The second half of the conversation with Benjamin Jordan turns to storytelling, and how a narrative gets built around a flight rather than bolted onto it afterwards. He walks through the approaches open to a filmmaker, from going out, doing the thing and finding the story on the editing floor, to projects like his Menorca flight where the meaning, in that case the migration of butterflies, was there from the start.
Full Transcript
Automatic captions by Autotekst using OpenAI Whisper V3. May contain recognition errors.
Introduction
00:00
Welcome back, Benjamin, to part two of Paragliding Atlas. And first thing that comes to my mind when it's all about storytelling is that how do you basically start building a narrative? Let's say you're Guinness World Record. Fly Menorca has a very deep meaning behind it. The way you explain the migration of the butterflies and the challenges they face and everything. So when it comes to developing a narrative, how does your process for that one look like and how do you do it? Sure. There's a few different approaches that I can imagine someone going into
Aninder: something like this. And... So there's three to be precise that I can imagine. One is, okay, we really want to do this thing. Let's paraglide from Mexico to Canada. That sounds cool. And so let's just do this thing, right? Okay, done. Now we're looking at that footage and we're saying, okay, what's interesting? What's relevant? Where are some parallels? How can we weave this into a story? And then start building that narrative on the editing floor, right? Because you still haven't presented anything to the world. How are you going to make it mean something to people beyond just, hey, I've got a bit of an ego and I'm going to do this thing. to be overly simplistic. Then there's the other
Three ways to build a narrative
01:01
Aninder: approach, which is to say, I can't start unless I know how the intro is gonna go, how the middle is gonna go, where all the twists are gonna be, what are the ups, what are the downs, how is it gonna conclude, what's the moral? Okay, so now here's the second option where we've constructed a story the way you might screenwrite like a Hollywood film.
And then you go ahead and you try to have your experience and you try to have that experience of paragliding from Mexico to Canada and actually meet all of those checkboxes. Like, okay, got that scene. Okay, got that scene. Oh, yeah, I was hungry right there. Okay, got that scene done. So now you're just going to slap it together, again, the way that they would in a commercial sort of documentary made for television where... That's how they do it, without elaborating on why. And then there's the middle ground, which is that you have some inspiration. In my case, for this project, it was the monarch butterfly. I discovered them, although I grew up with them in Canada, and they were just a
run-of-the-mill standard butterfly that you wouldn't bat an eyelash. The finding them in Mexico and then realizing that they actually flew there, that blew my mind. That blew my mind because I thought nothing of them, but I would think highly of anything that could fly from even a bird. Nevermind the equivalent of a post-it note. the Monarch butterfly, I would have a tremendous amount of respect for a goose that did that. Here we have this little piece of paper doing that. And with an accuracy that I don't even, for the viewers that don't know this, the Monarch butterfly, a little butterfly is flying three, 4,000 kilometers per hour. from one country across an entire other country
down to the southern part of this continent and landing, like top landing on a very specific mountain where they've never been before, their parents had never been before, their parents had never been before, but their parents had been born to have that kind of pinpoint accuracy on top of this monumentous, seemingly impossible, even now when I think about it, project. is so inspiring to me as a cross-country pilot who just desperately tries to tag waypoints on a flight that I planned that feels near impossible to me. So there, without going off too far, I'm saying that is my inspiration. I am motivated. What can I do to try and experience something of what they've experienced? Okay, now
we have the inspiration. Now we have the general idea. Now let's go and live it. And yeah, of course, we can try to find parallels while we're going and make some notes and do some vlogs about that. But let's take the original idea, not be too attached to how the project is going to go. Have it go however it goes. Again, this is a part of not having too much pressure on oneself. And then... look at all of the parallels that we can draw, all of the exciting points that we should offer to our viewers, and just mash them together into an hour and a half, whatever it's gonna be,
to try and create something that is inspiring and easy enough to watch. That's what I found works. It's worth saying, because you probably won't ask, i've tried both of the other methods just doing something and then trying to put the story together at the end that that works but it can seem it can seem a little bit amateur or at least i feel that way maybe it's because those were my earlier works but then the other extreme where you literally have a storyboard And you try to check off those epic scenes because if you can achieve this up and this down and this twist, that you're going to have something just that is sensational. That never works. There are films and films that I have shot or half shot that no one
