Film the Success

Dillon Overman
English 110.01
Hannah Stephenson
Film the Success

When people hunt, they want to show others that they have been successful. All of these bullet slinging, beer drinking, unemployed rednecks will go out and shoot 10 deer and bring them back. Sure showing your kill to your family is successful; but do they really know how the hunt unfolded? Do they really know how it happened? No they don’t. The hands down best way to show a hunt to be successful is to film the hunt. By capturing they hunt and kill on camera, the viewer knows exactly how and when the hunt happened. By hitting that “record” button, you are able to bring nature to your kitchen table. After you capture that video, you can show your world to any audience that wants to see it. When I say “your world,” I mean you and your surroundings. What you see when you are in the stand. The trees, the ground, the animals, and even the time of day. They get to see the surroundings that happen at that moment in time when you are hunting. It is simply “what you experience.”

Here is a question for you. If someone said “I just killed a world record deer.” Would you rather see the pictures of it? Or would you rather see the video that captures all the detail of the hunt in its entirety? I think that 99% of the time the viewer is going to pick that video production of the hunt. People now days want detail. They want to see everything that happened, starting from the beginning and going all the way through the end. As technology has increased, so has the public’s wants to see what new things they can do with that technology. Filming hunts is just one of those “wants.”

When people see a filmed hunt, they get to see everything that is experienced through the hunters eyes. They get to live out that moment with the hunter. But what really makes it successful? The fact of the matter is that everything that is captured in the video contributes to making a video successful. Everything that a cameraman gets on footage, can somehow contribute to the final product. What time of day was the hunt? Where was the hunter hunting? How big was the animal? All of these questions can be answered by video footage. On video people get to see the animal before it is killed. This is a big contributor. I don’t know if there is a psychological term for it, but when people see the animal alive and then dead, something in their brain triggers and makes it seem very successful. Although the kill is what everyone is focused on in a filmed hunt, everything that is going on before the kill is what makes the video flow together. All of the pre-kill footage or the “filler” shots, add a great amount of vivid detail to the video. They make the video watchable and more interesting for the viewer. What time of day it is, where you are hunting at, even what season it is. All of these factors are very important to include in the video. Without including this information there is the possibility that the viewer is left with questions. When filming anything the one thing that you don’t want to do, is leave your viewer with questions. When a viewer has a question that is not answered in the film, most of the time they won’t find that answer anywhere else. Questions that a viewer has that aren’t answered leaves that person with dissatisfaction. They feel like they didn’t get enough information.

When you film you own hunt, you are capturing a lifetime memory. With video you can go back any time after the hunt and re-live that moment. Filming your own hunt is hands down the best way to show that a hunt is successful.