Scott Snell

0:00:00 Speaker 1: On this episode of The Mack Talks, we have Scott Snell on the show. He’s a director of photography with over 28 years of working experience in the video production industry. His credits range from short films to network television. His work has been seen around the world on such networks as NFL, MLB, NASCAR, Netflix, Fox, the Olympics, and more. He recently won an Emmy. Yes, a freaking Emmy for his work on ESPN 2018 US Open Tennis Championship. We’re excited to have him on. Let’s go. Chase, tell the people what The Mack Talks are.

0:00:42 Chase: If you’re an entrepreneur, impactful leader, or business owner, the Mack talks are that vehicle that brings you the stories that you need to hear.

0:00:49 S1: That’s right, real stories from real leaders. Check us out every Thursday. Scott, welcome. Thanks for joining us. Obviously, I’ve been a huge fan of your work, you do some amazing work, we got a mutual buddy between us.

0:01:06 Scott Snell: Yes, that’s right.

0:01:06 S1: Good old Matt.

0:01:07 SS: Good old Matt, yep.

0:01:08 S1: Which we just call Bart. [laughter] He’s not even Matt anymore, he’s just Bart.

0:01:11 SS: Yeah, Matt’s a good man.

0:01:13 S1: But how are you doing today?

0:01:14 SS: I’m doing great. Thanks for having me out, and I know we tried to get this going, what? A good month and a half ago.

0:01:19 S1: Yeah, but you got a lot of college football to…

0:01:21 SS: I do.

0:01:22 S1: To shoot and get done, right?

0:01:23 SS: Yeah. It’s been a crazy season and my whole season changed. I wasn’t really looking to have a slammed fall like I did this year, but I got a call literally about two and a half weeks before I started doing the US Open, which I’ve done for 19 years. So I was looking to do the US Open, a few one-off games here and there throughout the fall, maybe some NFL, stuff like that, nothing crazy. And a buddy of mine that I worked with at ESPN forever, he’s a longtime friend of mine, Mike Fauss and he called me up and said, “Hey, you still doing any work for SkyCam,” and I said, “No, not really.” He was like, “Great, ’cause we have a new system coming in that they were looking at, and it’s called OmniCam. They’re a great company, if you do the research, they have a lot… ”

0:02:15 S1: So SkyCam is the unit that is on the cables.

0:02:18 SS: Yes.

0:02:19 S1: And it gets those awesome shots.

0:02:21 SS: Yes.

0:02:21 S1: And when did that really start?

0:02:22 SS: Oh my God.

0:02:23 S1: NFL was the first one to do it or…

0:02:24 SS: Well, not really.

0:02:25 S1: Actually, it was in more of the…

0:02:27 SS: I’ll take you way back.

0:02:28 S1: Go ahead.

0:02:28 SS: I’ll take you way back. So I was at the ’96 Olympics in Atlanta and I was running a couple of different robotic cameras that were mounted up in trusses in the ceiling. So I did men’s and women’s gymnastics at the Georgia dome. And this system next to me, these guys come in and they install the early version of SkyCam, which was developed by Garrett Brown, Steadicam operator. So back then, it was his gig and he had…

0:03:00 S1: His baby.

0:03:00 SS: All sorts of things there that year, he had Moby dive track cam, the SkyCam, he had all these different things. He had a shirt that said the moving motion picture company and he had all these rigs listed down the back. I was fortunate enough to get one of those t-shirts, I still have it somewhere. But anyway, SkyCam was being developed back then. And while the concept of it, I was watching these guys do it and I was like, “This is so cool,” but it was constantly… The software would crash and it would have to have been… So you didn’t know what to think about it. But when it was on…

0:03:40 S1: It was on.

0:03:40 SS: It was really cool. It was like, “Wow, this is pretty wild.” But hard to take in that whole concept. So, a few years later, I was chasing him a little bit and I decided… I was talking with a buddy of mine and he said, “Well, you know what? I know Garrett pretty well. Let me put your name in the hat.” And so, I emailed out who I was supposed to email and I got almost an immediate response because I do jibs and things like that and a lot of robotic work. And so, they were very interested in talking to me and they brought me in. I’ll tell you, it was trial by fire. You were thrown right into it. There was some training, but it was a steep learning curve, for sure.

0:04:26 S1: It’s just a good thing that they go to that camera for just some quick highlight. It’s never really during… But now more and more, they’re introducing it more to the in-game but it’s not… It’s always highlights mainly, though.

0:04:37 SS: Yeah. Well, they are taking a lot of live snaps or live cuts with it now because of it’s reliability and things like that. I was fortunate to get in on that system fairly early and there were only three or four systems in the United States, so you were… This isn’t… For lack of a better word, you were an elitist in terms of, there’s just… There’s very few systems, so you would learn it and grow with it and so, obviously, the first super practical purpose for it was football.

0:05:12 S1: Yeah.

0:05:12 SS: And the other competing system at the time was Cablecam and that was developed by Jim Rodnunsky who’s another genius, and Cablecam was the same mouse… Not the same mousetrap. Different mousetrap, same result. They were really the first ones to make the mark in NFL and football, and then SkyCam kinda followed up and started doing it. And the rigs are incredibly drastically different because Cablecam was three winches redirected and the camera rig was basically a flying west camera sequoia system, and very heavy. So 114, 120 pounds.

0:05:49 S1: It takes a while to get that baby moving.

0:05:51 SS: Yeah, so it’s a lot more sluggish. But because of its extreme stability in the gyros and stuff that were inside of the unit, you could chase with the lens and move the camera at the same time. So it added a huge dynamic…

0:06:00 S1: That’s great.

0:06:00 SS: To what they were seeing, and SkyCam was very agile and fast. So you could… It didn’t have as long a lens, but it was still very stable so you could chase with the whole rig and be in the action as opposed to be pushing into the action. A more natural thing to be running behind something than… You can’t zoom in with your eyes, but you can walk towards something, and that makes a lot more sense.

0:06:00 S1: So a lot of the work that you’re doing now is mainly with that newer system that you were talking about?

0:06:00 SS: Yeah, the OmniCam.

0:06:00 S1: OmniCam. And how’s that going?

[overlapping conversation]

0:06:33 SS: There’s a bunch of guys… I’ll tell you, it was interesting. As I said, I got a call from Mike and he said, “Well, would you be interested?” And I talked to him, we caught up on things. I’ve known him for… He was one of the first directors I ever worked with at ESPN. And so, he said, “Would you be willing to give this a try?” I said, “Sure. I mean, why not?” So the guys contact me, they’re a company called MediaPro, and they are kind of ESPN’s equivalent in Europe, and then, there’s OmniCam. OmniCam’s based out of Portugal and they make really great stuff. But it’s comparing… You can’t get away from comparing a new system to other systems like, “Oh, well, it’s different than this.” Which is kinda good because you’re already kinda deep-seated in the knowledge of how something works. It’s kind of like if you drove a Pinto one week and then hopped into a Ferrari. Well they’re both gonna go, but one’s got a lot more bells and whistles than the other. And not…

0:07:34 S1: Take turns a little sharper…

0:07:36 SS: Yeah, right, right, right. So I jumped on board with these guys and it’s an impressive system. It’s not… In comparison to the other flying camera systems that are out there, it’s… What’s a good way to say… Again, it’s not… If you saw all the stuff that you would have to haul around for SkyCam and then saw the footprint for Omni, I couldn’t believe it the day the truck pulled up. I was like, “This is it.”

0:08:08 S1: This is it? They just hand you a briefcase? [laughter]

0:08:10 SS: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I wish it was like that. But it was a considerably smaller footprint, and having worked with it since, wow, I guess the end of August, and now this is our coming into week 13 on the system. And I pilot the system, I don’t run the camera on it.

0:08:30 S1: Okay, that was gonna be my question.

0:08:32 SS: Two-man operated system. So there’s a pilot and an operator, and we have a good guy, Doug.

0:08:37 S1: But you gotta obviously have the skills because you’ve gotta put it in the position.

0:08:42 SS: You do.

0:08:43 S1: So you still have to be… Which you are, which is good.

0:08:45 SS: Yeah, and because I did both for the other system, so it was easy to… As much as I… It’s difficult, okay, being a camera operator. It’s almost like if you gave someone a camera and you kind of have the eye and you want a certain shot and how it’s moving and you would have to rely on someone else to get it to that spot…

0:09:08 S1: Yeah, that’s tough.

0:09:10 SS: And being a camera operator myself, I have to be a little bit more forgiving because I can’t do everything that I wanna do. So what you can do is pass along your knowledge. Doug is a great guy. He is a MediaPro employee and they picked him to… He told me he was on his boat on Saturday night.

0:09:27 S1: Same thing?

0:09:27 SS: And the next day, he was on the plane to come and train on it and…

0:09:30 S1: Maybe he got the same phone call that you got.

0:09:33 SS: Kind of.

0:09:33 S1: It’s like, “No, I’m all set.” “Yeah, okay, great. Pick you up tomorrow.”

0:09:35 SS: At least mine was a week and a half before his.

0:09:37 S1: Exactly, right? That’s funny.

0:09:40 SS: He hasn’t done a ton of live sports, but he’s a great camera operator. So all I could do is say, “Hey, this is like nothing you’ve ever done before, ever. I know you run jibs, I know you do robotics and Steadicams.” He flies drones too, and things like that. And I said, “But trust me when I tell you, this is a whole different ball wax.”

0:10:00 S1: Different animal, yeah.

0:10:00 SS: Yeah. And it’s been progressively great because he’s into it, he’s totally concentrated. And you don’t know where you’re gonna end up after a few weeks, and we’ve become a pretty tight-knit…

0:10:13 S1: Yeah, you get better and better.

0:10:15 SS: Gelled team where we’re not talking. The less you talk, the better you’re getting.

0:10:19 S1: Yeah, because then you know where you need to be and things like that, yeah.

0:10:22 SS: And football’s a… It’s a good game because it’s forced. You’re following the action, you kinda know where you have to be. The toughest part is not getting faked out. People ask me that all the time throughout my career.

0:10:33 S1: The RPO.

0:10:34 SS: Yeah.

0:10:35 S1: Especially with college because college, they run all kinds of tricky stuff, right?

