgrave (01:20):
This is awesome. I haven’t gotten the chance to interview anyone who’s done wildlife filmmaking before, and I’ve got a lot of questions so buckle up for some rapid fire. But let’s start with how you got into this. What’s been your journey so far?
Alex Goetz (01:37):
It’s been a little unorthodox. Growing up, I knew wildlife was something that I was really passionate about as a child. I wanted to work with animals in some capacity. I didn’t know what it was. I took kind of like the typical kid career paths which was like, I want to be a veterinarian or a biologist, or I don’t know, a zookeeper. As time went on, I realized I’m pretty terrible at math and sciences. I started to learn in like high school that photography and video was where my interests really were. It wasn’t until I saw Planet Earth by the BBC that it all connected. The first time I saw it, it like blew my mind. I knew in that moment, and I even like stood up and I said it with the people that I was watching it with. I’m like, “This is what I want to do as a living.”
Tanya Musgrave (02:30):
Awesome.
Alex Goetz (02:31):
I had no idea, no one around me knew that this was actually a real career. You kind of just see these things on TV and you’re like, “They just magically exist.”
Tanya Musgrave (02:40):
Right.
Alex Goetz (02:42):
I ended up going to Bowling Green State University here in Ohio, which has a film production program. I studied traditional film production. They’re basically like grooming you to move to LA or Atlanta or New York and like work as a PA up the ranks. I get to my film program and I’m like, “I want to do wildlife film.” And they’re like, “We don’t know what to tell you, but like set up this light.” It took kind of a strange path. I took a job during my time at college for a PBS station, which wasn’t dealing in wildlife at all, but it was doing more of doc-style content, and I knew that that was a little bit more of the direction I wanted to go. That’s actually where I met my business partner, Justin Grubb. He was studying biology at the time and he wanted to be like the next wildlife host, like a Jeff Corwin or like a Jack Hanna.
Tanya Musgrave (03:37):
Whoa, Jeff Corwin.
Alex Goetz (03:39):
He had come into the PBS station and like pitched a wildlife show and was like, “I need crew to come do this.” And I was like the only one who jumped up and was like, “Let’s go.”
Tanya Musgrave (03:51):
The only one at PBS?
Alex Goetz (03:56):
I mean, it was like a student-run thing but at the time I was employed there, so it’s like I could go and do this. So I jumped on the opportunity and kind of, from there, I realized like I should study environmental science as a minor. I should do film production as a major and kind of hand in hand, working with him. I was learning a lot about biology. He was learning a lot about the film side. Then it kind of just been going ever since. Since 2011 or 2012, we’ve been working together doing wildlife film.
Tanya Musgrave (04:30):
Wow. I would love to know how the conversation went when you guys got your first big gig.
Alex Goetz (04:37):
It’s still been like a weird trajectory because we didn’t still know how to get into the industry. I was still coming from the traditional film background. I knew I could find PA gigs on sets and things but I wasn’t figuring out how to land these wildlife gigs initially. What we started doing much to like the dismay of our significant others at the time was, we were saving up all of our money to self-fund all of our short films. We were just traveling around the world on our own dime, filming things and like submitting them in the film festivals, hoping that we could get something. We created a short film in Honduras about an island chain that was living like sustainably off of reef. We submitted it to a National Geographic film festival and we ended up being finalists in that and we ended up losing. The following year, we actually made a second film and submitted it again and we’re finalists and ended up winning. That was kind of like that moment of winning this Nat Geo award, we point at as like the launching point.
Tanya Musgrave (05:43):
Wow.
Alex Goetz (05:44):
Everything before that was just like, we were living off of raisins and carrot sticks in our very cold apartment together, suffering for the art, I guess.
Tanya Musgrave (05:56):
You still paid your dues.
Alex Goetz (05:59):
From there, it really took off and it’s kind of taken shape in different ways. Running Wild Media is very much like a production agency or a creative agency in that we do a lot of work for nature and wildlife organizations that will approach us. Like, “Hey, we have a story we need told, here’s the budget, can you guys make us a short film or a longer film?” That helps get the word out about conservation or wildlife. But then we’re also now moving into the broadcast aspect of it, where we’re getting hired to be like a camera crew that goes out and shoots for like a Nat Geo or a BBC.