will ever see because I tried to do them that way to save time, to create better content, and they seem so fake and they're not interesting to me. I do not want to put energy into them. They're inauthentic and I feel like they would seem inauthentic to a viewer. Got it. I think you put it across
beautifully. And I think just for the information of our audiences, for those who are interested in checking out Benjamin's work, just Google him up or head over to benjaminjordan.com and you see all the magic out there put at clicks. Yeah, just absolutely. Just benjaminjordan.com,
Aninder: like Michael Jordan's brother. Benjamin, benjaminjordan.com, that is where you want to find anything that I feel proud of that's come up in the last 15, 20 years. All right, great. I think we've talked about building a narrative and finding a purpose and how to doing it right and
making sure it reaches the audience that we intend to. I'm just wondering, Benjamin, when you were working on all of these, and you did explain it a little bit, not to put any time expectation around it, but When it comes to putting together a visual project, what has an average timeline from the start to the finish look like for you? And if you can talk us a little bit about behind the scenes and budgeting and all of that, so that anybody who is willing to get into this gets an overall idea from someone like you who has made it and realized these things. Okay. So
Aninder: hopefully your audience is getting a sense. I certainly am getting the sense as I say a lot of these things out loud that my MO is really to try to keep as much pressure off of myself as possible. So my timelines may be way stretched out versus the current expectations of people that may be looking at doing similar things. But I like, so overall, big picture, I like to spread out projects by two years. And there's a few reasons for that. I found that works best when you need to do four parts. Pre-production, which I consider conceptualization of a concept. Sorry, so redundancy there. Birth of a concept. Search for support, which is, I gotta say in parentheses, that's not a requirement. right if
people want to get on board that's great if people don't want to get on board it's what's perfect is if projects can happen with or without sponsorship and ironically sponsors are more likely to support something that doesn't need them versus something that is requires them that is the i don't want to go off on a tangent but i've learned that painfully over time that If people don't think that you need them, then they start to feel like they need you. The same way is if I had a project that already had a whole bunch of sponsorship, it would be really easy to get additional sponsors. because those sponsors recognize ultimately, not that they're having FOMO and that they wanna be like all
the other sponsors, but what they recognize is this person's already has the support to do what it is that they wanna do with or without me. And so this is actually a good place to invest. And so that can also apply to having no sponsors for a project, no support for a project, that they recognize that this project is going to happen with or without because the requirements are well within your means. And so that's just a side note, but so that's a part of pre-production. So you got your idea, you're putting together some materials perhaps to get some support. That could take six months, especially if you're working another job or you have some other obligations like family. Then you have your
project, which not to spoil anyone's dreams, but that's usually the quickest part of the whole process of this two-year cycle that I like to look at, which can take anywhere from as long as five months, six months for this fly monarca to as little as a few weeks, which was the time it took me to shoot The Boy Who Flies in Malawi, Africa. teaching the first person to paraglide there. And then after that, then you've got another six months, let's say of editing and your photos, writing articles, editing a film. And then, okay, so you've used, let's just say six months, six months and not, let's not even count the time for the expedition. Now, if you actually want to monetize that thing that
you've created, you need to be able to promote that and possibly do what I have enjoyed doing, which is going on my own film tours where I'm driving around and I'm presenting and I'm doing Q and A's and I feel I really enjoy doing that. And they can be lucrative economically, but even just being a part of film festivals, et cetera, et cetera, all these things take time. You submit today and then hopefully they accept your film in five months and then three months later it's on the screen. So right there, that's like a year. And while that's happening, you've entered your next six month cycle to begin preparations for your next project. So just in terms of being realistic for me to do this as a professional and be