0:10:38 SS: Oh my God, wild cats, the double pass, I mean it’s like… And you’re in a moving platform, so you can’t always turn on a dime. If we got faked out, Doug would get frustrated or I would get frustrated because I got faked out. And I always fall back on, and a lot of people asked me this over the years, “Did I do regular camera?” I did cart and low-end zone stuff for NFL for a long time, I still do. And the funny part of it is, everybody’s like, “Well, how do you get faked out?” I’m like, “They’re designing these plays to fake people out that are four feet away from them. Guaranteed I’m gonna get faked out when I’m…

0:11:14 S1: Yeah, it’s gonna happen.

0:11:15 SS: Twenty-five, 30 yards away and looking through…

0:11:17 S1: Hide the ball.

0:11:18 SS: Yeah, absolutely.

0:11:18 S1: I mean, that’s the whole point.

0:11:19 SS: From behind, and everything like that. I said, so, you’re gonna gotta let it go because if you keep worrying about the last thing, you’re not ready for the next thing.”

0:11:26 S1: Yeah, that’s true.

0:11:26 SS: So you just kinda plow through it, and you make your mistakes and there isn’t a cameraman out there, not one, that hasn’t been faked out.

0:11:33 Chase: Isn’t it crazy how much entertainment has pushed technology? It’s almost like you expect technological advancements to come out of universities or scientists, professors, people who are actually teaching this stuff. But it comes out of somebody who wants to make a movie better or somebody who wants to make the playoffs more… The camera work in the playoff maybe more dynamic or something. You know what I mean?

0:11:58 SS: Oh, absolutely.

0:12:00 Chase: I’ve always been blown away by that.

0:12:01 SS: And I think what drove this is coming from the mind of Garrett Brown, and if you’re a fan of his work, he’s the Steadicam guy. He got that whole thing going. One of his famous, most famous Steadicam shots is in The Shining. He used a lot of that, it’s a lot of Steadicam work.

0:12:18 Chase: Wow.

0:12:19 SS: He goes way back. And so, when you have a mind like that, he wants to constantly keep going and add this dynamic to it without having to cut. It’s probably been my most frustrating aspect is with a moving camera doing jib and robotics and things like that. And especially this platform, there’s a pay off to this. So when you start a move and you have your frame and you’re trying to sell this move, so a director on a live broadcast would be, “Alright, set up that shot. I like it. Scott, that’s great. Perfect. Wait, wait, wait.” And then, “Alright, go jib, go.” And you start going and he doesn’t cut to you. And by the time he gets to you, the move is gone.

0:12:47 S1: Yeah.

0:12:47 SS: And it’s so frustrating. So a lot of times, you hear the false caller say, “Alright, start your move,” and you won’t start it. And they’ll start barking at you a little bit more, “Come on, move, start to move,” and you purposely hold it off and you force it, so that when he comes to you, the move is there. And that’s just a… That’s a feel and that’s one of the most frustrating I think any jib op, any moving camera op will tell you is if a director’s too early on something, “Why? Why have it? Why have it move? If you’re catching it at the very end of the move, it’s like let it pay off.” People are savvy enough at home where they’re not like, “Oh wow, that’s the most amazing shot ever.” But they… You…

0:13:43 SS: That is why movies are shot the way they are. And there’s foreground elements that give more attention to the elements that you’re supposed to be but it gives you more sense of place. And gives you objects and elements that you’re supposed to… It gives a feel. And as if… When you’re watching someone, if you… Walking, let’s say, just down a path and you spot someone through a thin brush of trees or a thin growth of trees, you’re looking through them through those trees, that’s why you see those angles in movies all the time, to create that movement, and as you would see it with the naked eye.

0:14:25 SS: It doesn’t always have to be a perfectly clean frame but that mind of Garrett Brown was exactly that. And that’s… He wanted to keep his images moving, pleasing and add a dynamic and keep your interest, keep you attached to what you’re watching.

0:14:42 S1: Yeah. And I know that you do… Obviously we’ve spoke about it a lot with sports and stuff, but I see that you do a lot of stuff on the Hudson.

0:14:49 SS: I do.

0:14:49 S1: And obviously, you’re a natural artist besides… You can tell by your work…

0:14:53 SS: I appreciate that.

0:14:54 S1: And your photography and stuff, I think it’s amazing.

0:14:55 SS: Thank you.

0:14:56 S1: Which is great. Because it’s like I love the fact that you’re able to do sports because I love sports. But then, I also appreciate the art of what you do as well, which I think is awesome. So tell us a little bit about that side of your career, if you could.

0:15:09 SS: That’s kind of funny. Being involved in video for, gosh, almost 30 years now and I got into the business through… It was a crazy story and maybe I’ll get to that later, but I had been so engrossed in video and moving images for so long and I always have loved photography, don’t get me wrong, but photography back in the day was expensive, it was pricey. I used to do black and white stuff and develop and do things like that, but I don’t anymore. You kind of lose that, or I lost it, I won’t say everybody does. But I got away from it because I so much more wanted to capture moving images and then the digital realm hit. So we started getting digital cameras. I remember one of the first Sonys, and I’m a Sony guy, I admit it. And just to preface this for anybody that might be listening, it’s like, “Oh, he’s a Sony guy, I’m a Canon guy, I don’t wanna listen to him.” I love all cameras. They all work great. It’s just, it’s like I say about a lot of things. They’re all great, they have their pluses, they have their minuses. You just gotta find the one that you like the most.

0:16:24 S1: Yeah, that works for you.

0:16:25 SS: Yeah. And I’ve been a Sony guy for so long. Their menus haven’t changed over the years that much and where other people might come from Canon or Panasonic or something like that, and be like, “What are they thinking putting this menu here and… ”

0:16:38 S1: Yeah. You’re just used to it, it’s your preference.

0:16:39 SS: I’m used to it and I would be as lost on any Canon if you put that in my hand or any other camera. You just gotta learn it, and then once you do, it’s all good. But, so when the digital realm came out, one of the first Sonys I bought was like a 1.4, 1.5 megapixel camera. But it was cool. It had an articulating lens, the body rotated so you could do high angles and it was great. And I remember having the memory, I think the memory card that I put in it was 16 megabytes, so it was like the max.

[chuckle]

0:17:10 Chase: Wow.

0:17:11 SS: And you’re like… Now you look back at that and I can’t even… That’s not even a thumbnail.

0:17:15 S1: The cell phone is more… A cell phone is probably, it’s ten-fold of what that camera can do.

0:17:21 SS: Oh my God. Oh, easily.

0:17:21 S1: Just a cell phone.

0:17:21 Chase: The new iPhone could do like…

0:17:25 SS: Yeah, it’s crazy.

0:17:25 S1: Right? Yeah, it’s unbelievable.

0:17:26 SS: It is totally crazy. I was shooting… I was on a movie set like two weeks ago, and I just shot… I just rolled a clip on what we were shooting, so it was kind of like a BTS but I kinda kept the frame clean, and then I showed it to the other DP and he was like, “What’d you transfer this from your camera?” I was like, “No, I shot it right with my cell phone.” And he was like, “You’re kidding me.” I’m like…

0:17:47 S1: Wow.

0:17:48 SS: Crazy. I said, “Shoot this whole thing on the cell phone, let’s everybody… ”

0:17:51 S1: See what it looks like, yeah.

0:17:52 SS: And people have tackled that.

0:17:53 S1: Yeah.

0:17:53 SS: So you’re absolutely right.

0:17:55 S1: Yeah, that’s cool.

0:17:56 SS: And people are… And that’s the craze… I don’t know if you remember it. It’s a good reference though. There was a commercial, I don’t… You would think, being such a good commercial I’d remember what it was. But there was a girl and she’s sitting on a couch and she gets this present and it’s this great camera and she’s looking at it and she’s like, “Oh my God, this is fantastic. Thank you so much. But, how do you make a phone call?”

[laughter]

0:18:21 SS: And it was so funny.

0:18:24 S1: Yeah.

0:18:25 SS: Because you would think that telephone technology is really what they’re after, but they’re not, it’s about having a device with you at all times, that you can… Look at what we’ve become. We’re…

0:18:40 S1: Cyborg almost, that’s where we’re going.

0:18:41 SS: Yeah. We are recording our lives with a device that’s with us all the time.

0:18:46 S1: Yeah.

0:18:46 SS: Or something. And you know people get into… Oh, are getting into the drone thing a little bit. And…

0:18:52 S1: Yeah.

0:18:54 SS: “I don’t want that up there spying on me”. I always say to them. “Listen, you shouldn’t be worried about that drone flying over your house”.

0:18:58 S1: Yeah. There’s a lot more other things…

0:19:00 SS: You should be worried about the other 30000 cameras you roll through on a daily basis.

0:19:04 S?: That’s why I said it’s literally gonna be if it’s not already with these Nest or with, what is it Nest or what’s the thing in the door bell? Oh, oh…

0:19:05 S1: With that Ring. Ring, Ring.

0:19:05 SS: One of them is called…

0:19:05 S1: Ring, Ring, with the… So even before it was probably, you know… It was getting to be very easy anyway just to find people from the cameras that the government… Just in general people that have… But now when you roll in those things, you literally can see how somebody got from one point to one point, and that’s not even anything that complicated. We’re not even talking about tracking cell phones or anything like that. So…

0:19:39 SS: Oh, right. You’re absolutely right.

0:19:39 S1: So it’s like… It’s funny ’cause I always say the days of being able to try to get away with things, they’re almost over, because everything is gonna be on video. Like, it was the end of a game when Richard Sherman said that Baker… I think Baker Mayfield or somebody, I can’t remember who it was, wouldn’t shake his hand, and then they found footage of it. It’s like, you can’t nowadays… You can’t…

0:20:00 SS: Yeah, and that’s so funny.

0:20:00 S1: You’ve gotta be real careful nowadays of the things that you say, so…

0:20:02 SS: And… And… And do, I guess. ‘Cause you’re being recorded everywhere. You can’t move an inch. I mean you’re… You’re… I would love if you could just put into… I say love in a very forgiving way.

0:20:15 S1: Yeah yeah, right.

0:20:15 SS: You just kind of type in if you had a number assigned to you, to your DNA or something like that, and you just type it in and it would pull up any image that was ever captured of you throughout your life.

0:20:27 S1: Yeah.

0:20:27 SS: And, I think a lot of people would be surprised at how many times that they thought they were by themselves, secluded, nobody knew they were there and they…

0:20:38 S1: And that’s what goes hand-in-hand with what you were just saying, “Don’t worry about this drone, ’cause honestly, this drone is just going for my little piece in my… Your picture is probably [laughter] all over the freaking place.” Do you know what I mean? So it’s like…

0:20:52 SS: Yeah, Yeah. Absolutely.