Tanya Musgrave (06:35):
I remember somebody saying that if you wanted to be a Nat Geo photographer, you basically had to be an anthropologist or a zoologist first and like live in that environment for like two years before the camera even came out and then the camera was actually secondary and completely understanding the subject first. I’m guessing that things have changed a lot since then, if that was like, indeed how it actually was. Photographers don’t fly first class anymore. I’m guessing that you have to be and I think your environmental science speaks a lot to that, that you have to be extremely aware of like the behavior of your subjects or work closely with somebody who is, but what’s your crew look like out there? Is it just the two of you?
Alex Goetz (07:22):
At times, it’s like two or three people on what I would deem like a smaller budget, wildlife production.
Tanya Musgrave (07:28):
What would a smaller budget wildlife production like hover around?
Alex Goetz (07:32):
One of the ones we did this past year is a 10-episode production. I think each episode, pre-production and post, falls at like 1.5 million an episode and they were like, “This is a small budget.”
Tanya Musgrave (07:48):
Wow.
Alex Goetz (07:49):
But I mean, you’ll have crew sizes up to like five or more depending on what the subject matter is.
Tanya Musgrave (07:57):
Would that just be like other shooters, other camera operators? What kind of roles are there? Because it’s not like, there’s a first 80 somewhere on set or that kind of thing.
Alex Goetz (08:07):
Sometimes you’ll just have like a producer and then a cam op or you’ll have like a cam op and a camera assistant. In my case, I worked with both. At one point we did have two cam ops going out for a three-week stint with a producer. Then there was a few times, this past year in 2021, we did about six months of shooting total in 2021, like on location. A lot of times, it was just myself, a camera operator and a camera assistant trying to find all the subjects they wanted filmed and film them. And I think you’re right, there is a lot of like ecology and biology that goes into it that is really necessary to find what you’re looking for.
Tanya Musgrave (08:51):
A lot of it is dependent on whether or not a critter decides to show up, right? You said it was like a three or even a six-week shoot, like how long are typical shoots and how would you invoice for that? You know what I mean? Is it like, until we get these shots and it might be five months.
Alex Goetz (09:10):
They have like insurance that they’ll cash in on if absolutely nothing goes right in a stint. But I mean, they’re paying every day you’re there.
Tanya Musgrave (09:19):
Really?
Alex Goetz (09:20):
Like for three weeks I’m getting paid for 21 days of work to basically sit and hope that I get what they’re asking for. And if I don’t, they’re like, “Well, on the next thing.” Usually that’s how it goes. It’s like, we’re fully expecting, we’re getting set up with like producers at an agency or a production house that are doing a lot of like the research beforehand to make sure we’re getting into the spot that we could best be successful, but that doesn’t mean we’re always going to find what we’re looking for.
Tanya Musgrave (09:51):
Interesting. So their pre-production is more about somebody spending some time out their way beforehand saying like, “No, this is their usual watering hole,” kind of thing.
Alex Goetz (10:01):
Sometimes you do have a biologist with you or you’re working with researchers or biologists who are working with that species that they’re trying to film, and like you have a research team back in pre-production who is just communicating constantly with these researchers or these biologists to be like, “How do we make this a successful shoot and we’re not just like making these guys sit outside for three weeks and paying them?” Which is nice.
Tanya Musgrave (10:25):
Is there some kind of a thing that you would walk on set, or not on set, but you would walk in and just be like, “I can’t be a part of this production because I know that there’s red flags here.” What would you warn newcomers about?
Alex Goetz (10:40):
I think that what I found in the past is that if I get the opportunity to pick my camera assistant or I know the producer, and we go out in the field, the two or three of us, like I feel super comfortable. But sometimes when you bring in additional people that you have no experience with, you really have no idea what their comfort level is, there’s times where we’re like, we did a four-week shoot in Yellowstone in March, it was averaging like negative 20s to like 20 degrees. I mean, we were up 4:00 AM to like 8:00 PM at night.
Tanya Musgrave (11:18):
Mercy.
Alex Goetz (11:18):
In like all day long shoots for four weeks straight, I don’t really know how we survived the shoot.
