You're listening to the Nick amp podcast, a podcast that dives into the lives and stories of creatives, entrepreneurs, and outdoor enthusiasts. My name is Nick amp and I'm a filmmaker and photographer best known for documenting stories in the mountains. We sit down with guests to uncover where they got inspiration from, dig into their experiences in the outdoor industry, and find a ton of actionable inspiration from their adventures in life.
Welcome to episode 12. We have another special guest on today on the Nick Gamp podcast. He's an outdoors filmmaker, photographer. You may know him for his adventure videos, but recently he just did a documentary called The Backyard Bears featuring the Tahoe Black Bears. It was an epic film. If you haven't watched it already, highly recommend watching that. He's on Instagram. He's known as Roaming with Riley, but he goes by Riley McClary. That is his name. Riley, pleasure to have you on today.
And how you doing so far, man, over there in Hawaii? Pretty good. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, Hawaii's been great so far. It's nice to escape the cold weather and be in a warm tropical environment for a little bit. Yeah, man. Normally you're in Tahoe, so I mean, this is definitely a change up from the previous winters probably, right? Definitely. Yeah. I mean, the last few years I've been pretty nomadic. I was living in a van for a while, but Tahoe is kind of home base.
But in the winters I would kind of leave in the van and kind of go where it was a little bit warmer. So, I've never really been a huge winter person. So, yeah, winters were usually spent kind of seeking warmth, but this year I really kind of took that to another level and I've been out here for a few months. And it's been a good decision because Tahoe's been getting absolutely pounded with snow. So I'm glad I'm out here. It sure has, man.
I mean, you can't spend it the wrong way in Maui like that. So normally on this podcast we ask our guests the first general question, who are you? So for you, who is Riley McCleary? How did this adventure all start for you, man? Yeah, all right, I'll try to keep it short. So I'm Riley. I am a filmmaker and photographer. I'm kind of diving a lot more into the wildlife space, wildlife conservation space these days. But I kind of got my start when I was about 14.
I was doing a lot of like mountain biking and like adventure sports stuff. And I just kind of got a GoPro and started taking that on all my little adventures with my friends. And that kind of developed into getting a new camera. And I started out by filming weddings and was doing like weddings throughout high school. And then I got a job at a media company in Tahoe, like when I was a junior and we were doing a lot of adventure sports, mountain biking, skiing, all that stuff.
So I was doing a lot of that kind of filming. And then with all that knowledge that I was learning from that production company and everything, I kind of took that into creating my own business and getting my own kind of gigs with companies in the outdoor industry. So that kind of sums up that amount of time until recently when I kind of started to transition into the wildlife space. And that was about, that was in 2022. So that was however many months ago.
I'm still definitely kind of in the beginning stages of moving over, but it's been a fun journey so far and I'm excited to be where I am now. So you started this back in when you were 14 years old, like most kids at that age, when they enter into creative space, we get a GoPro. I mean, one of the easiest ways to enter into that atmosphere back then, were you just trying to document things or were you already trying to create stories like you do now?
I would say back then I was kind of just trying to just document whatever we were doing, whatever stuff we were getting into, mountain biking, riding scooters and just kid stuff. So it was definitely more of just like raw, just documenting whatever and then just kind of eye moving it all together into random videos with like EDM music behind it. But that definitely like kind of sparked my love for cameras. And then that kind of took me to where I am now.
At what point did you even know that this was what you wanted to do for a career? I would say pretty early on. I would like when I got my first real camera, it was the Sony A6000. And that like as soon as I got that, I was like, how can I start to like make money with this? I never really wanted to get a job at like a copy shop or something that like some of my friends would have been doing at the time. So I started to do weddings and that's kind of how I started to initially make money with it.
And then I was like, I just want to do this. Like I don't want to do anything else. And I wanted to combine my love for the outdoors and nature with the camera stuff because it was like those are like my two big passions at the time. And so I was just kind of doing anything I could to merge those two together into a career. Man, I've never done a wedding before, but I've heard stories that it was, they're stressful.