0:20:53 Chase: It’s the same with everything that’s recording you, the audio gets recorded, video gets recorded, all your messages that are being sent, do you know what I mean? Everything’s being spied by…

0:21:02 S1: Yeah, you’re by your cell phone listening to things you say and then, oddly enough you have a conversation with someone about something and then…

0:21:09 Chase: All of a sudden it shows up.

0:21:10 S1: Like you’re talking about some music and all of a sudden your music…

0:21:12 Chase: So we attend… We attend a lot of digital marketing expos and stuff ’cause it’s what we do here at MacMedia.

0:21:17 SS: Sure.

0:21:18 Chase: And it’s so funny, ’cause a lot of these guys, they’ll get up there and they’ll be like, “Your cell phone is not listening to you, this is not listening to you.” And it’s just like, it’s so hilarious ’cause that’s the same thing as the doctor telling you that this drug is not gonna give you this side… “No, no, no. Don’t worry about that.” Because he’s in bed with them and they’re in bed. [laughter] Do you know what I mean? So it’s like…

0:21:37 SS: Yeah. Exactly. And, that long list of side effects that they list.

0:21:39 S1: Of course. What’s he gonna do? Put the product down…

0:21:41 SS: Yeah. Of course not.

0:21:41 S1: And be like… And be like, “Yeah this thing’s listening to you. No one should buy ’em.” Of course they’re gonna make… [laughter] Of course they’re gonna say that, but these are people that are like… They’re not from Amazon, they’re not from… These are just the people that are with inside of the industry. But I know for a fact that that’s what it does. This guy…

0:21:56 SS: Well, how could it not?

0:21:57 S1: Yeah.

0:21:57 SS: If you have a phone, whether you’re Android or iPhone or Apple, if you have your ‘Hey Siri’ thing turned on…

0:22:05 S1: Yep. Even then, even if you don’t, it just…

0:22:08 SS: It’s gonna answer. That… It… Constant… Listen, and people don’t understand that, so…

0:22:12 S1: Yeah. Yeah.

0:22:13 SS: The… Your… The Amazon, what is the… What, Alexa?

0:22:18 Chase: The Echo or the Alexa.

0:22:20 SS: The Alexa.

0:22:20 S1: Yeah. Yeah.

0:22:20 SS: At home or I have the HomePod.

0:22:22 Chase: The Google Home… Yeah.

0:22:23 SS: I have have the Apple HomePod and whatever ones that are out there.

0:22:26 S1: There’s so many, yeah.

0:22:27 SS: Any time you speak, tell it something, or even if you’re not talking to it it’s…

0:22:31 S1: It’s just keeping track of it.

0:22:33 SS: It’s oozing this data, you’re oozing data to it. And whether… Whether that data is important or not, who knows who’s getting this? That’s the whole… The data collection is… Is this a big brother thing? And…

0:22:48 S1: Yeah.

0:22:49 SS: I just say… I’ve been one to always embrace technology, and I’m not trying to get anybody paranoid, if you wanna stay on top of that curve, so be it. But, it just… It’s just the way things are advancing, and whether that makes the world better or…

0:23:04 S1: But it goes to what… But it goes to what you said though, don’t worry about the drone. Same thing with the people that would say things like, “Oh I don’t trust buying things on the Internet.” Your credit card was on the internet. So, like, you don’t have to.

0:23:18 Chase: Yeah. Yeah. Right.

0:23:19 S1: Guess what? When they hacked Target, and you swiped your card at the thing, I think everybody knows that now, but for a while that’s how it was. So…

0:23:25 SS: It’s a great… It’s a great point too.

0:23:28 S1: Yeah.

0:23:28 SS: And a lot of people say, “Really? You buy things off the internet?” I said, “Do you have online banking?” They’re like, “Yeah.” Okay. What’s the difference?

0:23:33 S1: Yeah, there’s no difference.

0:23:34 SS: Different encryption, maybe some extra security protocols. I think you’d be surprised at how advanced most online buying experiences as far as data encryption is. But you’re always gonna find some knucklehead… Why I call ’em a knucklehead, some genius or super invested, “I’m gonna crack this site,” for reasons of not good, or to get his pocket lined with more dollars. And they hire… They hire people to do that too for organizations.

0:24:05 S1: Yeah. Yep.

0:24:07 SS: Yeah, it… Yeah, and tenfold on technology and trackability, and how we got on this topic who knows? But…

0:24:15 S1: Yeah, I know. Well, it comes down to drones and it comes down to… You know what I mean? But go ahead. Yeah, yeah.

0:24:20 SS: And so I had come back to finding my roots in photography again, and I… And even still, I think what did it is about almost seven years ago now with drones, is that, when I started flying these cameras around, I had done Monday Night Football for three, four years. And when I stopped doing that, it was an epiphany. It was kind of crazy how I decided this… Why would I not be doing this? I was on my computer looking something up I think, for a GoPro, and… ‘Cause they were starting to get big, and I was having a lot of fun doing time-lapses and things like that with them.

0:24:58 SS: And, I saw this little clip ad. It wasn’t necessarily an ad, but it was on Vimeo, and I watch this, it was… It was called… Oh, I gotta think of the pier. Santa Monica Airlines or Santa Monica Airways. That’s what it was called. And, it was the shot of a drone at sunrise, what the drone was seeing, and it was flying low over the beach towards Santa Monica Pier, around wraps it raises up in front of this ferris wheel. As the sun’s coming up, it goes right through the ferris wheel, then hooks up with the roller-coaster tracks. It starts following the roller-coaster tracks, and as the rollercoaster turns, he just goes off, raises up, and it was just…

0:25:18 S1: Wow, yeah, yeah.

0:25:18 SS: And my mouth was agape.

0:25:18 S1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:25:18 SS: Like the whole time watching this and I’m like, “Why am I not doing this?”

0:25:18 S1: Yeah, yeah.

0:25:18 SS: And, so I started to research a little bit more. And it just… I was bitten at that moment. And, the cool thing about drones is having flown the aerial camera systems and stuff like that with wires, now I’m thinking…

0:25:18 S1: Freedom. [laughter]

0:25:18 SS: I could go anywhere.

0:26:06 S1: Exactly.

0:26:06 SS: I just gotta beat that battery, that’s the only thing now, you’re fighting the battery, not the wires.

0:26:10 S1: Precisely.

0:26:10 Chase: It changes the whole game at that point.

0:26:12 SS: It did. It was a complete game changer. And game changer was, it was still very crude, but it was mind-blowing because you were seeing things from angles that you never saw before. And so, I got right into it and…

0:26:29 S1: How many casualties?

0:26:30 SS: Oh my God.

0:26:31 S1: How many casualties of the drones? How many drones have you… [chuckle]

0:26:34 SS: I’ve stopped counting.

0:26:35 S1: You’ve stopped counting? Alright.

0:26:36 SS: I really have.

0:26:37 Chase: Oh boy. [chuckle]

0:26:37 S1: Have you ever dove into the water to get it right?

0:26:40 SS: Yeah.

0:26:40 S1: You ever seen those?

0:26:41 SS: Yeah. Oh yeah.

0:26:41 S1: Oh those are classic.

0:26:42 SS: I didn’t dive in…

0:26:43 S1: Those are funny reels.

0:26:44 SS: To get it from hitting the water, I dove in after it had gone into the water to retrieve it.

0:26:49 S1: Because you wanted to get the chip? Yeah.

0:26:50 SS: Yeah. And that was a big thing, but it depended. Back then… I’ve flown everything from… Mostly DGI stuff, from the Phantom 1 all the way through everything that they have now. And back then, they were, believe it or not, pretty resilient. As long as you didn’t crack the body in half or really break a chip or something inside or any SCE or the flight controller, you could dunk these things in, as long as it was fresh water, pull it out, dry all the components out and have it flying.

0:27:22 S1: Oh wow. I didn’t know that.

0:27:23 SS: Oh yeah. Because there’s no real voltage to fry anything, so when it goes in… I had one dump in early on into a stream, right in Beacon where I live in New York. And the lights, I could see the lights on the battery and everything still on in the water…

0:27:38 S1: Oh, in water.

0:27:38 SS: And the props were slowly turning…

0:27:40 S1: So why did it go down, the battery? It’s usually battery right?

0:27:43 SS: No tree, a small…

0:27:44 S1: It clipped a tree?

0:27:45 SS: Yeah, because at the time… When I first got into it…

0:27:47 S1: It didn’t have the sensors. It didn’t have those. Now they have the sensors.

0:27:49 SS: It doesn’t. No obstacle…

0:27:50 Chase: Julio says it’s like a video game with real consequences.

[laughter]

0:27:54 Chase: That’s our video game.

0:27:56 SS: Julio, you’re exactly right, my friend. It is, yeah, major consequences at times because now you feel like you’re flying with a packed wallet up in the air all the time.

0:28:03 S1: Yeah. No, it’s true.

0:28:06 Chase: Yeah.

0:28:06 SS: Just raining money.

0:28:06 S1: I know that when you get them, you’re like, “Okay, well, I’ve made enough money on this one.” I don’t wanna say… We still have our first drone that we’ve had. And we’re very, very… Because it’s a major investment for us.

0:28:15 SS: What are you flying? I’ve seen a lot of your clips and great stuff.

0:28:19 S1: We have a Phantom 4 Pro.

0:28:20 SS: Oh, great.

0:28:21 S1: Yeah.

0:28:21 SS: Great machine.

0:28:22 S1: And it’s great. It was funny because in the beginning, the first one we had, there were some issues with the focusing on it and we looked and it was a whole issue that a bunch of them had. So we just returned it, got another one and it’s been great ever since. And that’s been our one and we’ve made a decent amount of money off of it. But still, it’s like you’re always like, you know that it’s gonna happen at the worst possible time. You know what I mean? So…

0:28:44 SS: I’m gonna tell you right now, there’s never a good time. But there’s been enough instances where I’ve been fortunate, in that, I had one instance where we actually were working for a client. So most of my instances always happened off the clock, if you will.

0:29:01 S1: Yeah.

0:29:01 SS: Because I’m trying something new, or I always tell people that are flying, there’s only one move that kills you and it’s the back fly. Because you will go in one direction…

0:29:13 S1: And you can’t see.

