We Spent Too Much on Cameras...

I think for me, when I'm looking out into the sea of Sony A6600 cameras, just knowing that like $6,000 worth of equipment is shining down on me. Little known fact, uh A6600, it's not a model number, it's how much you have to spend to get a good quality. I was wondering why it was similar. Yeah, yeah. I was like, man, they really hit the nail on the on the head with that price tag. For sure. You want to let the people know though, like exactly what this means, what we're doing here. Yeah, yeah. I I think the biggest thing that's happened in our podcasting careers thus far has been the switch from the infamous iPhone Xs that have been providing you folks. They're not Xs, they're just X. Oh. They made a big deal about it. Really? I don't know why. Yeah, I'm not. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah. Did that offend you? No. Okay, good. You seemed a little bit uptight about it. I shouldn't have brought up. Yeah, next time keep your mouth shut. Yeah.

Um, no, I mean, I think, you know, moving from iPhone Xs, excuse me. Yes. Uh, to a more, you know, legitimate, like industry grade camera. Yeah. I mean, it like, we felt the fucking rush when we clicked purchase. Dude. I mean, I never like I haven't done drugs in a while, bro. That was similar. That was like hard drugs. Holy shit. I just ran a fat line of of camera purchasing, bro. It felt incredible. It was just a thing where we we we look around and we've invested in this set. We've invested in good audio, we've invested a lot of our time into getting good guests. I invest a lot of time editing clips. Yes, you do. Getting better at editing. Yep. And I just felt like we were only as strong as our weakest link. And when the occasional iPhone X wants to auto focus on something that's not our fucking subject, and our clips come out blurry, it's kind of fucking annoying. It's super fucking annoying.

Yeah. And in my like two hours of research on Sony cameras so far, everyone's like, dude, the focus, the autofocus, like you're in good hands. So I feel good about it. It's almost creepy. Yeah. That someone compared it to the terminator. Like once it locks on to you. Oh, like we are focused right now. They get they know where our eyes are. They know like it's here. I mean, we did some test runs before this, and it was like fucking freaky. Yeah. I mean, we were going as you know, we were walking in front of the camera, and then we were like, you know, heading to our seats and back off camera and switching, you know, seats and just uh everything. It was it was really impressive. I mean, I'm hearing like uh pro camera people being like, these fucking guys, they invented this in like 2005. Oh, yeah. I mean it's like the most basic shit. I mean, we were trying to watch videos on aperture, and we we just were like, this shit. Shutter speed, not yet. Not yet. Oh my god, man. But uh, but no, I mean, I I really think that you're right. This was like the last I won't say last because there's gonna be things we have to improve upon, of course.

But this was like something that had been bugging us for a while. Uh once again, it was like hit or miss. Like, don't get me wrong, we've had so many great interviews that didn't seem to have any issues. Uh, the you know, the cameras didn't fuck up, right? But then you were just running into too many things where it was like, man, like we've got this amazing content, and then it's like the visual side of it was just like barely missing, and it was like slightly out of focus at times, or like the coloration was weird that we couldn't fix, or whatever the fuck. I was just having daydreams of like we get the Kanye interview, and the fucking cameras like blurry, and I'm like, dude, my life is ruined. I quit podcasting forever. I mean, we've had some, we've had some really cool people in the industry ask us to do like on-site interviews. And you know, correct me if I'm wrong. A big part of you not wanting to do those. Well, you don't want to show up with iPhone Xs. I don't want them to fuck up either, but you know, it does look a little more, you know. Not as professional.

It looks legit as fuck right now. Like, I I love looking at this, Sony. I think iPhones are great. They shoot 4K. The cameras are unbelievable. They're damn near putting DSLRs to rest, but they're not quite. They're not quite. Like Cole Bennett can do great things with an iPhone. I get it for a music video, but there are certain things like specifically the focusing and the coloring and shit that I'm just already starting to learn about that are not to be fucked with by a phone. And and just us being able to zoom in and not lose quality. Oh man, shout out clear image zoom. Yeah. You learned about that. At 1.5 and not lose any information. Fire. Yeah, yeah, for sure. So something else we were talking about recently is we have had really like a crash course in finding out like who our audience is on various social media platforms, primarily TikTok and Instagram. Oh my God. We've we've had like a rude awakening as well. How different they are. it's wild. It's crazy.