So I'm sure transitioning to what you actually wanted to do quickly on was very nice. I mean, you're known for, at least I remember the videos I've seen you do tightroping videos. Is that something that you still want to continue doing? Doing those adventure videos or is it full on wildlife mode now? Yeah. I mean, the action extreme sports world was something that is still, like I'm still very involved in that world right now. I don't do as much filming and documenting of all that kind of stuff.
That's kind of more just like what I do for fun and stuff like that. But yeah, the wildlife stuff, like I've always had a love for wildlife growing up. Animals were always such a big part of my life. And I kind of went through this transition where I wanted to start making more of a difference in what I was doing with the camera.
So I was like, I can just tie in my love for animals and my passion for wildlife and the environment and the natural world and start making films that push messages to help conserve and protect all the different animals and environments that I love so much.
So yeah, I don't know if that really answers your question, but yeah, the highlining stuff, I got into that whole world when I initially moved to Tahoe and met a bunch of people that were doing a lot of highlining and cliff diving and stuff like that. And I kind of just immersed myself into that. And that's such like a unique activity, highlining. It is just such a mind mental game. Like you can walk a slack line in a park all day and it's essentially the same thing.
But when you take it up 3000 feet above Yosemite Valley, it's just like such a mental game. And that's such like a fun challenge on the body and on the brain. So yeah, you're definitely daring, man. For those of you listening, if you don't know what we're talking about, go on his Instagram page and scroll back a bunch on his reels and look for the videos where he's highlining.
He even documented one of them, one time when the stories in Tahoe, we climbed up these mountain summits and how he got the line across the other side. That was an epic part. I remember watching you when you were posting about that. And I don't know, man. I know a lot of people, at least in the photography space, I feel like are not that adventurous. And I bet for you at that point was probably on the document because you were doing something a little bit different than most people.
What was, and you were saying that was just all for fun, right? Yeah, I mean, I like, yeah, that was just kind of passion. I was just going out with my friends and doing a cool adventure. Yeah. So you recently just posted, or probably a couple months back now, but you posted the Backyard Bears documentary featuring the black bears in Tahoe. And you mentioned briefly that you wanted to make a difference with what you're doing with your camera.
So what was the reasoning behind the Backyard Bears to be your first initial documentary on himmels? Yeah, so come 2022, it was kind of like the turning point where I was getting kind of burnt out of what I was doing. And I just wanted to use my skills with the camera to make a difference, as cliche as it sounds. So I moved to Tahoe in 2020 after high school. I graduated high school in 2020, moved to Lake Tahoe. And that's when I kind of like I had been going to Tahoe my whole life.
I grew up in Sacramento just outside of Tahoe. So I've been spending a lot of time in the mountains and in Tahoe my whole life. And I knew of the black bears in the area, but I didn't really know that there was a huge problem with human wildlife conflict until I moved up there. And I saw it for the first time when there was a bear walking in front of my apartment. This huge, huge black bear, like way overweight. And I followed him down and he went and got into a dumpster.
And I was like, this isn't right. This like what are we doing to these incredible animals? So it was like then where I really like wanted to make a film about the Tahoe Bears. But it kind of took like two years of traveling and doing some other stuff where, which kind of led me to building up all the storytelling skills and knowledge with cameras and everything to get to the point where I was like, all right, I'm going to do it. And then in 2022, I kind of like put most things aside.
Like I was doing a lot of video editing for some media companies in Tahoe, which kind of allowed me to spend all my time out in the wild looking for bears when it was daylight. And then I could work at night when it was dark. So I spent a good like six, seven months out spending like all my time with bears.
Like I kind of cut out and like all social life kind of pretty much everything and everything was focused on the bears and learning their behavior and tracking them and just like trying to document anything that I could to tell their story in the way that I wanted to. I think I put in about like 60 or so days where I actually got footage of bears and then so many others where I just got completely skunked and didn't find anything.