0:29:13 SS: And then you wanna come back or you get in tight on something and because of the width of the lens, or whatever, you wanna come back. And you start flying back and then you hit a tree or you hit something else that you knew you flew around…

0:29:27 S1: But you forget to reverse.

0:29:28 SS: Yeah. But then you start to come back because you’re into the shot and it’s a wire you didn’t see…

0:29:34 S1: Do you ever use the glasses?

0:29:36 SS: I’ve tried the goggles.

0:29:37 S1: Yeah, what do you think about those?

0:29:38 SS: It’s a little too immersive for me and a lot of people say, “Oh my God, you’d be so good at the drone racing leagues,” and stuff like that.

0:29:43 S1: Oh yeah, right.

0:29:46 SS: I’ve tried them too and it’s a little bit… I’m doing a lot of this as just…

0:29:51 S1: Visual…

0:29:51 SS: Catch your breath.

0:29:52 S1: Yeah, visual. You’re not like…

0:29:53 SS: Beautiful stuff, slow your heart rate.

0:29:54 S1: You could play Call of Duty if you wanna do that, right?

0:29:57 SS: Yeah, you’re right.

0:29:57 S1: You’d go do a couple tours in the basement of Call of Duty, that’ll…

[laughter]

0:30:01 SS: And then, the Drone Nation League, I think is fantastic and it’s a really, really cool art even, if you will, but great skill set for these guys and they’re two totally different animals.

0:30:13 S1: They’re more video game guys. They’re more video game guys, I think.

0:30:17 Chase: Yeah, they’re not… Directors.

0:30:18 S1: More photography type guys, like director and motion pictures.

0:30:21 SS: And some of them are getting more and more now with these, the fast and the FPV flying, and the stabilization software that’s out there now for after. If you see some of these, they’re going down mountain sides. There was one clip of this guy following a rail car with one of these racing drones and he’s going in and out and all over because their footprint’s so small and they’re doing some really crazy cool stuff. And because of the stabilization software, they’re able to smooth it out and make it very watchable.

0:30:53 S1: Yeah, that’s cool.

0:30:54 SS: And it’s mind blowing. And I was like, “Well, you know what, there might be a reason to kinda get more into that because it involves speed. It’s a smaller rig and these things can go, they can fly 75, 80 miles an hour.”

0:31:07 S1: Wow, that’s unbelievable.

0:31:08 SS: It is nuts.

0:31:09 S1: How much do those things go for?

0:31:11 SS: It’s been a while since I’ve checked price points, but I know you’re gonna start spending a couple grand. It’s like when they used to have the remote control car racing and stuff like that, you’d get into that and then before you know it, you’re into this thing for three grand. And you’re like, “What did I spend all this for?” But it’s kind of like that and it’s becoming more and more popular. I know ESPN had a Drone Racing League Championships down on Liberty State Park.

0:31:38 S1: Oh yeah, I see it more and more on TV.

0:31:40 SS: Yeah, it’s just…

0:31:40 Chase: There’s one in Vegas that’s really cool. They do it at night, and all the lights are on.

0:31:46 SS: Oh, that must be wild. I’ve never seen that, yeah.

0:31:46 S1: Throughout the city?

0:31:46 Chase: And it’s wild. Yeah, throughout the city, it’s crazy.

0:31:49 S1: That’s pretty cool.

0:31:50 SS: Oh, wow.

0:31:50 S1: Yeah.

0:31:51 Chase: Yeah.

0:31:51 S1: So tell us about some of the movies that you’ve been on throughout the years, because I’m sure there’s been some great ones that you’ve shot.

0:32:00 SS: Big movies, I’ve not done any super A-list stuff. I’ve worked on some stuff low on the totem pole, but nothing to do really with camera work. Recently, we’ve been doing a lot of these independent films and stuff like that, so it’s… I’ve done some opening shots, some really cool scenes for people that have contacted us. One of the most interesting series that we just did… My buddy and kind of… Well he’s not kinda of, he’s my partner in crime when we do really big jobs for drones…

0:32:33 S1: That’s Aerial. Is that a separate…

0:32:36 SS: My company used to be XFactor Aerial, now it’s SDS Imagery. The drone aspect of the company is Zero Point Aerial. So a buddy of mine, Pat McManus, who’s a director I’ve worked with for a long time, I used to do Indy Car racing with him. He’s an excellent director and he directs American Ninja Warriors, if you’ve ever seen that show, that’s his show. So he called me up two summers ago, and he said, “Hey Scott, would you be able to get a couple of drone teams for this racing thing that we’re gonna be doing in upstate New York?” And I was, “Okay, sure.” And that’s the way I would take stuff, first call, things like that, “Oh wow, sounds great.” But once you’re doing something in your line of work for a while, you need to qualify it and you wanna know it’s real before you get super pumped about it.

0:33:30 S1: Sure, yeah.

0:33:31 SS: So I said, “Yeah, we could do that, Pat, it’s not a problem.” And he goes, “Alright, so just do me a favor, shoot me a quote for what it would be.” So I was like, “Alright.” So I just put numbers down. They were proper numbers, and sent him the email, and he said “Okay, thanks.” And I heard nothing for another week and a half. He sent me a text. He goes, “Hey, did you ever hear from those guys at Netflix?” I’m like, “Oh, you didn’t tell me it was Netflix.” And I said, “No, I didn’t.” He goes, “Alright, you’re gonna hear from them soon.” And then I got a call the next day, and we talked about it. So it was a really exciting project, it was a show called Hyperdrive, and it’s on Netflix now.

0:34:09 S1: But I think that was the thing that you shared that you said you had been working on for a long, long time and now it’s so great to finally see it come.

0:34:17 SS: Oh, yeah. And so it was called Hyperdrive, and we couldn’t grasp the concept of this. And, the best way to describe it is American Ninja Warriors meets Fast and Furious. And it was this obstacle course. It was designed up at the old Kodak factory in Rochester, New York, for cars. So they invited 30 amateur drivers from all over the world, and they bring their own vehicles and they compete on this obstacle course. And it was, “Okay, let’s see it.” So we get up there. And they initially asked for two or three drone teams and then literally three weeks before Pat was like, “No, it’s just you guys.” I’m like, “Okay.” So we get up there and we tied our feed into the broadcast truck. I guess the executive producers were in there watching too, and once they saw us in the line cut and what we were able and capable of doing… It was three o’clock in the morning, ’cause we shot every night from 7 PM to 7 AM…

0:35:14 S1: Wow, wow.

0:35:15 SS: For 18 days. So we were all night shoots for lighting. So Pat goes, “So Scott, can you get another drone team up here?” I was like, “It’s 3:30 in the morning… Yeah, sure.”

[laughter]

0:35:29 S1: Who’s gonna answer the phone?

0:35:32 SS: “We’ll make it happen.” Oddly enough, they did. There were three of us up there on a team already, so all we did, we made some adjustments. I did all the technical flying. This guy Parker, he was also a licensed pilot, he did all the cover shot flying in his zone, so we worked it out. Then we had Todd de-conflict our air space, so that two pilots could be going and we had a spotter for each one of us. So Todd was the sky boss, then we had… I wish… I mean I probably do, I could show you pictures of our whole ground station set up with this big, huge table, twice the size of this, with a big, huge 55-inch monitor in front of us with all these different feeds. It was great ’cause we had never really… This was a first kind of it’s thing show. So we’re trying to solve a problem. Not necessarily a problem, but add something to it that people haven’t seen before, by adding drones to it. There were two spider cam systems there as well.

0:36:35 S1: Nice.

0:36:38 SS: Telling you all that, just give episode one a watch. If you don’t wanna watch it further than that, I can’t help you, but…

0:36:46 S1: It’s on Netflix.

0:36:47 SS: On Netflix.

0:36:48 S1: What is it called again?

0:36:49 SS: Hyperdrive.

0:36:49 S1: Hyperdrive.

0:36:50 SS: Yeah.

0:36:50 S1: Okay, cool.

0:36:50 SS: It’s been really well received. We’re hoping for seasons 2 and 3, but we haven’t heard anything in a few months after it’s been released.

0:37:00 S1: I can’t wait to check it out. That’s awesome.

0:37:02 SS: They invested a lot of money, like millions. I think there was a two million dollar lighting budget on it. I could be off but… It was a lot. I might be off because I’m not saying enough. When you see the show and you see all this stuff…

0:37:17 S1: You’ll understand why.

0:37:18 SS: Yeah, you’ll understand why the lighting budget was what it was.

0:37:19 S1: That’s awesome. I’m excited to check it out. We have a part of our show called Mack Move or Wack Move, where we read topics that are somewhat business-related. Would you like to join us for that?

0:37:32 SS: I’d love to.

0:37:32 S1: But before we do that, I’d like to know what is the best play, or let’s say, either play or moment in sports history that you feel that you’ve captured through your eyes.

0:37:47 SS: Hmm, hmm. Wow.

0:37:49 S1: ’cause I know you’ve done Olympics, you do the US Open, NFL…

0:37:55 SS: It was…

0:37:56 Chase: Dez caught it?

[laughter]

0:37:57 SS: That’s funny. No comment.

0:38:00 S1: That’s funny. That’s a good one Chase.

0:38:04 SS: Actually, good timing. I’m gonna have to say it would have been an Olympic moment. It was back in ’96 when…

0:38:12 S1: That was Atlanta?

0:38:12 SS: Yeah, Atlanta for gymnastics. We had a phenomenal women’s gymnastics team there. So the whole coach carrying her around and through… It was a pretty surreal moment. And you’re just kind of doing it, you know? I tell that to people a lot…

0:38:12 S1: Then when you see it.

0:38:12 SS: “Wow, that was pretty special.” It can’t be duplicated. All the planets were aligned for that moment, and it happened, and you cover it. As a camera operator, you don’t know when something phenomenal is gonna happen right in front of your eyes. So hopefully you have the mindset to either just stay with it and tell the story from your angle or whatever you can do, and…

0:38:58 SS: It’s not a matter of thinking, “Oh, I can’t wait because I know what I just shot is gonna go viral.” You don’t think that way. And that’s not what’s motivating you. Once you kinda get into that mindset of shooting and capturing things, it’s about… We’re all storytellers to a degree, and it’s about being able to tell the story for that moment at that time, the best that you can with whatever it is that you have. And whether it’s your voice, your memory, and then putting that on paper. There’s so many different levels of storytelling and the visual aspect of storytelling is a lot of our strong suits. So, how many times do you… As you become a professional or you become very proficient at what you do as far as shooting, and then we’re exposed to all of this content on social media and things like that and people capturing these pretty important moments, but they’re all over the place with the camera, and you’re like, “Just stay there. Stop.”

