I’ve been making outdoor and hunting films for a while now, about fifteen years. Over the course of that decade and a half, I’ve learned an awful lot. When I compare my work now to my work back then, it’s clearly improved. My cuts are clean. Audio levels are normal. Color is corrected. It’s a testament that you get better at what you persist in.

But I owe a lot of the progress I’ve made to a lot of people. Here are a handful of others in the hunting space you should watch, follow, and learn from:

Rockhouse Motion

In so many ways, Rockhouse Motion is the original outdoor filmmaker. Maybe not the first, but clearly among the first to change the way hunting films were made. Rockhouse’s Matt White was originally associated with Heartland Bowhunter, back when Heartland Bowhunter was doing TV differently than other TV show on the Outdoor Networks.

But TV was not the place for what Rockhouse had to offer. It went commercial and became the hunting industry’s version of Camp4Collective (notice the similarity in some of the media reels).

Rockhouse is more meticulous than any production company in the outdoor space. They study film and employ what they learn into everything they make. Rockhouse is not a YouTube channel, and more clearly delineates the difference between YouTube videos and actual hunting films than anyone in the game.

Sicmanta

I name Sicmanta for one reason only, and it has nothing to do with Donnie Vincent. Donnie is an Instagram influencer who partnered with an excellent director of photography and editor to create what I consider the best hunting film ever made, The River’s Divide. No other project has taken on and adapted classical Rom-Com storytelling quite like the story of Donnie Vincent and his North Dakota whitetail, Steve. If you want to make hunting films that stand out, watch this one. And then watch it again and learn from it. It’s brilliant storytelling.

Branlin Shockey

Branlin produced one of the only interesting outdoor shows on the Outdoor networks, ever— The Professionals and Uncharted.

Most TV shows, Heartland Bowhunter included (HB was innovative in that it used DSLR cameras to capture cinematic imagery), are some iteration of the exact same thing. Their success depends on the likability of the main character. Do you want to see Lee Lakowski kill another deer? Or are you watching his wife, Tiffany? The stories are trite. The imagery is meh. Outdoor TV is very much about personality (but in a different way than a successful YouTube channel).

Where Branlin stands out as a producer, however, is in his ability to design sound and match it to production. I don’t know that anyone does it as well as he does. Pay attention to what you hear in this piece from 2014.

When I filmed Cam Hanes hunting moose in Alaska, the kill shot came after the sun had gone down. There was only a slight glow of blue light in the sky, and the arrow is very difficult to see through the falling snow. As I edited the project and sent it to Cam for review, he sent it to Branlin. Branlin’s advice was to add foley sound of a bowstring release to help viewers realize the shot was made. The audio would help them “see” the arrow.

Studying these individuals has been informative, and I hope to share some of the knowledge I’ve gained from them and my own experimentation with others.