able to pay my way through life with these projects, I need to give myself that kind of time on either end of the actual expedition in order to do it. And then I would say as a side effect, Giving myself that kind of time, it also allows me to have renewed passion when I get going on my next project. This is versus maybe what I would have imagined and maybe what a lot of other people would imagine, which is like, oh, you got 10 years, you could do 10 expeditions, you could do something every summer, every paragliding season. I could do something every paragliding season, but if I did that, I don't think that I would be able to do it professionally. at least not without an entire team of people around me
doing all of the film editing and publicity and all of that kind of work. I would literally just have to be the athlete, which I'm just not in that position. And I don't think I would really like to be in that position. It would feel too much like a job. So that's, I think that answers your question just in terms of the flow and the realistic expectations. It does very well. And thank you once again for explaining it so well. Like
you're a podcaster's dream, man. I ask one question and you answer all the side questions by yourself. I love being a podcaster's dream. I'll
Aninder: add that to my portfolio. Go ahead, man. I'll vouch for it. If you need a testimonial, hit me up. I'll write the best one ever. Yeah, I feel like I
want to go on a tiny bit of tangent here before switching on to the next point is that very new generation in today's world is increasing from digital media and be with any kind of content on YouTube or Instagram or short form, long form, horizontal, vertical, because I think TikTok. recently started horizontal content as well usually at an average of course this is very subjective depending upon how many projects you have and how much success you get with them but at an average what kind of revenue generations do projects like these look at can you end up buying a small car can you end up buying a living off it for a few months in a very frugal manner or just a ballpark figure so that our audiences get an idea
like what they are getting into if they want to Well, okay. So that's a great question. And I feel like in order for that to be, to resonate with
How much to tell people up front
14:13
Aninder: as many people as possible, I really shouldn't dive into, what's the right word? Like static figures? Because... Somehow it feels unprofessional, but also I feel like it feels like it would alienate someone who's on either side of that. Someone who might think that's way too much or someone who might probably most people would think that's not enough. I can't believe that he survives on that. And so let's just say it's always more than I think. can generate but it's probably not been enough to keep me out of what a lot of people who are working other like hardcore nine-to-five jobs that they either love or don't love would think is much beyond the poverty level I had my my mom growing up my
mom was a high school teacher and Way back then, this is in the 80s, I remember her thinking that she needed to raise our family. She made about 40K Canadian per year. And again, we've had a lot of inflation since then. But for a lot of my life, I haven't had to support a family. And that's all been by design because I recognized that I was going to go through this period of not earning very much and having to eat a lot of beans and rice and living in the school bus, as I described in the interview prior in order to get by. I've always been able to get by with
the support that I've gotten. I'd say at first from the community at large, for instance, The Boy Who Flies, this is a film that I shot in, pardon me, 2011. about traveling to Malawi to teach children how to build kites from random pieces of garbage. And then ultimately found a guy who wanted to learn to paraglide. And then we have this inspiring story of him becoming his country's first paraglider pilot. Great film. Also, it's my first film. Monetarily, that was probably the most successful film I've ever had in terms of prizes won from film festivals, in terms of licensing for television, in terms of people buying hard DVDs and digital downloads. That was great. That allowed me
not only to go back to Malawi and even have enough extra money to go back there and start a paragliding school there and a community center there, but it, or I should say piggyback on a community center that existed there, but to allow people to go there and paraglide with people there and teach more people to paraglide there. It allowed me to live for probably three years. while I worked on my next project, which became XBC, Paragliding from Vancouver to Calgary. The film's called Strong the Wind Blows. It's pretty cool. You should check it out. So I've always been able to get by. But I think that what's important to say is that I wouldn't have been able to get by had I continued to live the lifestyle
that I was living prior to embarking on this journey. Had I continued to rent the same nice apartment? Had I continued to feed myself the same kind of food? Had I continued to have dinner guests over every week and be feeding them some fine foods? Had I done all that stuff? Had I not moved into the school bus and really humbled myself? None of that would have worked out for me. I wouldn't have been able to put the time in and I wouldn't be here talking to you right now. Now, I would say a relatively small portion of the income comes from the audience, which is sad