But that's kind of like where the idea originated and then kind of how I began production and started the filming of it. To dive into your video a little more in the depth, you said you started tracking these bears for six months, six to seven months in only 60 days of that you actually got footage. Did you learn better skills how to track the bears? How did you even go about knowing where to look for them?
Yeah, so I would say the first two months is kind of where I didn't get anything and I was just kind of aimlessly wandering around the woods looking for bears. I could find them occasionally in town doing the dumpster stuff, but I wasn't having a whole lot of success at the beginning until I started to kind of learn their routines and behaviors.
Like the bears that are the urbanized population that are in town that pretty much eats trash for a living, they really are kind of on a schedule and I could towards the end, like after like following them around for so long, I could pretty like consistently go out to specific dumpsters and find the same individual bears on their same loop around town every day. So once I kind of figured out those routines and patterns, it became a lot easier.
And then the same kind of thing for the bears out in the wild as well. I was finding like different spots that they like to hang out and I was figuring out why they liked to hang out there. So then like once I kind of figured out those patterns again, like I could predict where they were going to be, when they were going to be there. And I was getting that system a lot more dialed in as it kind of went along. So then I was pretty successful for a while, like finding bears.
And then come like October when I was trying to film the salmon run scene with the bears fishing for salmon, that was another scene where I went like a month without getting anything and I was going out sunrise to sunset every single day. And I didn't get anything because the salmon weren't going up because the water levels were too low. So that was like a month in the making of just like nothing and nothing and nothing.
And then all of a sudden one day the salmon went up, one family of bears came down once in the morning and then I stayed, they left and then they came back once again in the afternoon and that's when I got all that footage for that scene. And then a storm rolled in the next day and put the bears away for the winter for the most part. So yeah, it was a long process, but it was super fun and I learned so much in that whole process. Yeah, man.
Following anything for six months, you're going to learn their patterns. And one thing that surprised me, I had no idea that bears eat 5,000 calories in the summertime. So you mentioned something called hyperphasia. So before they go to bed for the winter, they start eating more. And what was that like experiencing watching them increase their appetite during those months? Yeah. So yeah, so bears, black bears, they eat about 5,000 calories a day throughout the summer.
But then come the fall when it's nearing winter, they start packing on 20,000 calories a day plus. So they're just in like a complete feeding frenzy all day, every day they're eating. And that's like, what I really noticed more was the bears that were in town. Like, I would see, like I would probably count like eight to 10 bears in town every single day, like in some specific neighborhoods that I would go that really had a problem. And they were just gorging themselves the entire day.
I like that throughout that time, I was also spending a lot of time at the river where the salmon were running or supposed to be running because that's another huge food source for the bears that are that are out eating natural food sources. So I was kind of bouncing back in between the salmon run and in town getting all the in town shots. But yeah, it's crazy, it's crazy the amount of calories they can pack on in a day.
And that's why like the trash is so like rewarding and appealing to them is that they can get 20,000 calories in an hour. Whereas if they're out foraging for food, it's going to take them the whole entire day. So it's like, if it's available, why not take advantage of it? So that's kind of the problem I was highlighting in that in the film. So Riley, I spend most of my time in Kings Canyon National Park, Socorro National Park and the Suriname National Forests.
And the black bears over there are one, not as big as the ones in Tahoe, and two, they're still more afraid of people from what I've encountered myself. I mean, I've counted bears a lot out there. And when I went to Tahoe, I camped on some BLM land out there. I don't know what it was. It was some type of national forest land. And there was one bear that was scavenging through someone's truck because he left it open.
Yeah. And that was the biggest bear I'd ever seen in my entire life in the black bear species. So when I saw your video, you featured the bear literally opening the trash can. I did not know that it was that intelligent or capable of opening trash cans like that. In your opinion, what are some ways that businesses can help improve keeping the food away from bears? So, so yeah, bears are, they're super talented in their door opening and trash can opening skills.