Tanya Musgrave (11:26):
That sounds brutal.
Alex Goetz (11:27):
We are running, I think, on like absolute fumes, there’s moments where you go and do shoots like that, where you’re like, “I know I need to have somebody with me that I absolutely trust and is not going to burn out after like five days and just immediately become a hindrance to this shoot.” That actually creates kind of like a big obstacle for newcomers trying to get into the industry is, they’ll like reach out to established shooters or producers or cam ops and be like, “Hey, I would love to carry your bags or carry your tripod or whatever to get experience.” And a lot of times we’re like, “We would love you to do that, but we can’t take the risk of having somebody show up and be tired and exhausted on day three and basically like pull the whole shoot momentum down.”
Alex Goetz (12:17):
Really like this whole industry, same with the main film industry, is about knowing people because you got to know who can hike with you for three weeks or four weeks and not burnout. There’s different routes that people can take to go into this but definitely one of the things in it make stuff like, film in your own backyards, film wildlife in your own backyards, there’s always some sort of conservation topic you could film in your own backyard, in your own community. Yes, raccoons and robins might not be a sexy animal to film for you right now but to somebody maybe in Australia or India, where these animals don’t exist, you need to just know your audience when you make your film and distribute in a different location where people will actually appreciate the animal that you’re filming in your backyard.
Alex Goetz (13:05):
But like really for wildlife film, a lot of the people I know who’ve gotten their starts it’s because they make a short film and they do festival runs with it and people see the potential that that person has to do work on their productions. That’s like a great way to get into it. But if somebody wants to take a more traditional route, there’s obviously internships. There’s something called like a bursary, which is especially in the UK, I think it’s more of a thing, but it’s kind of like a paid internship opportunity for a set year for like a production company doing wildlife film. It’s not going to be much, you’re still going to probably be sleeping on a couch and not eating a ton, but it’s going to get you on like every production that company’s doing in that year and get you a bunch of credits.
Tanya Musgrave (13:50):
Wow.
Alex Goetz (13:50):
They have like bursaries for cam ops so that you can go and tag along on these project and learn from the people actually doing the work. Then I believe they have some that are like more of a producing side as well type deal.
Tanya Musgrave (14:02):
Say bursaries, spell that.
Alex Goetz (14:05):
B-U-R-S-A-R-Y.
Tanya Musgrave (14:09):
Okay. Bursaries.
Alex Goetz (14:09):
Like BBC offers them, like wildlife film bursaries, and then a lot of production companies as well, but really making your own film and showing your dedication to it is the biggest thing. I think anybody can do… It’s like I mentioned earlier, you can’t message somebody who’s already doing it and expect that they’re going to be like, “Come on.” Because there’s just so many hurdles and risks they take with bringing somebody that they don’t have a hundred percent trust in yet.
Alex Goetz (14:39):
That’s my advice. I think a lot of people think it comes down to contacting people, but I really think it’s showing that you’re ready to do the work. I mean, I know when I first started, there was so many mysteries about this industry that I wish somebody was like, “Here’s what’s going on.” But for the longest time it was like hidden, they wanted the barrier of entry to be like very difficult. Especially with providing opportunities for minorities and women, and people of color, like we need to have that curtain pulled back to show them like, “All right, here’s some steps you can take if you want to get into this,” because it’s historically been an old white guy industry here in the wildlife world, especially.
Tanya Musgrave (15:24):
Really. Wow. I mean, I really appreciate it too, because it’s been something that’s been just shrouded in mystery in general. I mean, there’s not really much of an IMDb, I guess, for wildlife video. Like is there a mandy.com? Is there like a Staff Me Up and film and TV jobs? I know like the writing community’s big on Twitter.
Alex Goetz (15:49):
There’s definitely places you can go. I think the Talent Network is a UK-based website that focuses more on like BBC type gigs. A lot of like documentary style stuff. I’ve seen Nat Geo shoots come through on Staff Me Up. They tend to be more like television-focused, not as much wildlife. There may be some natural history associated with it, but I’ve seen those come through, but really the film festivals are kind of the big thing. That’s where you also realize like how small this industry is, because you’re going to just run into the same people.