You'd think that just your type of content would find the same people. The same people across platforms. Yeah. No. Because we're on both. Yeah. There's other people that are into different shit that are on both. You just assume that the algorithms and the platforms find those people similarly. I think part of it is we casted kind of a wide net. You know, we made we our philosophy was always to make different kinds of content, see what bites, see what works. So we have that's why our slogan is even gems take some bullshit. Because it's like you you love the bullshit. We didn't want to pick one, you specifically I love the bullshit. I love the gems. I love the gems too. You love the bullshit. I feel like you like the takes. Not even I love the gems. You love the bullshit. I love the gems, but like if you had to choose. I like jokes and fucking around too. Like, yeah, that's definitely a big part of me and my personality. But I think because we were making different kinds of content, um, it did make it easier for people to kind of latch on to the types that they liked. And we found that you guys on Instagram like the gems, you like to learn.

Maybe you're a little older, maybe you skew a little more, you know, up here, high twenties, maybe early thirties. like us. You would age shame them. I'm just saying you're age shaming. There's data. You're you can pull up the stats. You're age shaming our Instagram audience. The people in on TikTok that like us are younger. They are. They just like the gamified, like fun shit that I like too. You didn't just say they were younger. What else did you say about those TikTokers? I didn't say dumber. Yes, you did. Holy shit, yes, you did. Come on, man. Why are you gonna bring that up? I didn't mean it. Like, well, because you're age shaming Instagram. Let's at least like intelligence shame TikTok. Younger people are generally dumb. Dumber. I think that's okay to say. Yeah, they haven't had they haven't had as much time to learn. They need more time. Yeah, I just it's wild. We, you know, we post a lot of like drafts where we're basically like picking teams of rappers for whatever fucking reason under the sun that we can come up with. Um, you know, and we're doing like guess how many streams this, you know, rapper has, like, guess, you know, the top 10, this, that, whatever.

He tweeted it. My pussy sounds like Squidward feet. Yeah, like all sorts of just just more lighthearted fun shit, uh, and really not taking ourselves that seriously. And I like that shit, so maybe I'm young at heart. Maybe I'm dumb and young. Yeah. You're not young. Okay. But at heart, I said I said at heart. Yeah. But dumb, you're just that. I mean, but no, I mean, it's been really interesting to see. I I think the the main takeaway for us has been that if we didn't cast that wide net though, and we weren't as consistent as we were, we probably wouldn't have figured this out ever. Right. You know? Yeah. We would have just been looking, like, let's say we thought that the gems thing was the thing, and it was like we got because that's kind of what we were doing originally. Yeah. It's like, let's just post all the gems clips from the interviews. Let's just focus on helping people. Helping people at all times. That's what we're gonna do. Yeah, we would have never caught our first million views on TikTok. Or 7 million.

Or another million and then another million, you know. I mean, yeah. So it's interesting. So is it okay to do both? I mean, I think this kind of goes back to what we talk about when we're talking with artists, right? It's like when you're an independent artist, you can definitely like if you have no fan base, you can put out a lot of different type of music, maybe at first. But if you start to see what's working, and in music, I don't know that like the cross-platform thing is as big of a deal. It's not like Spotify skews to emo rap and Apple Skews to trap rap or whatever. age probably isn't that big a difference. Yeah, I think I think the demographics maybe of people who consume music on all those. I mean, of course, there's gonna be slight differences, don't get me wrong, right? But I think early on in your career, you can like experiment a little bit more. But I think, But I think that if you start to see what's working, you should double down triple down. You'd be a fucking fool not to, man. Unless you just don't like it anymore for whatever reason.

That that would be like us knowing that pretty much guaranteed every single draft video that we make on TikTok, it's almost guaranteed five figures. Yeah, almost guaranteed. I don't think Oh, ranker video, like it's getting five, it's getting six now almost when we got our first million. I it's like the first thing we did, I think was okay. Let's go shoot 10 more drafts. We Literally only shot drafts for like three weeks straight. Yeah, um, and obviously, you know, we still do them not as often now, but it's like, you know, because we want to say somewhat original, and but it's just you know, what I mean, it it was it was fun for us too, though. I mean, that's also a big thing for me if we're not enjoying it, we can't sit here and do it enough. Like, I mean, it's a fucking grind to shoot this content, and then for you, and or if we have editors even like for you and the editing team to edit the content, to post the content, it's like we better be fucking having some like amount of fun, or else it's just like okay, I'm literally quitting at this point. If we haven't got burned out by now, we gotta be enjoying it a little bit, right?