because I like that idea of that's the community that supports me. The community does support me, but over time now as I've had more success, but also just had more eyeballs, I've gotten the attention of people who can benefit from advertising inside of what I do, which was always the goal was to create what I dubbed authentic advertising, which is giving people an opportunity to present their brands inside of a story that is true as opposed to fake. What I used to create in my past life as a fashion photographer, as a commercial photographer in the city of Toronto, which was inauthentic advertising, which people are giving me a wad of cash to create a whole scenario that never would have existed if that wad
of cash hadn't existed. And to create a picture of someone having a good time or a picture of someone being sexy or someone being badass or whatever in order to sell a product. People are looking at that picture and they're getting on board with that brand because they're having an emotion. But that emotion is triggered by something that never ever would have happened had a company not completely manipulated a scene in order to create it. Sorry if I'm all over the place here. I wanted to stop doing that work in Toronto as a faking it. That's the thing. It didn't feel good to me. Because I realized through, it was actually the images from that skateboarding event that I called the board meeting that were
so powerful that I realized, wait a second, these images are so powerful that they're getting more people to come out, more people to come out. People are taking action based on pictures of things that are really happening. And I get it. That sounds to people like, yeah, dude, what's the big deal? You're just having an adventure and photographing it. Yeah, dude, you're just having an adventure and you're filming it. But at the time, I could have never imagined it at the time. For me, pictures were all just about creating a false image to influence a viewer into making a financial choice to engage with a product or service. That's how I started. And it didn't feel good. And when I realized that I was
making pictures and I was art directing really, because I would have these events and then I would be directing 15 photographers. What kind of film to use? What kind of shots to get this shot? And I'm creating these powerful images of people skateboarding in white dress shirts and neckties through a busy city, congesting traffic. I'm creating power greater than I could create shooting for L'Oreal or shooting for Nike with these fake settings where I've rented all these lights and these makeup artists and stylists. How can I take that power? It feels so good to create this true, authentic power and now offer that privilege to a brand because that brand is willing to say, hey, you know what? We
Art directing the shot you need
20:18
Aninder: support what you're doing. And here's a wad of cash. Keep at it. And that's been great because that kind of support What it's allowed me to do is it's allowed me to not be so concerned about whether or not I am able to generate enough film sales or whether or not my film is perfect festival material and not have to rely on those sources of income as much and just know that there are businesses that are willing to get behind me regardless because they appreciate the message and they appreciate that people are seeing this and that they agree that this is a great way to advertise and reach people in an authentic way. I love it, man. But just to illustrate this point a little more, can you pick up any example from
any of your projects so that our audiences can relate or get an overview of how this actually works when you go out in real world where you have had an inherent goal for the brand and sold them the story that, hey, this is how it's going to be represented and that's why you should support?
Aninder: Sure. So I come up with an idea. I think to myself, okay, so let's go, let's say, okay, I'm gonna fly a paraglider across Canada, powered paraglider across Canada. So back in the day, who's gonna see this? Who's gonna be moved by it? Who's gonna care about it? Okay. probably a lot of kids are gonna care about it because what kid doesn't wanna fly? Let's just be honest, right? Like in some capacity, not to sound cliche, but like the dream of flying, I feel like we have these dreams, especially when we're young for some reason, I don't know what it is, but it happens. And when I was a kid, long before I discovered paragliding, like flying seemed like a really good idea to me. Agreed. So am I gonna
fly... literally by the seat of my pants with a little fan attached to my back across Canada. Who's going to care about that the most? Kids. Okay. How can I connect with kids inside of doing that? Okay. Why don't I do this to support children so that adults who are responsible for children feel like incorporating me into something that they're doing so that I, and then ultimately by virtue of that, that I can actually reach those children. Okay, so now, okay, I'm going to paraglide across Canada, but I'm not just going to paraglide across Canada, powered paraglide. I'm going to do it to support children. Okay, when am I going to do it? I'm going to do it in the summer. What are children doing in the summer?