Tanya Musgrave (16:21):
What are some of the main ones?
Alex Goetz (16:24):
The two biggest ones are Jackson Wild and I guess it’s in Wyoming. That’s like every other year, that’s the big US one. There’s some smaller really great ones in the US like International Wildlife Film Festival in Missoula, Montana. There’s some DC based film festivals focused on wildlife and conservation. Then in the UK, the big one, the big deal is Wildscreen. They call it like the Oscars of wildlife film.
Tanya Musgrave (16:52):
Wow.
Alex Goetz (16:52):
It’s like the bigwigs are going to be there, you might have a shot with David Attenborough.
Tanya Musgrave (16:57):
Wow. At these wildlife Oscars, I mean like the Oscars, like you need to be invited. Could anybody go if they just wanted to?
Alex Goetz (17:07):
Technically, yeah. I mean, they’re crazy expensive, but it’s like, it’s that whole thing of you’re investing and meeting the people.
Tanya Musgrave (17:16):
Yes.
Alex Goetz (17:16):
But a lot of times they recognize the barrier of entry that, that causes. And so they’ll be like volunteer opportunities where it’s like volunteer this day and you’re going to get a day off on this day so that you have opportunities to go and mix and mingle with people or see films and things like at that. So volunteering is also, at these film festivals, kind of a great way to meet not only like the higher ups, but your peers who are probably volunteering at the same time as you and on their way up too.
Tanya Musgrave (17:46):
I know that in the traditional film area, there’s really the high level jobs are reserved for people who are part of that union. Is there a union that’s like necessary to be part of this crew?
Alex Goetz (17:59):
Nope.
Tanya Musgrave (17:59):
Nope?
Alex Goetz (18:00):
We just…
Tanya Musgrave (18:02):
You just got to be crazy enough.
Alex Goetz (18:04):
It really is. That was basically what I was going to say and then I’m like, “Should I say that?” You do just got to kind of be crazy enough. There has been talks and I think one was attempted to start back in the day, but there’s definitely been talks because I mean, there are some guys, like when you look at something like Planet Earth, a lot of those shoots, you break down an episode into sequences, which are usually like three to five minutes a sequence. They’re estimating about a week a minute to get footage. They’re spending a week on a subject just to get one minute of footage.
Tanya Musgrave (18:39):
Wow.
Alex Goetz (18:39):
I think on Planet Earth II, I heard it was about five weeks per sequence and only one sequence went over and that was filming snow leopards. But I mean, when you’re are there for like three to five weeks, you’re in it, like you’re working the entire time. Oftentimes, you find that you come home and you’re like dead to the world for like another three weeks to recoup. I think there’s been talks about like, what should our standards look like?
Tanya Musgrave (19:10):
I’m curious what some of the standards are now. Especially for some entry level filmmakers in this field, because just warning or not necessarily warning, but like giving them a heads up of what they could expect, what could they expect to invoice and what would be included in that?
Alex Goetz (19:28):
Usually your travel’s all covered. Your expenses are all covered. You could expect to do like a half day rate for travel days. You normally get like a per diem and it could be like $50 or more a day.
Tanya Musgrave (19:39):
All right.
Alex Goetz (19:39):
Then, literally all your expenses are covered, all your food is covered, rentals and things like that. There’s usually some insurance that’s booked for the shoot to keep you a little bit safer.
Tanya Musgrave (19:53):
Because I was going to ask that too, like insurance-wise, so they would set that up for you?
Alex Goetz (19:59):
Yeah. There’s some insurance that’s like for the production. Fortunately, I haven’t had to use it. So I don’t really know what all it covers now that I think back on it and then your day rate, which, I mean, you’re there, like if I got booked 21 days, you’re getting your day rate every day. Starting rates could be somewhere from like $450 a day for like three to five weeks all the way up to whoever is making the big dollars.
Tanya Musgrave (20:29):
That was always something like when you enter into a completely different place because like union rates are all posted. You can kind of go and see like, “Oh, this is what I should be charging.” But for some of these offshoots like, “Hey, by the way, you’re going to be put in danger this whole entire time.” Sometimes you got to have that little bit of crazy. I immediately think of like, Sean O’Connell. I’m curious if you’re really related with The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, when he was out there with those snow leopards, that’d be incredible.