0:39:51 S1: “Just stay still, what are you doing?”

0:39:53 SS: “No, no, don’t drop the phone.” Or you see something happen, and as soon as the event stops, the phone drops…

0:40:01 S1: Just immediately.

0:40:02 SS: And they take off. I’m like, “No, part of it’s the… ”

0:40:04 S1: “No, you need the ending.” [laughter]

0:40:05 SS: The end story. Yeah, I wanna know what’s going on, bring me with you.

0:40:09 S1: That’s funny.

0:40:09 SS: But it’s a whole different thing out there, where there’s now… I know we wanna play this game but it’s a tough thing. I probably have, if I really sat… And I’m not saying you blindsided me with that question but I would definitely say that’s the first one that comes to mind. But I know there’s others in my archives that I was pretty proud of. And just like, “Wow, okay, that was a cool play.” And then you see…

0:40:41 S1: Well, I’ll tell you what…

0:40:42 SS: Later on replays. We shoot a game, a lot of the camera operators, if we’re doing NFL or something… We had a day game and then we’re hanging around the bar at night, and ESPN’s…

0:40:54 S1: Well, there’s your shot.

0:40:55 SS: Highlight package. Like, “Oh. There’s… Oh, I do the… Oh, oh, whoa, I got that.”

0:41:00 S1: It’s funny because you get that feeling when you’re at a game, let alone you’re shooting it. So when you go to a game and you’re watching it, it’s still different. When you’re looking at it through the lens and then you see it after, I can only imagine when you’re looking though the lens what that’s like because you get that feeling anyway.

0:41:13 SS: Well, you do. And I will say, I’ve been desensitized to a degree over the years. A lot of people say, “You a big fan?” I say, “I am a big fan of sports, and I love covering sports.” And they say, “Well, what’s your favorite?” And I love baseball. I can’t stand shooting it. I will tell everybody that and they’re like, “I can’t believe that.” And I’m like, “Believe it, it’s a hurry up and wait contest.” You’re…

0:41:39 S1: Which is different than the forced action of football. And that’s what… It was funny because I was gonna reference back to baseball about how you’re just hurry up and wait, versus forced action, every time you hike the ball, it’s like…

0:41:50 SS: A funny expression that has come out of my career into a lot of my peers is root for the clock. Any sport that has a clock on it, you’re like, “Yeah, pan, tilt, invoice. Let’s go.”

0:42:00 S1: “Yeah, yeah, let’s go. Let’s go.” Yeah, yeah, right.

0:42:02 SS: And that’s what I’m saying, you get desensitized, when you’re seeing the same stuff, not the same game, but similarities to it. Baseball is a great example because you get there, if you have to set up that day, or if it’s no home stand or if it’s like a one-off game, get there early, you set up, you shoot the game, and you’re there at like 7:00 or 8 o’clock in the morning. You set up the games at 7:00 that night, so you set, then you shoot. And oh, you think you’re like in the fifth or six inning, and you look up and you’re bottom of the third. And it’s tied, and here comes a nice two-hour rain delay. And then, the rain stops and it goes back.

0:42:42 S1: Yeah, at least you know with football it’s relatively… Okay, well, there could be an overtime with college football, a few overtimes, but you still have that window where you know it’s gonna be.

0:42:53 SS: College overtime, one of the most confusing overtimes in all of sports.

0:42:57 S1: Yeah, it is, it’s so funny. I think I finally figured it out just recently.

0:43:00 SS: I am glad you have. When you get a chance explain it to me, I’d appreciate it.

0:43:01 S1: Yeah, I’ll let you know. Exactly. And then real quick, before we do Mack Move or Whack Move, tell us a little bit about this Emmy, tell us a little bit about how long you’ve been shooting the US Open.

0:43:09 SS: Oh, okay.

0:43:12 S1: Because I think that’s awesome. I saw the whole…

0:43:13 SS: Oh, thank you.

0:43:14 S1: I saw the post that I guess your wife’s had a whole…

0:43:18 SS: I’m still… My girlfriend.

0:43:19 S1: Your girlfriend had a whole set up for you for when you walked in.

0:43:22 SS: She did. She is…

0:43:22 S1: That was cool.

0:43:24 SS: She’s amazing. Yeah, I knew basically when I was getting it because you had to order it. So this year when we… A lot of the technicians arrived at the open, and we started working, there was a buzzing, “Oh, hey, they won an Emmy last year.” And we’re like, “Well, if they won an Emmy, we want an Emmy.” And they were like, “Well, yeah, that seems to be the rumor.” So as the buzz started escalating, and then we finally all got an email, “Yes, you all have won an Emmy. And we’re also… We’re getting a plaque for everybody that got it.” And it’s a technical Emmy, which is sometimes more difficult than the Emmy. There’s lots of different categories for Emmy awards. And, yeah, so we won this technical Emmy and everybody that was on the list got an Emmy. So you had to go, they gave you a code and you go on to the website to order your statue.

0:44:17 S1: That’s funny.

0:44:18 SS: And so I put it in and then it brings up your history. And there was five other nominations that I was never even aware.

0:44:25 S1: Oh wow!

0:44:25 Chase: Oh damn!

0:44:26 SS: So I ordered…

0:44:27 Chase: Bonus.

0:44:28 SS: Obviously, I didn’t win them but being nominated…

0:44:31 Chase: But still would have liked to have known.

0:44:33 S1: Emmy nominated.

0:44:34 SS: Being nominated was pretty cool.

0:44:34 S1: Five time Emmy nominated!

0:44:36 SS: So I printed out the certificates, or I ordered the certificates for print out. And then, when… They give you a date when it’s gonna be shipped and being away for college football every weekend, it got shipped on obviously the day I left, so it was sitting at home all week and I’m like, “Oh, I just wanna see this thing.”

0:44:55 S1: Yeah, see what it is.

0:44:56 SS: And I told Tammy, I said, “Don’t open it.” She goes, “Oh, I would never.” So when I got home, I always take the first flight home. You don’t sleep from Saturday night, and we have that night game on the ACC network, and so I take a 6:00 AM flight out if I can. And this year has been the North Carolina tour every school right there. So it’s good because it’s a short flight home.

0:45:19 S1: Yeah, it’s quick.

0:45:20 SS: But I get out, I drive and I get home, and I’m still pretty whacked from not really slept. I walk in, and she’s got the box on the table, and breakfast all set out and Emma Moses and I’m like, “Oh my God, you are too much.”

0:45:33 S1: That’s awesome.

0:45:34 SS: Just sat there and really enjoyed the moment.

0:45:36 S1: It’s funny too, like to know how you got it, like to know that you didn’t know the year before, that they got it. And then there’s all this buzz. Then when you go and you look, and you’ve been nominated five other times.

0:45:46 SS: It was shocking.

0:45:47 S1: But you just didn’t know, because it never probably comes down to the technical people, it’s always the people at the top, “Oh, Hey, We’re nominated. We’re nominated.” It never probably trickles down.

0:45:56 SS: You’re right. I always felt like there was this one instance, we were doing the Belmont. I wanna say… Was it funny side? I can’t remember the horse that was up for the first Triple Crown in the longest period of time. And it has happened since this time, I was talking about, which was probably 15 years ago, and we were at the Belmont it was the race if he won Triple Crown.

0:46:20 SS: All we had to do was shoot that day, and we’re a shoo-in for an Emmy, it’s happening. As long as there’s no major technical gaffes. This is an Emmy show because it’s something that doesn’t happen often. So one of our buddies, co-workers, long time, great camera operator, phenomenal, gives a speech. It was pouring rain out that day. And he goes, “Water raises ships. Don’t look down on it, just shoot, we’re gonna be rewarded.” And he was beat in the last quarter length by… I always felt like that. I won’t see this again, I was so upset, because we all heard that kinda and it was like, “All he’s gotta do is win the race, and we’re good.”

0:47:00 S1: Yeah, yeah. That’s it.

0:47:01 SS: And he literally lost it in the last quarter to a pro jockey on like a 70-1 odd horse. It was nuts.

0:47:07 S1: That’s always how all those happen, whatever that was happening. Whether they’ve got the two legs, not in the third one, It was always something crazy that happened or something. You know what I mean?

0:47:19 Chase: Your goal isn’t to win an Emmy but being recognized for that.

0:47:23 SS: It’s pretty special.

0:47:24 Chase: Yeah, you don’t go into video production, because you wanna win an Emmy.

0:47:28 SS: No.

0:47:28 Chase: But when you do get that recognition, I can’t imagine what that feeling is.

0:47:32 SS: I’ll tell you, it’s still sinking in. A lot of people have congratulated me. Seen me after the fact and say, “Hey, I heard you won an Emmy.” And I’m, “Oh, yeah, thank you.” And it’s not… My cousin, God bless David, he’s so funny. Right on Facebook, he goes, “Sounds like your rate’s going up.”

[laughter]

0:47:55 SS: And I am like, “No.”

0:47:57 S1: That’s true.

0:47:58 SS: I laughed at it. It’s funny but to me it’s the recognition. It’s not something I use to market. I’m passionate about what I do, I enjoy it, I love it. I like to grow with technology, and do things that people enjoy watching and try and share as much of it is as I can. So it’s more, “Hey, if I get recognized for that good for me.” But as you said, it was never my goal. You can’t help but to watch award shows and things like that and be like, “Man, will it ever happen?”

0:48:35 S1: But it’s like what you just said though, it goes similar to, not really recognizing the stuff that’s happening as it’s happening. You see it after the fact. That’s what your career is been like. You get it, that’s what this is, it’s recognition for…

0:48:52 SS: Sure.

0:48:52 S1: Of all that hard work and stuff that you didn’t see in the moment, but now you’re seeing it from?

0:48:57 SS: That is on the adverse effect as well, because there are so many times I shoot something and then I’ll see the replay or. “Oh man, I wish I could have shot that differently.” It was done. It’s over. No recapturing that. So there’s just as many of those feelings, not necessarily of failure or defeat but I wish…

0:49:13 S1: Could have made that a little bit better.

0:49:14 Chase: That’s also the artist inside of you. You know what I mena?