They're going to summer camp. okay, I'm gonna do this to support children going to summer camp. Does that feel good to me? Yes, it does feel good to me. I went to summer camp and I went to summer camp when I was a kid that wasn't entirely paid for by my family. It was actually partially paid for by funding received from either the government or some sort of outside donors. So let me create something that gives back to that. That feels good to me. I can actually get behind that and put extra oomph into that because of the value that I got there. okay, so now
we're going to paraglide across Canada. We're going to be interested in having kids see this, and we're going to work with kids in order to make that happen. Okay, cool. We're going to land at summer camps. We're going to give inspiring conversations to children about achieving their dreams. While we're there, why don't we organize them into giant shapes on the ground, take pictures of those shapes to create something that's visual, that speaks a thousand words with the one picture, which is kids having a good time at summer camp. That's what this is all about now. Finally, Who's interested? Who's aligned with summer camp? Who else is giving to summer camp right now? In Canada, people may or may not
One picture that says everything
24:40
Aninder: know our stereotypical coffee chain, Tim Hortons. That's their thing. They are the company that aligns themselves with that statement, giving to kids going to summer camp. They have every, whatever, every year, like kids go to camp week or something like that, where some portion of every donut, every coffee that you buy goes to their charity that supports kids going to camp. So finally, now I'm going to design this project. to meet their existing branding so that they can see this project as a one-stop shop to increase what they're already doing. They just need to throw five, 10, $20,000 at it. I'll give them options in order to buy into this additional branding that they can use on top of
what they're already doing, on top of what they've already got the okay to spend money on. And that should be our path of least resistance. Are you following me, Sam? 100%. I think this is, I have to say, take notes, boys and girls, because you are literally giving out one of the most
effective blueprints in how to make it happen. And I feel like you've just given out a whole small little masterclass and then finding sponsorships to make your dreams realize. And I don't know about how many people in the audience are actually going ahead and doing it, but I definitely am taking notes and making it happen. This seems like a beautiful way to give back something to the sponsor and also have something for yourself and make your dreams a reality while maintaining a fine balance. Love it. It's worth saying, happy to hear
Aninder: that. It's worth saying that in the end, Tim Hortons was not interested in this project. The short of it is that they essentially said to me after much door knocking and presenting to them virtually that they already have a team of people working on this and they're content with the amount of fundraising that they do and that's working for their business. They don't need any extra fundraising to occur and they don't need to incorporate with any external businesses in order to do what they're doing. which was very disheartening for me at the time, because I'm thinking to myself, what do you mean you don't wanna raise an additional 100,000 or possibly a million or $5 million by piggybacking on this
record-breaking flight across Canada that kids are gonna love and that we could get tons of media around if we just would hook up. But in the end, it just didn't make business sense to them. to do that and as painful as that was, trust me, it was painful to spend months and months basically designing this project to be exactly what they would want. This is where expectation and disappointment come in that conversation. To hear from them, hey, we don't need to raise more money, good luck. Because I did that work, I still had the template And I could still present that to other businesses, which did come on board. And they found their own reasons, even if I couldn't necessarily see the exact reason. And I
didn't have anywhere near the support that I need, but I did have enough in order to make it happen. And it was important for me to have that vision and to have the idea of Tim Hortons in this case supporting, because it allowed me to really flesh out the whole thing and really create that sales package. So that's two parts. One, that's how you would get a brand like importance in an ideal world. But this isn't an ideal world. And in the end, your failure is still a success if you can frame it that way that you recognize that without them without the inspiration of working for
them or working with them you wouldn't have had all of this come together and look like this nice tidy package that other people will buy and that you yourself as an athlete and a filmmaker you buy because you can see how beautiful it is right Got it, man. I'm so glad I used the word masterclass
for this because, of course, you gave the blueprint on how to do things, and you also gave the blueprint in the second part of what to do when things don't go right. So moving forward, I would want to come to the most important part of putting together a project, which I'm pretty sure a lot of our audience members are going to be curious about, and that is filming in flight. I would love to have you talk over what kind of camera gear you shoot, what kind of shot selections do you do. Because to me, when GoPro and all the mounts and the selfie sticks came across, they
looked like a pretty big safety hazard for me. where they could snag lines and one collapse could take away your distraction and send you scrambling for handling the selfie stick and everything. Of course, it has evolved over a period of time and now cameras are shooting in 8K, which can fit in your pocket and everything. How have you navigated this aspect of filming in flight and what's your usual go-to setup in making all the possible magical shots come together? Sure. It's a big subject. Because...