Alex Goetz (21:06):
I haven’t gotten to see snow leopards yet, but there’s definitely moments like that where you’re just like sitting there and you’re like, “This is amazing.” It’s freezing cold or it’s really hot but what we get to do is pretty awesome. I forgot one point about what to expect maybe financially. It’s like, if you bring your own kit or like parts of your kit, like if you want all your own lenses, your own camera bodies and tripods, they’ll rent all that from you like industry-level rates.
Tanya Musgrave (21:36):
Okay.
Alex Goetz (21:36):
It’s a nice thing to roll out there with your own kit, knowing everything you’ve got, and then on top of that, getting like a bunch of money each day to rent your own kit.
Tanya Musgrave (21:47):
I was curious about that kit. I was going to ask about the tools of your trade and what gear or gadget is your old reliable in that kit?
Alex Goetz (21:56):
I would say the old reliable, and it’s not really that old in the grand scheme of things, is the Canon 5200mm lens. It kind of makes the rounds on the internet as like a viral lens because it looks outrageous. Spec-wise, it actually is, but it’s a 5200mm lens, with a 1.5 times extender built into it. You can just flip it at any time and get to 1500 millimeters. It’s like a T5 to eight, nine, I think is right. I would say that partnered with the red helium right now is like the wildlife filmmaker kit.
Tanya Musgrave (22:35):
Wait. How much does that lens weigh? I’m just curious.
Alex Goetz (22:38):
A ridiculous amount. It’s like a 70 and it’s also like a $78,000 lens and we’re just like throwing it around, like in dirt. It’s pretty awesome. It’s a fun lens.
Tanya Musgrave (22:50):
How does one transport? Like, you’re just backpacking that thing in?
Alex Goetz (22:55):
You’re just hiking with it. That’s why you hope you have like a good camera assistant or a producer that wants to carry things with you because the only way to support that with a red on rails is to have like an OConnor or a Sachtler like a big tripod. I mean we’re using like huge OConnor tripods and like baby legs, usually depending on the subject and you’re just carrying it.
Tanya Musgrave (23:20):
So all you newbies, all you fit newbies, get out there.
Alex Goetz (23:25):
Get like one of those a hundred pound sandbag that you can sling over your shoulders and like hike, that’s like a great endurance training.
Tanya Musgrave (23:32):
Just hike for 21 days, you’ll be set. Don’t crap out on us at five. You got to be ready. All right. How about your favorite new gadget, one that revolutionizes how you work?
Alex Goetz (23:45):
I would say across the industry and I just bought, I have five of these now. If this was visual, like I could pull them up and show you but they are camera traps that you can put DSLR or mirrorless cameras in. It’s literally like a modified Pelican case that you can put a DSLR or a mirrorless camera in and I mean, you could put anything from like a Sony A1 if you really wanted to, shooting like 8K internal or like Panasonic or anything like that. Inside of it is like two batteries that will last like six months, maybe, in the field and then your camera. And then you’ve got all your programming options right there on the side.
Tanya Musgrave (24:30):
Wow.
Alex Goetz (24:31):
And it’s all wireless. It hooks up to an app on your phone.
Tanya Musgrave (24:33):
Wow.
Alex Goetz (24:38):
They have modified lens ports so that you can put different sized lenses on it like I got a wide angle on. I actually was like testing this new one out on my cat boxes at home. Because I like knew they were going to come through there and then you have a waterproof lens cover.
Tanya Musgrave (24:55):
Nice.
Alex Goetz (24:55):
That goes over it. And then a cover on top of that. Then you actually have, I got one sitting right here, these like triggers which are like PIR lasers and you set these up on like a trail for instance. This is where like the biology and the ecology aspect really comes into place. Because we can go out into nature and let’s say we’re looking for wolves or something or like a big cat.