Yeah, at least a little bit, not for sure. But yo, how do you how do you like deal with when you're feeling like the burnout, bro? Because it's real in this game. It is, it's I mean, we've definitely both felt it. We almost quit podcast. We did yeah, we did a whole like episode about just like how we were so close to quitting because it was just like, oh my god, like yeah, we were kind of beating our head against the wall, like doing the same shit, and it just felt kind of like repetitive, etc. And so I mean, but since then we obviously got rejuvenated, but then we've had points of like feeling burnt out. Totally. So, like, what's your what's your approach? I feel like we have different approaches. Mine is play golf. Yes. Go to the beach. Yes. Go to the casino. Yes. Um, take time off. Yeah. And but but even when you take time off, you know, I'm like working extra hard the days before so that we're still covered because we're still not for sure. Dude, we've been pretty good at like not even missing days when we're on vacation or work trip or I know we've both been on vacation at one point and we still miss, bro.

Yeah, yeah. So, but maybe that maybe we should like I don't know, you know. No, for sure. I mean, there is something to be said for like actually taking time off work. Like, you know, even in my like day job, it's like I do have paid time off, and they expect you to like not be working. Because they they do want you to not work, like I'm pretty sure you come back rejuvenated. dude. My boss told me, and like he's a bullshitter, so like, shout out to my boss if you see this, but like you're a fucking full shit, like 90% of the time. And I I call him out on this all the time. I'm Like, dude, where did you even come up with this? Uh he says that when I take paternity leave for my second child that's being born soon. When I take paternity leave, he claims that they cut me off to our systems for the four weeks. What does that mean? Meaning, like, I can't log on to like email and the stuff I do Like I use. You're literally not allowed to work. That's what he says. I was like, dude, I doubt it. That's such bullshit.

You already work from home. It's like I was like, log on while you're like changing a diaper, like taking a call on speakerphone. No, yeah, no, the sound's coming in good. Yeah, no, like he literally said that, and I was like, boss, I was like, dude, No way, but the philosophy is that he's trying to get in. I think he's pure, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it makes sense. Like, even for example, I haven't been making beats for uh the last few months, like I used to. I've probably made five beats in the last three months. God, which is crazy. Does that hurt to say? Um, how does it feel to say that out loud? Insane. Being a producer. a producer. I know. People make five in a day, bro. I know five in an hour sometimes. Well, those people are crazy. Well, we don't want to talk. Let's we're not opening that fucking can. If you do it, you do it. I guess that's cool. Yeah. And if you catch one, but no, it's it does make me like want to do it more. It like makes me want to like get back into it and have and have time and find time to be rejuvenated. And I I feel like I'm seeing like I'm hearing inspiration in new places now.

I'll be out in the wild and hear something and like want to sample it, and I'm like, so like it's bubbling inside of me. Does inspiration um when you hear something that quote unquote inspires you? Do you actually take it in as inspiration? Meaning, like, oh, that's something I want, or do you think it's subconscious where then you are inspired by it when you go see you know what I mean? Like, is it a conscious thing where you're recognizing that that's inspiration? Yeah, like is it is it tangible. Is it triggering you as, like oh. Inspiration happened. inspiration just happened. I'd say it's a little bit of both. Okay, because there's definitely moments I hear something, I'm like, damn, I want to sample that. Damn, I haven't made a lot of beats lately. Damn, I want to get back to it. Damn, and now that whole thing is triggered. Yeah, but then there's also like you know, maybe the next day or the next week, I'll just be doing something completely unrelated and be like, yeah, yeah, like producing's so fun. Yeah, I love producing music. Have you been hard on yourself through like the break?

I've tried not to Like, do you like consciously like wake up every day and then be like? I have two me's. Okay. What are they? I'll just I basically just go back and forth between the me that is like it's okay, breaks are fine, you're gonna come back, or you won't, and it's fine. Either way, like do what you feel. And the other side of me that's like, come on, bro. Like you're a piece of shit. Dude, He's mad at you. You know you love this. Yeah. Get it. Is it is it mad at you or is it in spot? Is it trying to like motivate you back? Or is it mad? That side of me is kind of content. He's kind of pissed, like a little bit. Yeah. Oh, contentious. Yeah. Oh. I'm not saying that's healthy. I'm not saying be like me, but yeah, that's there's a side of me that's like wants to like whoops, whoops. Yeah, man. I have the same shit where I've got I'm spread pretty thin, obviously, you know, just given the fact I got a wife and family and day job, etc. Growing family. Yeah, growing family, yeah.

