I have known John Haenke for a number of years now, first meeting at his Hervey Bay house / office back in around 2018. I’d booked a fishing charter with him, as his fame as a brilliant guide and fly fishing whizzo had preceded him via contacts I had in the fishing game.
That trip proved to be memorable; not because of the fish we caught, but for two reasons in particular.
I had decided to take my original drone with me – a GoPro Karma – and as fate had it, John was after some footage for his upcoming video / TV show. So it was in the middle of Hervey Bay, we had completed getting the footage he was after and were chasing some fish on lure when a pod of whales surfaced all around the boat!
We sent the drone up again and got some great shots, but on the second flight after changing SD cards in the GoPro, the dreaded Karma fault reared its ugly head, and at about 2 metres from the boat, it suddenly dropped like a stone into the briny.
Exit one GoPro Karma, never to be seen again.
A memorable trip to say the least.
Fast forward to the future and John and his wife Peta have relocated further north to Bowen in QLD, and are still hosting guided fishing tours, but additionally, John has used his vast knowledge and experience in both fishing and broadcasting to put together a YouTube series of fly fishing tutorials.
John’s history includes being very involved as an integral team member on the well known and highly regarded TV show “Escape With ET” where, as a camera man, he has created some of the best footage of fishing seen in Australia and the South Pacific. Even before that, John was involved with an SBS show he produced, shot and edited called Wildfish, at the time, the network’s highest rating show!
I wanted to know more about how John puts his videos together so sat down – well via email anyway – and asked a few questions. The answers may surprise you.
Equipment
Of course, the first thing I wanted know was what equipment John used to create his videos. It turns out there is a combination of cameras, with Panasonic UX series and a Sony A7SIII used for land-based footage, and GoPros used for his underwater shots. To combat glare, polarizer filters are fitted and these are an absolute necessity when shooting over or under water.
No gimbals are used – everything is either handheld or tripod based. This might not seem a major thing, but trust me, having shot game fishing from a pitching boat, it takes quite some skill and stamina!
There are risks involved, John told me about one incident where he told a skipper not to back the boat up in big seas, only to have him do so and a huge wave coming over the back drowning his $100,000 camera!
This makes losing my GoPro Karma pale in comparison!
Audio is recorded via a combination of external mics including a Sennheiser boom unit, Sony radio mics and RØDE WiGo II. As well as obtaining the ambient audio, the Sennheiser is also pressed into use to record the voice over part of the productions.
Footage obtained is edited on a Mac using Blackmagic Design’s DaVinci Resolve NLE and this combo is also used to do the postproduction on the audio; no external packages are brought into play for this, not being necessary as Resolve has, of course, the Fairlight component installed.
Similarly, no special effects packages or plugins are used either.
And don’t think there is some big production unit behind the videos; I asked John about crew and his answer was typically succinct.
“One man, one woman, my wife Peta helps with shooting and production.”
I have asked many people about their workflow processes in creating production, and normally I get a very detailed and at times long winded answer to the question. Not in this case, however. I previously suggested John was very succinct, and so it was here again. His particular workflow process was simple – Shoot, Edit, Publish.
And that’s it!
A subscription is charged to view the resultant videos on either a monthly or annual basis and you can view them via www.FlyFishingMasterClass.com.
If you have any interest in learning fly fishing, it is well worth a look, but even if not, viewing the resultant videos gives an aspiring or even experienced shooter and editor an insight into a professional team at the top of their game.
Whilst there are no plans to create any spin off series’, when questioned about subscription TV or even free-to-air, John gave a less definitive “not at this stage” answer.
Outside of the production of the www.FlyFishingMasterClass.com videos, I wondered if John had any advice to pass on to CreativeContent.au readers.
As it turned out, he did, and I’ll let him tell it in his own words:
“As a cameraman and editor, it teaches you as a cameraman what you need to shoot to put a good story together in the edit suite. You need a variety of shots: close, mid, wide and different angles to put a good sequence together, and it’s not something I see very much nowadays. Have a clear idea of the story you want to tell, and have a clear idea of the shots you need to tell the story. Planning is very important, and thinking about where you need to be to get the shots is very important. A picture is worth 1000 words is very true.”
I was also interested after a long and distinguished career in the game, what his views on the ‘current state of the nation’ is, so to speak.
“Things have changed so much and so quickly in my long career in television production. I started editing film, that required splicing/gluing film together. When I finally got my first edit suite with a play machine and record machine it cost at least another $100K. Editing has changed so much since then, with excellent free programs available now for use on just a laptop, and the ability to learn how to do anything via YouTube and Google is a wonderful asset for anyone starting out. Decent camera equipment is also much cheaper nowadays. The downside to this is that there is so much competition, everyone is doing it… and not always well.”
“One thing I have noticed is there is a lack of understanding on how to shoot a sequence, crossing the line, even a basic understanding of focus and exposure. Lots of camera work is just shot in auto, they don’t know how to use manual settings.
Lots of what I see nowadays is just eye candy: full of drone shots, clever quick editing, but lacking quality content, story or any heart… or just “look at me” ego trips are becoming very prevalent.”
But it’s wonderful to have the diverse range of content available on so many platforms, from Free to air TV, streaming platforms, you tube, the world is wide open for anyone wanting to get started. “
Other video trailers of FlyFishingMasterClass can be seen here.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMvejjml6uOnW0FndPKCYYw