Aninder: All right. Filming yourself in general, like nevermind paragliding, because it applies to paragliding. for me, sorry, I'll say filming myself requires a lot of self-discipline because so often I'm, at least ideally, I'm doing something that I would be doing if the camera wasn't there. And so that means that I'm just excited about what it is that I'm doing. And at some point, when you're trying to create hundreds of hours of footage to be able to edit it down into one hour, an hour and a half of really great footage, you got to get the camera out a lot. And so you might plan on walking up this mountain and averaging five kilometers an hour. But the truth is, if you want to be able to present that to people later,
you have to plan on moving at maybe more like two kilometers an hour because of all the time it takes to run ahead, get a tripod out, get the camera running, make sure the batteries are good, get the audio going. And so...
That takes a lot of self-discipline for me to slow myself down, to create this stuff. And it especially takes that self-discipline when I'm not feeling great. Because when I'm not feeling great, I don't have that skip in my step. Like maybe it's raining. Maybe I just had a bad flight. Maybe I'm really tired. Maybe I'm super dehydrated. That's happened. And all I can do is think about getting to the next potential lake or stream. But I have to realize that those moments where I'm really not doing well, those are vital in filmmaking because I
tend to get the camera out when I'm doing great and I just love the world and I love myself and I love my project and I wanna share it. But without the sad, awkward, difficult, painful moments in between, that becomes very redundant. in it in an edited piece and so that's the first thing is just to recognize like hey it should be really easy in theory but in practice it's just actually really hard and it requires a kind of self-discipline that I barely have and often don't so now moving on to paragliding It can be dangerous to be preoccupied with cameras. It can be dangerous to have things strapped to us that can impact our lines or our reserve system or whatever. So a lot of that thought needs to be put
into that. And I feel like safety is top notch, not top notch, is of the highest order. And it's important to find things that Partly for the reasons of that if things are hard, we won't do them like I was talking about on the ground. But also if things require too much time or thought, they're not really safe when you're dangling from 30 string above a mountain. You need to have them be really easy. And you need to be able to do them blindfolded. So as far as filming while paragliding, coming up with creative ideas that maybe you haven't seen before, or maybe you have, but that are really easy to achieve. Like you can do them in 10 seconds, 15 seconds. In terms of setting them up, often I don't launch
with my cameras out. I have to release them once I'm paragliding. That's really important is to have things that you can do quickly so that you don't, it doesn't require a ton of self-discipline to get them out and then likely bring them back in before you land. But also that don't require a ton of time because you don't usually have that much time. I usually don't have that much time where I feel like I can fly without having my hands on my toggles and be completely in the game as far as, okay, where's my bomb out? Where's my next thermal, right? Yeah, that
Filming with your hands on the toggles
34:21
makes a lot of sense, I think. Have you been just using action cams for this or have you ever switched to what is a single lens DSLR or something like that? Or what kind of hardware do you usually use to tell your stories as the technology has evolved? Okay, yeah, sure. I can talk
Aninder: about that. So on my last... film that I've released so far. Fly Monarcha, I have a, it's the Sony RX100 fourth edition I used. I've actually been using that one for almost 10 years. I keep buying the same one because I break them. I wear them out. They shoot 4K. They are like mini DSLR. They have a lot of manual options. It's not the best that you're ever going to see, but it's... way better than a phone or at least phones at the time or GoPro or what have you. So that in combination with the tripod is how I do, I would say 75% of my terrestrial stuff. The rest
would be using GoPros on selfie sticks, gimbals and stuff like that. And then in the sky, it's pretty much entirely GoPro footage with the exception of As you'll see in Fly Monarcha and a little bit in the Endless Chain, but really in Fly Monarcha, where I had the privilege of having my now wife accompany me as a filmmaker on her own autonomously in a van, she would hike up and capture a lot of very helpful drone footage of me. So I don't want to forget to say that. But as far as me, that was separate from what I was doing, right? So what I'm doing is GoPros. I rely on three shots
that I really like that I can set up pretty quick. The easiest is a 360 cam that I jam. So like the GoPro 360, whatever it's called, I just jam that into the flip plate. That's the quickest one. I have another one on a arm that articulates by two hinges, so it's got three sections. And then on that, there's a gimbal and then another GoPro that's shooting me, but I can also turn the gimbal around to shoot forward or to the side. Both of those I can activate by hand in terms of starting and stopping them. And then finally, the most complex one for me to get out is a, let's just call