0:49:18 SS: A lot of people say that too. Is it an art? You know what, it’s awareness. I guess there’s a certain amount of artistry that goes in with composition and stuff like that, and I didn’t realize that, how much being in television and that composition for a live event had geared me towards getting back into photography. When I put the drones up in the air, seeing all these new angles, all I was doing was hitting record on video and I never really would click off on the photo aspect of it, and something clicked, in me one day. No pun intended, but I was grabbing a video frame of this scene, is not a photo. It’s not as good. The data is so different. You can’t… And I always felt like I was doing a disservice, so now I got two heads going on when I’m flying, and it’s like one sees a fantastic photo frame as I’m flying and recording video and I’m like, “Oh, the only way I could get that is to, I gotta complete my shot.” And then go back and go through that same spot again or vice versa. And I see a still, “Oh, what a great shot that is.”

0:50:32 S1: These are some of the shots that we see on your Facebook.

0:50:35 SS: Yeah. I get a lot of therapy out of that too. A lot of times I just need to get out there and do it and then, I never know what I’m gonna end up with.

0:50:47 S1: The money shot.

0:50:51 SS: I’ve come back at times and thought, “It’s kind of a meh day.” And I look through stuff and I’m like, “Wow I didn’t realize I have that or I caught this.” And so… But you just… No matter what the weather is, what the day’s conditions are, you might have a different design for what you’re going out to get. And I love chasing fog, it’s like one of my…

0:51:19 S1: I can tell.

0:51:20 SS: Favorite, favorite things to do. And there’s been times that I’ve gone out and I’ll have to leave you with some of the links of this stuff, and I’ve gone out and was thoroughly disappointed when I arrived, because there was no fog. And then just because I was there and was patient, it happened, right in front of me, and you just… Then it’s like, alright, document, grab as much as you can. And then when I look back at it, I was like, “I can’t believe I just witnessed that.” ‘Cause it’s surreal, you feel defeated when you get there, ’cause it’s like clear, you can see stars, the sun’s breaking and then… It was funny, there’s the one lighthouse video that I’m thinking about right now that prompts that story. And when I edited the piece together, it’s how crisp and clean and clear it looked and then how all this fog rolls in and it was just an amazing display of mother nature and just the atmosphere, and changes and everything. All within like a 90-minute period.

0:52:16 S1: It’s funny ’cause that’s one of the things that I notice from a lot of your stuff, is mother nature. That’s what I see with a lot of that, a lot of those stills that you put out with the fog and around the ships and around the lighthouse.

0:52:27 SS: And yeah, well, again, it’s just these places that you go and at times of day where it’s, nobody’s out there. It’s you and whatever you’re looking at. And it is, it’s very therapeutic. And it’s just you do what you want at that point. And a lot of people watch that fog and they’ll say, “How do you know the fog was gonna be there?” And I’m like, “It’s a lighthouse. That’s why it was put there, ’cause fog frequents that lighthouse.” [0:52:55] ____ the channel.

0:52:56 S1: That’s funny, that’s funny. Well, hey listen, thank you so much for coming on and telling your story. We’re gonna run into our favorite part of the show right now, where we read off a couple of topics.

[music]

0:53:09 S1: You got a sign over there.

0:53:10 SS: I do.

0:53:11 S1: If you like it, it’s a wack move. If you think that it’s a wack move, it’s a wack move. If you like it and you think that it’s a Mack move, then you hold up the Mack move. So, we kept it very light here for you, no hot button political issues.

0:53:21 SS: Okay. Do I need to hold it in a certain spot? Okay.

0:53:23 S1: Yeap, yeah, it’s right over there. Yep, there you go. So, Chase.

0:53:27 Chase: Alright guys, we got our first topic here.

[music]

0:53:33 Chase: Now, I don’t know how you feel about this man, but he’s definitely making a lot of moves in the fashion industry and the music industry, Kanye West. So right now, a lot of his manufacturing for his brands, his clothing companies are scattered throughout the world. They’re in China, some of them are in Asia. So he’s vowing to move Yeezy’s or his brands manufacturing arm to the US. And so that’s the question, Mack move or wack move? Kanye West vowing to move Yeezy’s manufacturing to the US.

0:54:10 S1: I think it’s a Mack move ’cause that’s obviously good for the country. But I don’t think it’s feasibly possible if he wants to make any money. [chuckle]

0:54:18 SS: I would agree with you that it’s a Mack move, but I think the feasibility of it…

0:54:24 S1: It’s gonna be really tough.

0:54:25 SS: Certainly too. But I mean, part of it leans towards, is he doing this for…

0:54:30 S1: Yeah, yeah.

0:54:31 SS: Popular…

0:54:32 S1: That’s what it is.

0:54:33 SS: Popular support.

0:54:34 Chase: Kanye 2024.

0:54:34 S1: Just to get into the news.

0:54:35 SS: Yeah.

0:54:36 S1: That’s what I think it is, is that he’s setting himself up for a political career.

0:54:40 Chase: Oh Jesus Christ, that’s gonna be funny.

0:54:42 SS: Oh wow, wow.

0:54:43 Chase: So he doesn’t get either vote. [chuckle]

0:54:44 S?: Well, let’s just say.

0:54:46 Chase: He can’t take the Democrat vote or the Republican vote.

0:54:49 S?: I hope if he ever takes any form of office of any kind, I’m not around to see it.

[laughter]

0:54:57 S1: What you got Chase?

0:54:58 Chase: Well, it’s a Mack move ’cause he’s moving stuff to the US. But what it seems like to me is that he’s filling the holes where other candidates would be attacking him? It’s like, “Oh why would you vote for Kanye when he’s got his Yeezys being made in China who we’re in a trade war with?” So anyway, that’s Kanye West, he’s an eccentric guy. But ultimately, yeah.

0:55:21 S1: That’s a great, great way to describe him. Eccentric is a good color for him.

0:55:27 Chase: Yeah. Yeah, I mean he… Yeah, you can’t control that guy.

0:55:30 S1: Alright, topic number two.

[music]

0:55:35 Chase: Topic number two this is hot news right now. Also kinda related because it’s in the family. Kylie Jenner sells 51%, which is majority stake in her cosmetics brand, which I think is just called Kylie. And she sells it to Coty which is a cosmetics brand company, right? So it’s for $600 million, she sells it.

0:56:00 S1: I didn’t even know, I knew she was worth a shitload of money, but I didn’t even know for what. I had no idea what it was for. I knew she was worth a lot of money.

0:56:05 Chase: She’s a billionaire.

0:56:07 S1: Yeah, I knew she was a billionaire.

0:56:08 SS: Yeah, kudos for one, to him, I mean you’re looking this stuff up. I would have no idea that this is even going on.

0:56:14 S1: I could explain it.

0:56:15 Chase: So she creates make-up products. That’s her business line?

0:56:19 S1: Yeah, the most popular on the planet. Like the Ford, you know what I mean? She’s like the Ford of makeup products, which is why it’s so insane. And so that’s why I like it and I support it, ’cause it’s like… It doesn’t seem to have been given to her. Yes, she had the money to start it up, but really, it’s all based upon her…

0:56:42 SS: I got you…

0:56:42 S1: Branding moves and her acquisitions and like all… So she’s…

0:56:46 S?: And her dad becoming a man. No I’m sorry, I mean a woman. [laughter] I mean a woman, that’s what it was, that was the trick. That was the secret behind it.

0:56:54 S?: But why would she… Okay, here’s the other way of looking at it. It’s like, why would you sell? Your company is doing so well and has a huge future, why would you sell 51% of it for 600 million cash?

0:57:05 S?: I don’t know, I mean the kid’s making a name for herself so I give her, I give her credit. Mack move, I understand she’s riding the coattails of her family, but I’m gonna go wack move. Mack move, sorry.

0:57:05 S?: Mack move.

0:57:05 SS: I’d say the same thing, it’s a Mack move. Because you know what, you sell that, you’re the recipient of that fortune.

0:57:05 Chase: Yeah, you’re obviously doing something right, you’re obviously doing something right.

0:57:05 SS: And yeah, what’s wrong with making money? That’s why we’re all in business.

0:57:05 S1: I think Chase is, Chase is hung up on the one, the 51%, right? ‘Cause now she looses control.

0:57:05 Chase: Yeah ’cause you gave up your control.

0:57:05 SS: Yeah, yeah.

0:57:05 Chase: So I think there’s a clause in the contract that says that she can still make creative… She’s still the creative director for the company.

0:57:05 SS: She’s not just a face, she’s actually involved in the creative… Okay.

0:57:05 Chase: Yeah, but I would just say it’s a wack move because it’s almost like she’s giving away, not giving away ’cause they’re giving her money for it but it’s her empire that she’s now piecing out to people. And I don’t know, I would just consolidate it and keep it. It’s your legacy. It’s your empire.

0:58:07 S1: Got you. That’s Kylie Jenner and that is topic number two.

0:58:11 S?: Love it though.

0:58:14 S?: Topic number three…

0:58:15 S?: I hope it’s made in the US, too.

0:58:16 S?: This one is very interesting.

0:58:17 S?: Oh yeah.

0:58:19 Chase: I hope so.

0:58:19 S1: This is very…

0:58:20 Chase: Then I switch to Mack Move.

0:58:21 S1: This is very interesting. Go ahead, Chase, topic three.

0:58:27 Chase: Alright. So, Uber’s being sued for mis-classifying workers as contractors and not employees. So there’s a lot of people talking out there, right now that Uber is gonna be broken up as a company because it’s all founded on this idea that their workers are contractors and not employees. And if that is found to be a lot like not true, they’re in some deep shit.

0:58:51 S1: There’s a certain Greek fellow that owns a pizza place in Bethel that makes the best fried Mozzarella sticks. Fresh, beautiful, they’re unbelievable.

0:59:02 Chase: Handmade.

0:59:02 S1: And this man made a hot take the other day and told me Uber will be out of business in two years because of this. That’s an extra, extra hot take, he even went as far as to say short them. That’s what he said.

0:59:12 SS: I gotta tell you. This is an interesting topic and I…

0:59:17 S1: You understand, because you are a subcontractor. So you really understand this because you work as subcontractors for a lot of stuff that you do.

0:59:24 SS: For everybody, for most of my clients, I’m… You’re not ever hired as an employee unless you meet an hour requirement. Like if I’m working at the garden and…

0:59:34 S1: You’re there every… Yeah, same location.