Alex Goetz (25:23):
You can be like, “This looks like a spot a big cat or wolf might come through.” And if we put these lasers up, it’ll trip one of these lasers that’s in a different spot and you can literally set these things. They’re fully customizable to like trigger and start rolling, and you can film animals completely under served with these setups. I mean the fact that like mirrorless cameras and DSLRs are getting so good nowadays as far as what their internal recording quality is. I mean there’s entire sequence of shot just on these cameras now, where they just rig up maybe like five of these like a wolf den for instance. Then you get these like beautiful shots of animals doing what animals do when people aren’t around. But I mean, you are leaving these out in nature for like months on end.
Alex Goetz (26:17):
We’ve put them out and like black bears have come up and started chewing on them or they’re literally yanked them down. We found them laying in swamps. Luckily, they’re waterproof, but the kind of running joke in the wildlife world is like, “If you’re filming in a place with black bears, fully expect your cameras will probably get messed with.” These have kind of been game changers in the wildlife film world. A lot of the old guys in the industry are like, “This makes it too easy.” But it’s like the new thing right now.
Tanya Musgrave (26:52):
That was like one of the ways that they got the first snow leopard, or was it not?
Alex Goetz (26:57):
A lot of the snow leopard stuff is now done on these types of camera setups.
Tanya Musgrave (27:01):
All right. Bears chewing on your cameras. I would love to know some other things that have gone wrong, like what has been an “oh no” moment?
Alex Goetz (27:11):
The scariest moments don’t actually tend to be like with the animals. It’s like a result of bad human behavior. Like a lot of our closest calls have actually been a result of people disturbing animals and animals getting angry. Realistically, we should go into a situation recognizing the signs that make an animal aggressive. How do we mitigate that? Because you don’t want to send back a whole day of footage where you just have like an angry looking animal just staring at you, because it just doesn’t look great for an edit. 2021, we had a lot of close encounters with herds of bison in the wild and it was all other people’s fault, which is really frustrating.
Tanya Musgrave (27:53):
Like how so?
Alex Goetz (27:54):
In one case we thought we were in a pretty remote area filming this herd of bison and they were kind of down in this little hilly valley. We actually found another wildlife film crew, which we were not expecting, filming them from another side. All the bison were pretty chill. We went down to try and get these shots and they did something that’s pretty frowned upon, which is, they tried to basically get the animals to move for their shot. They like influenced their behavior.
Alex Goetz (28:24):
Of course, they got them to move like in our direction and all these bison started coming towards us and then they got spooked by us and they literally started running a circle around us. My camera assistant was like freaking out, if he listens to this, he’ll probably think it’s funny. But I was still seeing things like through the lens so I wasn’t as freaked out, but he’s like, “I’ve got an air horn ready if we’re going to need to clear this. I can try and blow this thing.” Come to find out he didn’t actually have an air horn. And we were literally like full camera set up, backing up, like walking backwards as this herd of bison just kept coming towards us in full defense mode.
Tanya Musgrave (29:05):
No.
Alex Goetz (29:08):
That was probably one of the closer calls that we’ve had with wildlife is just like another person doing something like that. Because sometimes we’re not filming in like totally remote areas, like we’re in a national park and you’ll get a lot of visitors that don’t know the etiquette or the way to work around in these animals or take photos of them without disturbing them.
Tanya Musgrave (29:28):
We have a listener question from our Instagram @practicalfilmmaker. What is the toughest part of your job?
Alex Goetz (29:34):
I think it’s the days where you don’t see what you’re looking for. Like we did four weeks in Yellowstone out there trying to film like a very specific animal behavior. For like two weeks, we weren’t seeing it. I was getting like pretty nervous and paranoid because it was the first time working with this producer. We obviously wanted to deliver the best thing we could. I mean, there’s nothing you can do in that moment so there’s like a level of forgiveness to be had, but that’s usually the toughest moment is like, you’re putting in all these hours a day, not filming the behaviors that you’re looking for, it’s pretty tough. But also something that you see a lot of as well. I mean a lot of people who are in this industry really care about conservation and sometimes you’re going to these locations that are starting to get heavily impacted by humans or the population numbers of a species are spiraling downward. And you’re having to see kind of the effects of that, which are pretty depressing.
Tanya Musgrave (30:31):
I did a new year’s episode and was kind of addressing the why, like this is tough business and wildlife filmmaking seems like an exceptionally tough business. I was curious if that is your why, like what is your why?