it a follow cam. I think that would be the... accepted term for that which i keep in my harness in the side pocket and then once i feel very comfortable and i'm at some point in the flight that feels like it really needs to be documented that way i'll release that and that'll fly behind me usually on the left side it's biased towards the left wing tip is where i'm comfortable with it and i'll pay that out after I've launched. And then I'll, I actually have a thing that I can bring it back in when I'm landing, because sometimes you don't want something like that out
there when you're landing, partly because it'll break, but mostly because I'm terrified of having it get caught on a branch or something like that. And then causing a deflation. That one runs on a, I think it uses Bluetooth, it's either wifi or Bluetooth. I'm not sure, but it's just like the standard GoPro remote that you can, I have that on my cockpit. And so those are the three shots for me, plus whatever my wife was able to capture on our last film with the drone. And then also audio. So the same little... It's called the Zoom H1. I don't know if they make them anymore. Maybe it's H1N. But... anything I was is better than what you can get on your camera. It's just a little recorder. I'll have a lapel
mic with a little dead cat. They call it hairball that goes over the mic to cut down on wind. And I'll just clip that to either my buff or my inside of my jacket or something like that. And the sound is a little bit muffled, but I feel like that's a part of the authenticity of the shot. And so when I'm setting up my shots and, let's just say I get three out of three cameras running for a shot, I'll say, okay, flying over Mount Nemo, And then I'll just give a three clap and then that'll sync up all of my cameras and my audio. And then I'll be able to edit that later on. And I'll just
talk about something. And ironically, usually I don't use any of the talking because it's just garbage, but it's there in case I do need it. And sometimes I do use it. And when it is good, it's really good. And that pretty much, that's the secret sauce. Yeah. I love it, man. I think
sometimes the emotions that come out during the flight are one of the most authentic ones. So I think, as you said, when it's good, it's really good. It's the way to go. But Benjamin, what is the thing that makes you pull back the chase cam? What kind of mechanism do you use for that? Because I've been using chase cam myself, but once I release it, I just basically have to wait until it goes to landing. Can you tell me something about that? Are you? Yeah. Okay. For the Endless Chain, which is the following film, I developed a two-part system. The most
Aninder: important part of it was I created a pulley system where now I, instead of just having the string, the fishing line run from the paraglider down to the chase cam, I have it run up to essentially what is just like a key ring or a little carabiner, like a baby carabiner on the paraglider. But I recommend using a key loop so that nothing can clip into it. And then that runs back down to my own carabiner from my paraglider. And I can release the camera. And then I can... pull that pulley and I pull it up, let's just say five, six, seven, eight meters. And then I attach a little pre-made
loop on that fishing string that all of a sudden I see the loop and I attach that. Now, all of a sudden my camera is way higher than it was when I released it. And it's way higher than it would be able to be when I launch because it's too short. And then there's a third line and I guess a second line the second line goes from the camera also back to that same carabiner but it goes straight so when i am done flying or when i'm about to land and i want it back in i'll release that little loop on the pulley system so that now the camera falls back down to where it's too low to get a
good shot i'm done shooting But it's long enough to make it all the way back to my harness. It's longer than my paragliding lines. And then I'll pull in the little string that goes directly from the follow cam to my harness. And then I'll put it back in the box. So basically, it's some
kind of a triangle which goes between your lower surface and around the centers and around the C risers. That's right. Yes, it's a triangle. The
Aninder: top part has a pulley so I can adjust the height of where it flies. Damn, that's smart, man. You should try and sell that system because I'm
pretty sure there are a lot of people out there looking for that kind of solutions. Got it. I think as we approach the end of this part of the episode, one challenge or one new aspect from what I see that has come up with content creation is that short form has picked up so much in today's world. We all know attention spans are reducing. Social media is to blame up to some extent and everything around it. But A lot of people are just settling in for short-form content and long-form isn't really becoming that viable anymore. So do you have any advice for the budding filmmakers or content creators? Of course, chasing hard, doing what makes sense to you is how it should be. But if you were to start now with all
of these dreams in today's world and in today's age, how can somebody try and mimic your rate of success with the current industry trends and make sense with it? I don't know. In some ways, I feel like a bit of a dinosaur because when I look around me and I see the way people interact with...