Baby number two on the way. Fucking nuts. There's been chaos around the house Is there a name here? I'm just tearing. The only name we've been throwing out, and like I'm putting this on wax now, so maybe it'll actually happen, is we've been throwing out June. So we like June bug. June. Little baby June. Is she gonna be like 80 years old when she's born? Yo, all right. My daughter will not be named June now. She's gonna be born in the winter. Like, that's the opposite of what I think. I think of a five-year-old girl named June. I I think of like it's hard to imagine her as like an older. June, are you coming to the bridge game? June. Yo, what? That's what I think of. Fuck. I don't know. Maybe it's maybe it's coming back. Sounds like old ass lady. to me. Okay, this is why people tell you not to share potential names with people. No, literally. I don't like it. They like, yeah, they tell you to do that. I don't like it. Yeah, but okay, if I would have told you Oliver before he was born, would you have shit on that? I like it more than Jim.

Okay, wow. But do you think it's because he's alive? He's a okay. She's alive in the in the she's alive in the uterus. Well, I don't know, actually. This is a big debate in politics. She alive. Oh, God. Are you still alive? Pro-choice, pro-life. Yeah, let's let's move this whole thing. We don't cover music anymore. No, no. But the music industry, like these aren't supposed to be all about music, really anymore. We and I hope y'all are okay with that. We're doing something where we we do music too much often. Like it's this is too much. Yeah. Like the interviews are consumed with music industry, music business, gyms, like how do you make it in music? Music, music, music. And we were just like, fuck. Like, we found ourselves when we were trying to do these before. It was like, how much can we we want to talk about other shit? We uh we are humans. All the biggest podcasters generally talk about everything. Yeah. Is there a podcast that's huge that just talks about one thing? No, not really, right?

No, I mean, not not if they're actual just like hosts. Do you know what I mean? Like if it's curious if it's interview, if it's interview-based and you're having a certain type of guest, like I, you know, yeah, I kind of look at you know, producer grind, right? Which shout out to those guys for sure. They crush it, they've got a very like specific target market. But you know, even them, like they've tried to get some like managers on and stuff that, yeah, like you know, managed producers, but they're not always just getting producers on, but like that would be the closest thing where it's like they're like talking about like their niche production, production and like plugins, and when did you start making beats and how'd you get your first placement? And like just it's kind of a lot of the the same uh themes. Don't get me wrong, like they do a great job, put out really great content, and the interviews are so you know solid, and we need to collab with them, and we do, and they follow us, and fucking shout out to them for supporting us. But for us, it was just when we found ourselves wanting to do these internal podcast episodes where it's just me and Henry. It was like, dude, like we are because off camera we're also all only talking about music, yeah.

So when we're preparing for the interviews and we're preparing for the content that we shoot, that's like the short form music related shit. It's just like fuck, dude. Like, how much can we actually it's too much, it's too much. So sorry that we're not gonna do it all the time. Um, but yeah, this is basically what we're gonna do from now on, I think. And I think if you're still listening, then you're cool with it at this point. Yeah, actually, I always forget that like when we're talking about something at the end of an episode, like they've committed. These are our people that are listening to this. I know, and we I fuck with you, yes, you pointing at our pointing at the Sony camera 6600. Oh my god, it's so beautiful. Hopefully, it's still recording. Yeah, we should probably go check it. There's no like red light or anything. No, but there should be like a like a bat signal that's just like it's off, guys. It's not recording anymore. You can stop talking. If you want a job as a production assistant, we pay in t-shirts and coasters, and coasters, and stickers, and stickers, shout out and whiskey, no, and whiskey, sure, and Guayaki, yerba mate, and uh herbal fragrances, possibly. Oh yeah, well, yeah, you have paid some editors that way.

Look, you gotta do what you gotta do. We're we have not made a dollar off this podcast, and we just sunk another six Gs. We just sunk another six G's. For sure. So but yeah, we really do appreciate y'all for tuning in A lot. week in and week out. It means the fucking world to us. Y'all, this is the only reason we keep going. So until next week, Henry. We're chugging this drink. We're gonna go learn about Sony A6600 cameras so that our next episode will be even better. Bye-bye. Peace.