Alex Goetz (30:47):
I definitely think that’s my purpose in this stems from, and that’s the reason Running Wild Media still is doing a significant amount of client work rather than full production, like for TV or movies, is that we still have like very large passion for telling stories that are going to change people’s perception of maybe an animal or like positively impact them in a conservation way. Like some of our films will be, or projects will be like traditional blue-chip film making, which is like animals in the most beautiful environment, no sign of humans, Planet Earth style. Then some of our content is going to be doc-style content where it’s like, you’re going to see a lot of wildlife footage, but we’re also going to talk about the researchers who are doing like amazing things or the community that’s like rallying around saving a species. We love to play in both of those fields.
Tanya Musgrave (31:41):
Kind of diversify that. No, that makes a lot of sense because filmmakers are artists and artists usually feel pretty deeply about something, like that passion usually drives them on. This is another listener question, a favorite story from the field.
Alex Goetz (31:55):
When we won the National Geographic award for our short film, one of our prizes was to go to Africa and shoot for Nat Geo.
Tanya Musgrave (32:04):
Stop.
Alex Goetz (32:07):
We went to Africa and we filmed some stuff in South Africa around Kruger for one of the shows that they currently had. Then we actually rented a safari truck on our own after our time was done there and we drove for five weeks total through like South Africa, Botswana, Mozambique and Namibia. I mean, each time we’re like camping in national parks or in wild areas. It’s like, anytime an animal wants to come through your campsite, it comes through your campsite. And our safari truck had like a popup tent on top and then one of us, unfortunately, had to sleep in a tent on the ground and we kind of like rotated who got to sleep on like the comfy top tent. In one night I was sleeping on the ground tent and I had to use the bathroom in the middle of the night.
Alex Goetz (32:57):
I had developed this technique where I would like unzip the flap of my tent and then I’d use my flashlight to kind of do like a strobe thing, in an attempt to scare whatever is out there away. I did that this night and immediately growling came back and I just zipped up the tent again and I like laid back down and my heart was like beating. And I’m like, “I’m not using the bathroom.”
Tanya Musgrave (33:23):
Did you even have to go anymore?
Alex Goetz (33:25):
I somehow made it through the night, but like shortly after that, because I was definitely not going to sleep anytime soon. I heard very loud purring just going around my tent. I think that there was a leopard maybe like hanging out in our campsite and I was just like, “We’re not using the bathroom tonight. We’re staying in the tent.”
Tanya Musgrave (33:50):
I mean, all right, I’m a cat lover, but nope.
Alex Goetz (33:55):
Not a cat that can like carry you. I mean, they’re awesome to view from a distance, but when they’re between your tent side and you, it’s nice that they don’t know that like tents are pretty easy to cut through, I guess, is really what it comes down to.
Tanya Musgrave (34:14):
I guess.
Alex Goetz (34:17):
Like we’ve been on multiple shoots now where we’ve had to film like some sort of rattlesnake sequence, and they’re literally like, “All right, boot up and just hike until you find a snake.” And we’re just doing like transects, going in a line through like big fields just waiting until one of us walks up to a rattlesnake. Those are always fun.
Tanya Musgrave (34:36):
Usually, you’ll be like to avoid.
Alex Goetz (34:38):
Yeah. So normally when you hear like someone scream at a national park, it’s probably a snake and you just follow that because it’s like you know you’re going to find a snake probably on the other side of that.
Tanya Musgrave (34:49):
Wow. That’s amazing. I mean, it sounds like you haven’t had any negative interaction with some of these.
Alex Goetz (34:55):
No, not with snakes, fortunately. I mean, we’ve seen some like venomous snakes in places like Costa Rica but they’re usually so chill. Like that’s the thing people don’t understand about snakes is like the average location people get bit by a snake is their hands because they’re trying to grab it or their face because they’re picking it up and looking at it. But like for the most part, snakes are smart enough that they recognize that people are not something that I can consume so why waste my time and energy on it.
Tanya Musgrave (35:21):
That makes sense.
Alex Goetz (35:22):
They’ll just usually try to get away from you. But if backed into a corner, they’re like, they’re going to be ready to go.