Aninder: media, especially young people, I don't feel like I would have done very well as a human being growing up today. And that's not to sound resigned. I appreciate I am a dinosaur and dinosaurs don't understand that they're about to go extinct. I feel like there's a lot for me to learn to be able to properly answer that question. But I feel at the same time that Short form is because it works because people need a distraction, but they're really busy. So they don't, they want to lose themselves for five minutes because they have five minutes and they don't want to think about what's going on in their life and what they need to do, clean up their room, pay their bills, apologize to this person or go and do this,
change the oil on their car, whatever it is that they don't want to think about that's in their head, but normally for five minutes. And so that serves a purpose. And I feel like there's always been a solution for that, whether it was the radio, the television, and people using those things for short periods of time. I appreciate, because of the way that this has happened, our attention spans, even as adults, have dwindled significantly. But I think that the key to so many of the things that I've done being as successful as they were is that somehow finding a way to really make people care, really make people care about it. And I actually can't even really take credit for realizing how important
that was. Going back to skateboarding across Canada, I, as well as three other young gentlemen put this together and I can't even take credit for how it started because I got on board at the last minute as the documentary maker and essentially became the fourth skateboarder. We did this for the Canadian Breast Cancer Society and we raised a ton of money for breast cancer and a lot of awareness for breast cancer occurring more and more frequently in younger women who wouldn't have thought that they would be susceptible. And so there we are doing this thing. We've got this theme, these pink ribbons, Canadian Breast Cancer Society. And I remember on a message board from Toronto, I had
published some content and some guy said, it was a nice comment from a friend of mine. He said, of course, Ben would be the one to skateboard across Canada and somehow find a way to make people care about it. That's what he said. And I realized like, hey, he's right. But also, he's looking at this and thinking, if I did this, nobody would care. Because truth be told, he could have also done it. He had the time. He had the skill. He would have had the desire to do all of this stuff. But he didn't have a way to make anyone care about why he was doing it. And here, it just
fell into my lap. And then it became obvious to me after the fact. we were doing it for young women we were four 25 year old skateboarders skateboarding across canada to support the health of young women's breasts there is no more tongue-in-cheek project that i could have imagined being a part of but it really made people care it really made people think it really made people talk that i feel is the important part of every project If we take a look at this last one, the story of the monarch butterfly, there's no way to tell that short form. Maybe there is by someone else, but for me, that's a huge undertaking that they have to fly across the United States to Mexico and back again. And so in order
for me to tell that story, the only way to tell that is is long form, and I think that someone who sees the trailer for that film will recognize that, whoa, this is huge. This isn't just someone going and flying above the clouds, and wow, that's pretty, and that has its place, and it will only take a few minutes to showcase that. I do have content like that, but these real stories that really make you think and that really take you to a new place like your podcasts, you can't get there in less than an hour. And I feel like it's important just to take a look at what we're doing and
Why would anyone care about this
47:52
Aninder: to ask yourself, why is someone going to care? And if we can't answer that, then we need to keep thinking about that. But as soon as we figure that out, that's when we can start to engage in telling a story that's going to ask someone for an hour of their life. Wow, man. It's like poetry
in motion when you put it across so beautifully. Because it's all true, and it all makes a lot of sense. It's just a choice of realizing it and becoming aware of it, which is seemingly so easy. But again, we, even as adults, are reducing having our attention spans go haywire. Something as simple as that is often overlooked. But I think on that note, Benjamin, we pretty much have covered everything that we could wish for when it comes to flying and filming and on behalf of all my audience and the ones who are going to listen to the end to this in future i massive heartfelt thanks for sharing all this valuable gold for free of cost man and as i said in the beginning of the show one or two podcasts are not
enough to cover all of your adventures so We on Power Mining Atlas would love to bring you back for a storytelling episode for all the other adventures you have chosen, but we're probably going to have to save that one for later. But for now, it's been an honor, man. Thanks a ton.
Aninder: Thank you so much for having me. This has been so great.