0:59:35 SS: I meet like… I forget what the terms are for it now, but like 700 hours in a year, then you get your health benefits and things like that through them and you’re more of an employee status but probably still on a contractor basis because you’re not… It’s still a different hiring category. And networks switched to that years ago. Everybody think if I work for ESPN, “Oh, you work for ESPN!” Yeah, I work for ESPN.

1:00:03 S1: Yeah, but I don’t…

1:00:05 SS: They’re a client, and I am a contractor. Because if you can imagine, even as big as Disney is and with all the employees they do have, if you can imagine a network trying to employ 80-100 people in every football game that’s out there year round, and all the events that they cover. The only employees really exist in Bristol, in the studio. And they’re full-time employees and even some of them are probably contractors that just fill holes here and there. This is an interesting topic with Uber and…

1:00:36 S1: Really interesting. It’s gonna be sticky. It’s gonna be state-by-state, is what it’s gonna be, I think.

1:00:40 SS: So was the argument…

1:00:42 Chase: This is why it’s really bad. Is because they’re avoiding paying $9.50 an hour plus benefits to all these people by classifying them as that. So it’s dishonest, in a way.

1:00:55 SS: Well, look at that from the standpoint of being a waitress or a server. You make a minimum wage because you’re getting a lot of your income off of the tips that you generate. So I don’t know, this is…

1:01:12 S1: They can shut the tips down if they want, or they can keep the money for the tips also. I don’t think it’s gonna put them out of business, it’s definitely gonna screw up their model.

1:01:18 SS: No, it’s too…

1:01:20 Chase: Too big to fail.

1:01:22 S1: Yeah, I kind of think that. And as much as I love technology, you guys will appreciate this, especially as this way our conversation has evolved today. Uber was one of the last things I was willing to accept. And now, I love it. Well this year, we get, typically, on our shows, we get one rental car, and if I’m not the first one in, I don’t have it. So a lot of times I’m Uber-ing from the airport to the hotel, and then, once we all hookup as a crew, as far as OMNI Camp’s concerned, we share one car.

1:01:53 SS: You roll together.

1:01:54 S1: So it’s not a big deal not having a car. Years ago I hated not having a rental car, so most of the time I would have one, but now, you just kind of adapt and it’s just part of the process. So I never really Uber-ed before until this season. And I love it. It was like I’m doing this and I’m watching the car’s arriving, it’s showing me, and, “This’ll be here in two minutes.” And I’ve literally timed it where I’ve been in my hotel room, come down the elevator, walk out, and he’s pulling up, I get in, we’re off.” It doesn’t get any easier than that. And all these airports have adopted to pre-arranged pick-up services, which means Uber or Lyft or whatever the other companies are out there. And it’s amazing! And it’s all GPS. It’s concept great, because I hate cabs. I hate them. And I said that’s a game changer. I love seeing more Ubers out there than I do a yellow, checkered or anything like that. But from… I wouldn’t even… I wouldn’t think about it as an employee.

1:02:57 Chase: So my whole thing is this. Here’s the thing that I would say, a lot of these guys, they drive for Lyft and they drive for Uber, and guess what? That makes them a sub-contractor. So I don’t know… It’s sticky. I like Uber. I think Uber is cool. I’m down with Uber. I don’t like how they’re trying to deliver food and like DoorDash. I’m not down with that. I think that hurts the small business…

1:03:23 S1: It’s… I’ll tell you.

1:03:24 Chase: I think that also, you don’t really know, I don’t want somebody that’s picking up my food and dropping off my food to not be affiliated with the restaurant, because I feel like the restaurant can vet those people and the restaurant trusts those people for them to be there. When it’s an Uber, I don’t really give a shit. The guy’s a car, he’s dropping me off. He doesn’t have food, it’s just the purpose of dropping me off. So that’s why I’m not really too down with…

1:03:48 SS: Is it more of a because of what is arriving for you, you feel like, could be tampered with?

1:03:52 Chase: Yes!

1:03:52 SS: And I thought the same thing, and I was guilty of trying DoorDash and things like that, but when I got the bag it was all sealed.

1:03:57 Chase: Oh, it was all sealed.

1:03:57 SS: All sealed with a…

1:03:57 Chase: Is there a pin with a little lock. I’m just kidding. [laughter]

1:03:57 SS: Yeah, I caught you in a steal.

[laughter]

1:03:57 S?: They better come like that.

1:03:57 S?: Just return it. [laughter]

1:03:57 SS: No, but it was sealed, so it couldn’t…

1:03:57 Chase: Okay, alright, because I’m just saying, if I ordered a 20-piece of nuggets don’t be showing up with 18. Don’t be… I’m counting them, I am counting them!

1:03:57 S1: He’s sneaking a couple of nuggets in…

1:03:57 Chase: I’m counting them. Don’t be stealing my nuggets!

1:03:57 S1: Exactly.

1:03:57 S?: The red light comes on and he snags a nugget out of there.

1:04:28 S?: And there have been times where it’s been convenient where I didn’t have the rental car or someone else had it. Well, if I’m gonna eat, I either go down to the hotel restaurant, which maybe I wasn’t a fan of, or I just wanna hangout in the room, or whatever. It’s specific situation, I’m not just doing it all the time because I don’t wanna go out. I’m one of those people that I will buy online, but I’d prefer to go to the store and put the thing in my hands and walk out with it that day and not wait for the shipping and…

1:05:00 Chase: But sometimes when you travel, you’re stuck travelling and stuff.

1:05:03 SS: Yeah, there’s two sides to every… But I look at that as everything is becoming this process. You go to Walmart, you’re self checkout. How many jobs has that eliminated when you go there? And while I understand that.

1:05:18 Chase: And not only that, but people don’t even go to Walmart anymore, they just order it and have it come through Amazon.

1:05:21 SS: That’s true too, if you look at, not necessarily in the state of Connecticut, but certainly in New York, all our tolls are being eliminated because of E-ZPass and these toll workers. I live in Beacon and the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge’s tolls are slated to be removed very soon and there will be no tolls there anymore. You’re still getting charged…

1:05:39 Chase: Yeah, but they’re the electronic…

1:05:40 SS: But there’s no toll workers. And so, you think about all these automated systems that are being developed to help, obviously, store volume, because you look at it like, “Alright, if there’s 10 self scan checkouts at wherever you are, is that 10 cashiers that you’re really eliminating, because I don’t really think they would have 10 more rows of cashiers. So it might be eliminating two or three jobs, but not 10. But it’s still eliminating, and that’s the scary part. So it comes back, so now you’re creating DoorDash, you’re creating opportunity for other people that wouldn’t normally have something, so now they’re able to go and get and bring your food as a delivery or a courier service. This is what I look like it at as an electronic courier and now it’s everywhere. So, getting back to your point in the story or the question…

1:06:39 Chase: I’m gonna go Wack Move. Can the government do something with Amazon? Maybe the government should look at what Amazon is doing and stop, you know what I mean? I don’t foresee this being… Because of the fact that maybe it’s not your full-time job, you wanna work for a couple of hours.

1:06:58 S1: It’s a gig economy job.

1:06:58 Chase: You wanna… Yeah, it’s a gig economy job.

1:07:01 S1: Yeah, they support a lot of people.

1:07:02 Chase: And I feel that there’s gonna be major problems with the things that you were just mentioning and the things that people are setting up. But always, though, this is how it goes, “Let’s set it up, let you set it up and then we’ll change the rules, or then we’ll tell you. Once you get too big, now we’ll say it.” We didn’t give a shit about it for years.”

1:07:17 S1: We have yet to adapt. Yeah, we’ve yet to adapt the laws.

1:07:21 Chase: So I’m gonna say…

1:07:22 SS: Someone wants a piece of their pie.

1:07:23 S1: Yeah, that’s what it is. They want the…

1:07:26 Chase: I’m on the side of the company though, I’m on the side of Uber. I want them to succeed and keep growing.

1:07:31 S1: So then you’re going Wack Move then?

1:07:33 Chase: So I’m going… On the lawsuit, I’m going Wack Move on the lawsuit.

1:07:37 S1: Yes, yeah.

1:07:39 SS: I’m definitely Wack Move on the lawsuit, because I think if someone comes up with a great idea, don’t be the guy that, “Oh, I feel like I’m left out in the cold and I got to figure out a way to steal your fire a little bit.”

1:07:52 Chase: But that guy always…

1:07:55 S1: No, the same thing… They exist everywhere.

1:07:56 Chase: That guy always comes out of the woodwork.

1:07:56 S1: It’s the same thing with websites right now. So, ADA compliant, if you have a retail location, in the same way that you need a ramp for a handicap person to get in, you need a handicap person to be able to see your website too. But see it’s not gonna become law law until somebody sues the shit out of somebody for it.

1:08:14 SS: Oh, that’s a good point.

1:08:15 S1: And that’s when it becomes… And that’s what I’d have a problem with, why do you have to wait for the lawsuit to come in before you then adjust what it is?

1:08:21 SS: Isn’t that what… That’s what the tobacco companies did though. “We’re gonna just… We’re gonna keep pushing this off until it… ” Yeah, even though they knew what they were doing wasn’t really right. But that’s why it was so hard fought, because they said, “The minute any lawsuit is successful, we’re all going down.” It doesn’t matter what tobacco company you are, everybody’s in trouble with this, and rightfully so. So there’s… I guess, in a way, there’s good to have that… Know that that 800-pound gorilla is in the room always watching, and eventually someone’s gonna notice it. But can be equally as frustrating too because…

1:08:57 S?: But it’s all checks and balances when it comes down, it comes out in the wash.

[music]

1:09:04 S1: So next topic, this is for the Sony guy.

[laughter]

1:09:07 S1: So go ahead, we’ve got a Sony topic here, go ahead.

1:09:11 Chase: Alright, so Sony is buying AT&T’s stake in the Game Show Network. Basically, this is the Mack Move or Wack Move, right? Okay first, the acquisition of the Game Show Network, that’s the real Mack Move or Wack Move, but really what you’re voting on is…

1:09:27 S?: I didn’t know it was still around.

1:09:27 S?: My mom watches it 24/7.

1:09:31 Chase: Do you think that moving forward, like game shows, are gonna still be a big part of our viewership, like they have a future? Because that’s what Sony’s betting on. The Game Show Network has shows like Deal or No Deal, Cash Cab. None of the big ones, which I’m surprised about, they don’t have like Jeopardy or…

1:09:54 SS: Because Jeopardy is still being produced, is most likely why…

1:09:57 S1: Yeah, it’s usually the ones that are off.