Tanya Musgrave (35:29):
Our last listener question is, what project are you excited about?
Alex Goetz (35:33):
A couple projects that we worked on this past year are going to be releasing or just released, but we shot for BBC program called The Mating Game. It was all about unique animal courtship behaviors. One of the episodes we got to shoot for was like a conservation-focused episode, which we were really excited about. We filmed a wolf sequence, which unfortunately didn’t end up making it into the episode for time. Then we filmed a sequence about one of the rarest mammals in the world, the black-footed ferret but it’s actually the first cloned endangered species.
Tanya Musgrave (36:07):
Wait, back up.
Alex Goetz (36:08):
It’s pretty crazy. So we filmed this, there’s this ferret facility with endangered ferrets in North America out in Colorado, they have a cloned ferret called Elizabeth Ann and she’s a black-footed ferret. She’s actually a clone of a ferret that died in the eighties.
Tanya Musgrave (36:28):
Wow.
Alex Goetz (36:29):
We went and filmed this clone for the sequence in the mating game that David Attenborough narrated.
Tanya Musgrave (36:35):
What?
Alex Goetz (36:36):
That was like one I’m my life goals. That’s like the dream of most wildlife filmmakers is to get something. But it was interesting because we filmed it during the time of COVID. Ferrets apparently are like very susceptible to COVID and human diseases. We actually had to film the entire sequence through the building’s windows from the outside. We’re like black taping up all the windows or sheeting up all the windows, cutting holes in them for the lenses and literally filming entire sequence from outside the building in like a hundred degree days when it was like crazy windy. It was fun, but it was a clone, which was cool.
Tanya Musgrave (37:15):
That is cool.
Alex Goetz (37:16):
So they took a DNA sample from the one that died in the eighties. They were worried about like the genetics of the population of remaining black-footed ferrets. They’re like, “We need to inject some new genetics into this population so let’s bring back a ferret from the eighties to breed amongst all these other ones.”
Tanya Musgrave (37:36):
Okay.
Alex Goetz (37:36):
I mean it is physically this 1980s ferret.
Tanya Musgrave (37:40):
Wow. It’s so wild.
Alex Goetz (37:40):
It was weird.
Tanya Musgrave (37:43):
That’s so wild.
Alex Goetz (37:44):
You’re like looking at it and you’re like, “You’re weird, but you look like a normal ferret.” It was interesting in that way.
Tanya Musgrave (37:52):
What questions should I have asked you?
Alex Goetz (37:55):
I mean, the question that every wildlife filmmaker gets is like what’s the scariest wildlife encounter. That’s like a question that I think gets asked too much so I’m trying to think of what the opposite of that would be. One of the biggest parts of wildlife filmmaking was traveling to exotic locations, spending tons of money on gas, planes like cargo, like your carbon footprint was massive just to go to a place to film and tell people like, “We need to do conservation better.” Fortunately, because of COVID, they’ve started to really look into like, who is a good cam op in a location that we want to film in, and hiring local has just become like more of a thing lately.
Tanya Musgrave (38:41):
That’s good.
Alex Goetz (38:42):
That’s definitely one of the things that you think about the most, like I’ve started to want to do more projects locally within the United States, because I know like we have some amazing wildlife here. It may not be as exciting as like Australia or Africa to some people, but we have things we should care about here. To get people to care about them, is important.
Tanya Musgrave (39:03):
I really appreciate this. You’ve shed a lot of light on this. How do people find you or follow your work?
Alex Goetz (39:09):
You can find my website, which is agoetzfilm.com, A-G-O-E-T-Z film and then my Instagram handle is actually the same thing.
Tanya Musgrave (39:18):
Nice.
Alex Goetz (39:19):
From there you can kind of find anything you want to find but that’s a great spot to go to communicate or anything.
Tanya Musgrave (39:25):
Nice. Thank you so much. Man, you rock. This is so cool.
Alex Goetz (39:29):
Thanks for having me.
Tanya Musgrave (39:30):
This is great. If you enjoy this interview, follow us right here and on Instagram, ask us question and check out more episodes @thepracticalfilmmaker.com. Be well and God bless. We’ll see you next time on The Practical Filmmaker.