In 2011, after a few years working full time in video, production, editing, directing, and so on, and so on (I have the opportunity to wear several hats in the creative trade). One of my good friends and I made the decision to try something completely new to the both of us, the idea was for me to basically film him at work, this really is a basic concept reality shows have used for years.
What does he do? His name is Clint Cummings, a good friend of mine since high school, he was a musician and an amazing artist when compared to our peers back then. He turned his direction in art towards Tattooing while still in high school. More than ten years later he was an award winning Tattoo artist known nation wide, he had also opened a handful of Tattoo Parlors around DFW.
Though my entire life has been primarily spent behind a camera and or a drum set, in 2008 I took bold moves to making film/video and production my primary career. I could go into great stories as to how tough something like is, and the challenges I faced daily, but that isn't the point. I had some success with commercials, live music video, short film, training videos but never thought of reality television as something I could do, or would be interested in. Not only did I not own a television, I stayed away from watching anything with the term "Reality" in it. I feel like a majority of programming termed reality or unscripted, is typically a bold face lie. In fact as an editor I realized quickly that despite what script had been written, or how it was directed the entertaining portion of any video/film comes down to who and how the footage is edited. I say this because its known that some programs using the reality term are completely scripted in fact you can often see bad acting or even script reading live on camera because reality in a lot of cases seems to mean untrained talent/actors. But for the few shows that are real, it all falls onto the edits, because life is not as interesting or entertaining in a lot of cases to sell ad space. So the edits rearrange angry comments to build tension in a scene that actually had non, you aren't watching anything in real time, you typically watch things very out of sequence in a manor meant to be most interesting for the broadest audience. I really enjoy what I do, and manipulating footage, or the color and warmth, and the music playing in the back ground all plays in to creating these alternate worlds writers and directors dream up, but I have always felt if I were using the word real in anything, it should absolutely be one hundred percent as real as possible.
The learning curve, since I had no idea or even guidelines on creating a reality show, I really just began filming everything, knowing I would edit out most of the boring moments. That is why I say "as real as possible" the non real part is I am deciding whats interesting and cutting the footage of someone eating lunch watching television.
To begin filming I decided to use an older camera the Panasonic DVX100, a very solid versatile camera that I could film with for hours and hours, as long as I kept feeding it film and batteries. The down side of this camera was that it only filmed in Standard Def and it was terrible in low light areas. The popular cinematic HD cams with an afford price tag at the time were DSLR's such as the Canon 5DmkII which everyone seemed to own, the problem is those cameras typically only record for twelve minutes or less, great for something scripted and terrible if you are recording non stop for hours to catch a few second of entertainment. Even with the issues I would come across using the DVX we were planning for a youtube platform, which meant you could literally build an audience, figure out the best workflow, work out issues, and perfect the videos all at the same time with a very forgiving community. The first episodes began airing early 2012, and are so awful and directionless I can't watch them.
Why youtube? There is a big misunderstanding between people who use youtube and know everything about it, and everyone else. Over the years there have been several success stories from youtubers There are news channels, comedy channels, video game gameplay, how to videos, cooking shows and so much quality entertainment created by people who have polished there creativity while building a fan base and revenue at the same time. Yes it is like being struck by lightening. The most important thing for me was not being one of the top youtubers, or a youtube star. I wanted to join and contribute to a community on the cutting edge of modern media and entertainment. Before filming Needle Boys I had some youtube videos up starting from the original days of youtube, it was an amazing concept to me but I always felt I could use it more if I had something worth while to post online (content). Needle Boys was the content I never had before to begin a constant series on youtube. In my opinion regular television is a dinosaur, that hasn't changed or adapted, much if any in its entire existence. Currently we have service like Hulu, Netflix, Amazon, Google, and of course Youtube which are all not only premiering original content, you can also watch it when you want, how you want, with little to no commercial interruption. With some services you are obviously paying such as Netflix, but why not pay for the programming you want to see instead of paying for thousands of channels you never even watch, while watching thirty minutes of commercials per hour. I'm not saying television is terrible, in fact now days I watch some regular T.V. but I do not watch enough to justify buying a giant package of hundred of channels full of commercials and crap I won't ever watch. Youtube was in my opinion the face of change, a free service for viewers, and when they started the partner program it meant you may see one commercial ad every now and then. Now you can watch youtube on the television, laptops, tablets, and even most phones making it accessible to almost everyone, the viewers the top youtube creators have laugh at the ratings on most premium channels that satellite or cable offer, and for good reason its cutting edge creativity pushing itself to gain views vs people with enough money to get lazy and let their audiences down.
Enough with my personal opinions though. I knew Needle Boys would be an uphill battle to gain viewers. If there is a down side to a free service like youtube, it is that there is a ton of content and you are just another tiny piece of that trying to stand out, not to mention this is a tattoo show and on television they hadn't had the best luck. The point was not to become rich and famous, or even sell the show to a network, the point was to film real life in the tattoo studio, or on the road with Clint as he traveled to do guest appearances, or to attend conventions. Clint's Tattoo studio Sparrows Tattoo had an interesting mix of personalities that I would get to know during the course of filming Needle Boys, and the quality of their work set them apart from the thousands of tattoo artist in DFW, this was all part of the equation in considering to start a project like Needle Boys and this is what ultimately sealed the deal. I had no idea if I would ever make a penny off of the time and hard work I would be putting in to make Needle Boys a thing.
As I stated the first few episodes were really rough, but throughout the first year of Needle Boys things really took shape. We began doing the confessional commentary to fill in the voids, the tattoo time lapse videos were so popular a lot of other unaffiliated artists began coping that idea, and the journey took us to Clint being on Spike T.V.s Ink Master Season Two. I was interviewed by a few entertainment magazines, which helped me gain other work, and I learned a lot about film, editing, and style. Not to mention I had a weekly deadline I made for myself, I promised a new episode every Tuesday and for over a year I kept to it. I was, tattooed, traveled, exhausted from filming and editing non stop, and by the end of what we are no calling season one I was happy but very broke. Our Youtube account had started generating some income after almost a year, but not enough to begin paying for the expenses of the show. By January 2013 I had began receiving more and more offers to do paid video production services for a number of people, primarily by people who had heard about me in one way or another because of Needle Boys. After filming for a year and a half with Clint, I was forced to leave this awesome, weird, amazing, thing we created to make money and pay the bills. My original intention was to cut back to an episode a month for Needle Boys, to keep it going while working on other productions, but I soon found myself working out of state and or full time on other reality show productions. I may have not made much from Needle Boys, but the real life training, scheduling, and determination got a lot of recognition nationally. You can literally go to the youtube page and see progression in my work as the videos go from one month to another.
One year ago today the last episode of Needle Boys was edited and went live on the youtube channel. For months I was working through all of the footage I had from filming and I was still editing them into episodes even though I hadn't seen the boys in six months.
So for one year a ton has changed, I have worked film production jobs nonstop, I have traveled more, I have experienced more, and honestly probably learned even more. I think if you are in a creative industry like this you never stop learning, evolving, and adapting. But I have missed Needle Boys, my friends, and youtube. The youtube page has gained subscribers, and continues to grow bigger and bigger. Some of the artists at the shop have left, and new ones to take their place, this week the shop has opened its new larger location and it is absolutely beautiful.
Though I am currently under contract with a few productions right now and attempting to get my film fully cast for a mid summer shoot, I am going to begin filming content for Needle Boys again. I can't make a new episode every week, but I do intend to have a couple out a month unless I am out of town working. I am happy to be involved again with Needle Boys, and its honestly the least I could do for something that has provided so much for me.
See you soon,
Eli