1:10:00 SS: So these are… A lot of these are syndicated, too, that they show. Not necessarily syndicated, but they’re older shows, things from like Match Game and Joker’s Wild and things like that, so you can find a lot of these older shows. I don’t know what… Does Game Show… Forgive me for being so in the dark about this one. Do they have original programming? Is there anything on…

1:10:22 Chase: They’re gonna be creating… It says that they’re gonna be… The acquisition allows us to work more closely with the company’s talent, talented team to deliver the best iconic game shows.

1:10:25 S1: So they’re gonna…

1:10:25 Chase: And then, to also create new game shows as well. So based upon that, I’m gonna go Mack Move because that falls right in line with Reality TV, they’re gonna come up with creative ways… I mean listen, when you tell me that you’ve got The Rock hosting a freaking game show, that’s what tells me that there’s money in it, and there’s people that are still interested in it. And they got the one with the costume on their head, where it’s a celebrity doing the karaoke.

1:11:01 S?: Oh, I haven’t seen that…

1:11:03 S?: I haven’t watched it either, but it…

1:11:05 S?: The masked singer.

1:11:05 S?: Yeah, but it’s super popular. And they’ve got serious judges on there.

1:11:09 S?: I’ve heard about it, so obviously it’s popular.

1:11:10 S?: There is something feel-good about those shows that I really love. I love the mini golf one, right now that’s like…

1:11:15 S?: I saw that one, that’s pretty good.

1:11:16 S?: I love that show. It’s on between the NFL games or after the NFL games…

1:11:21 S?: It’s entertaining, it is entertaining.

1:11:23 S?: I love it, I love it. So I’m gonna go mack move.

1:11:25 SS: And I’m gonna go mack move. I think it’s smart, when you think about it, Sony’s got… Can you even put a number on what Sony’s net worth is? They got deep, deep, deep, deep, deep pockets and throwing money into a network like this to make money with it, it’s like handing me 10 bucks. It’s nothing to them.

1:11:49 S1: The other thing that we always talk about too, is that people love vintage. People love vintage. Shit just cannot go away. Shows go away, they come back. Everybody wants those vintage hitters.

1:12:00 Chase: Yeah, everybody wants the vintage shows.

1:12:04 SS: Even in movies.

1:12:05 S?: Same thing, definitely.

1:12:07 SS: I mean, you got old movies and… And that’s what disappoints me in Hollywood is… Alright, come on. There’s enough thought out there to come up with something new and creative, yet I can understand a classic movie that was attempted to be remade, and in very rare circumstances, and I’ll throw back a question to each of you for the movie aspect of things, I have two examples I can give. I think the worst remake of a movie ever, and it was just so forced and so horrible and just because you attach a couple of good actors too it doesn’t mean it’s gonna be a success, the name carried its remake more than the content.

1:12:52 S?: I think I can guess which movie you’re talking about.

1:12:54 SS: Bad News Bears.

1:12:56 S?: Bad News Bears?

1:12:58 SS: Remake. I was such a fan of the original.

1:13:00 S?: I was way off, I said Godzilla.

1:13:01 SS: So hilarious, such genius has been remade, which remake? I mean like, 30 of em, right?

1:13:08 S?: All of ’em.

1:13:09 SS: And then a good remake I thought very classy, was Arthur, with Brands.

1:13:20 Chase: It’s funny ’cause they made a few of those. It was a series, wasn’t it?

1:13:26 SS: No, I don’t know. Well, the Arthur with Dudley Moore.

1:13:30 Chase: Yeah, yeah.

1:13:32 SS: That movie was just phenomenal. And I thought the remake’s gonna be really bad, they turned it around a little bit, made it a little bit more modern day.

1:13:40 S?: They did it with Russell Brand.

1:13:42 SS: Russell Brand was the guy who played Arthur, the whole drunk… He was very believable. And it was very, I thought, well done and very hip and now. And they refreshed it enough to where I’m like, I enjoyed it. It wasn’t like trying to watch that Bad News Bears remake was like, they were almost… There were some lines that were recited… So Billy Bob Thornton was playing the Walter Matthau role, and I was like, “Well this couldn’t have been cast any worse than this.” Not that I don’t like Billy Bob Thornton, but this was not for him. So those are mine, so what’s yours? What’s one of yours? I’m putting you on the spot.

1:14:24 S?: I don’t know. I mean part of me wants Rocky to just stop making Rambo’s, just stop it rocky. But that’s not really a remake, you know what I mean? It’s not really a remake.

1:14:33 S?: It’s a continuation.

1:14:34 S?: I’m gonna go with how they’ve tried to re-do Dirty Dancing.

1:14:37 S?: They did?

1:14:37 S?: I don’t know, did they? I figured I’d take a shot at it.

1:14:40 S?: No, not yet.

1:14:42 S?: You sure they didn’t?

1:14:42 S?: I don’t know. Maybe they did and it’s terrible, but I don’t know.

1:14:47 S?: This isn’t a jab, and you’re young.

1:14:49 S?: He likes old movies though.

1:14:50 S?: Do you have old movie and a remake that you loved?

1:14:52 S?: Put it this way, The Mechanic.

1:14:55 S?: Good example.

1:14:56 S?: Fantastic movie, back in the day, one of my favorite movies from when I was a kid. And they remade it and it’s horrible, with Jason Statham. You couldn’t have remade this worse.

1:15:04 S?: I agree with that. Oh, we have a shoutout.

1:15:07 S?: That was a deep shot.

1:15:07 S?: That was a deep shot from that…

1:15:09 S?: You like that? I feel like that was a…

1:15:11 S?: You needed a super-zoom lens to get that one. He was like Steph Curry territory, he shot that one from deep…

1:15:17 S?: No, I’m a huge…

[overlapping conversation]

1:15:19 S?: My dad used to sit me down and he was like, “You’re gonna watch these movies…

1:15:23 S?: Yeah he knows a lot of old school stuff.

1:15:24 S?: With me, because you need to know… ” Same with music too.

1:15:27 S?: He loves Top Gun, so that’s gonna be a big thing for him. It’s his favourite movie.

1:15:31 S?: I do love Top Gun.

1:15:32 S?: I’m looking forward to that remake.

1:15:33 S?: Top Gun is up there for me. And I know that’s corny and cheesy but…

1:15:37 S?: But that’s almost like a part two, they’re not remaking it.

1:15:40 S?: It’s a part two.

1:15:42 S?: It’s not a prequel?

1:15:43 S?: No.

1:15:44 S?: No. Actually, it’s a sequel. It’s after all the events.

1:15:48 S?: ‘Cause that’s another thing that’s come really popular, is prequels. Rogue One, I thought was phenomenal.

1:15:54 S?: Oh yeah, that was the best one. Don’t you think?

1:15:55 S?: I thought that was absolutely great. Best one’s tough for me, because I grew up with Star Wars.

1:16:02 S?: No, not the best Star Wars, the best prequel. The best prequel and the best sequel… Because the original is what I say is, that’s Star Wars, the original three movies. And then everything after that is what I call a remake.

1:16:15 S?: And it’s so out of order, It started out with…

1:16:18 S?: Makes no sense.

1:16:19 S?: Like Episode 7 as one. And so that’s why they had to go backwards.

1:16:23 S?: Yeah. Makes zero sense.

1:16:23 S?: The whole story behind how they’ve made that movie and everything, you know the whole story behind the Star Wars, right?

1:16:28 S?: Yes.

1:16:28 S?: About how people are like, “This has turned into a nightmare.” They were just like going to…

1:16:32 S?: Mind-blowing.

1:16:33 S?: Yeah, just like the ship was just falling apart, left and right. They didn’t really have any… He tore it up and rewrote it, like six times, Like all this crazy stuff about it and then it turns out to be the biggest…

1:16:41 S?: It was based on Western movies and the Japanese movies. Samurai.

1:16:41 SS: There’s a whole synopsis too, about Star Wars and the whole theme of it and how the force is very… It has to do with our everyday lives. And there was a real message that was being sent in the books. And two of my buddies that I work with, they went on this back and forth dialogue about all this. And it was at lunch, it was at the US Open, we were on break, and everybody’s sitting there and I’m listening to these guys and I’m like, “Really? This earth? Are you here?” I wish I could quote some of it. I don’t remember all of it, but it was fascinating to listen to. And it wasn’t even so out there, it made sense. And you’re like, “I had no idea, I was just watching it ’cause I thought it was cool with a lightsaber and… ”

1:16:41 S?: Yeah, right? That deep, mental stuff behind it, I know.

1:17:42 S?: What you guys are watching this like a Zen moment.

1:17:44 S?: Alright, that’s gonna wrap us up. I know we had one more topic, but we’re gonna skip it because I got a 12:30 appointment…

1:17:50 S?: True.

1:17:50 S?: And I wanna talk to Scott for a little bit afterwards.

1:17:54 S?: True.

1:17:54 S?: So we are gonna have to wrap this baby up, Scott.

1:17:56 SS: Hey, it’s been fun. Had a great time, man, it was awesome. We could keep going and going.

1:18:01 S?: We probably could bore everybody to death.

[overlapping conversation]

1:18:04 S1: Chase, go ahead and give everybody all Scott’s information, his website, all of that.

1:18:10 Chase: Scott, just so that I don’t mess things up, I’m gonna have you give your information. I’m gonna give ours real quick. So thanks for watching everybody, subscribe to us on YouTube, follow us on Instagram, it’s @macktalks. Go to our website, www.themacktalks.com to see all of our content. And also leave us a review on iTunes, and go ahead Scott.

1:18:34 SS: Thank you. To watch any of my stuff, or some of my content. It’s not updated as often as I would like, you go to my website, it’s sdsimagery.com. You can also get in touch with me there via email, which is scott@sdsimagery.com. I don’t do weddings or bar mitzvahs.

1:18:53 S?: Yeah, I love that.

1:18:54 S?: What a way to end it.

1:18:55 S?: Awesome, Scott. Thank you so much for joining us, we finally are able to meet now, so I look forward to growing with you, to see what you got going on and go from there.

1:19:04 S?: Absolutely. It’ll be fun.

1:19:07 S?: Alright guys, thank you so much.

1:19:07 S?: Alright, thanks.

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