Door, car doors, they can open those as well. They can't do the ones where you have to slide your hand in sideways, but the ones with the handles where you hold them, where you can go under like this, they can just open up car doors like that. They can open up doors to your houses. They can, they can do whatever. And if they can't open up a door to your house, they can for sure bash through it and break it down, especially some of the 600 pounders that we have in Tahoe.
But getting back to your question, the businesses throughout the Tahoe basin, pretty much all of their dumpsters can be locked. They have like this locking system with the carabiner and a chain that has this latch that goes over and then you can lock it with the carabiner and the bears can't open up the carabiner. So the dumpsters can be locked. It's just the human error of being too lazy and irresponsible to close the latch and lock the dumpster. Most of the dumpsters are that way.
Some of the dumpsters just aren't locking at all. So those businesses need to get on the train of getting a dumpster that can be locked. But then it all just goes back to the ease of use. If the dumpster, if it takes too much effort to lock it, it's just not going to get done.
And then for the residential streets and the residential trash cans, a lot of houses have these bear bins that they put the trash cans in and then on trash day the trash crew will come and open up those bins, take the trash cans out and dump them. So you'll see a lot of those throughout town but not everyone has them. And a lot of people just have normal trash cans that they put out every trash day. And the bears know the schedule. They know what day the trash is coming.
Even in the wintertime, you'll see, I'm seeing videos all the time from my friends where on trash days the bears know and they don't even hibernate anymore. They just sleep for six days or whatever and they come out on trash day and walk the streets and eat a bunch of trash and then go back and nap for a little bit. So they're so smart and once they know where and how to get that food reward, they're just going to keep doing it as long as it's still available.
So it's really up to us as humans to take a little bit more responsibility and just do what's right for the bears. And it's not even just for the bears. It's like they make a mess, right? And then the wind blows, trash goes everywhere, plastics in the lake, plastics everywhere. So it's not even just the bears. That's the beginning of it but it's a whole deal. And it all kind of comes down to us and the responsibility that we need to take to fix it.
If you answered one of my questions I was going to ask you, if I guess it's the top people who ever govern Tahoe Basin, if they are applying pressure to businesses to taking responsibility to locking up their bins, I would think that they would apply more pressure there. But it sounds like the residential areas are taking care of business. I don't know. You've lived in Tahoe. Is this something that's talked about in terms of putting pressure on businesses? It's definitely talked about.
And there's some numbers that you can call to report businesses that aren't securing their trash properly. But it's just it's not enforced. There's no fines. It's not enforced. So yeah, there needs to be some sort of change on that level to make a difference.
And with the bear documentary, I'm talking to some people about getting in front of some government officials and going to some different community events and talking about it and just doing whatever we can to push the message and try to make some sort of change. Well, I was happy to see a local newspaper, the Placerville newspaper and Active NorCal to give your documentary some attention. Has there been people, are they reaching out to you talking about it?
Yeah. Trying to help you out in this endeavors? Definitely. Yeah. The documentary has been doing really well. There's a few local Tahoe newspapers and magazines that have published some stuff on it. And so that kind of helped get a lot of recognition in the Tahoe basin. And then I've been submitting to a bunch of different film festivals. I'll be in in Montana next month from the 22nd to the 27th at the International Wildlife Film Festival.
If anyone wants to come say what's up and watch the film, I'll be there. And then come October, I'll be in New York for another film festival showcasing it as well. I've got it submitted to a few other ones that I'm waiting to hear back for or from. But yeah, it's been doing really well. I've been getting a lot of good feedback and a lot of eyes on it, which was the whole goal to just get as many people to see it as possible and just spread the word.
Because I feel like it's not talked about enough. And I'm hoping that this kind of changes that. Yeah, man. You mentioned even that these bears get euthanized because they become dangerous to us, the people. Because we didn't take responsibility in the first place. So I don't know if this even crosses your mind. Probably did. Obviously you talked about it in an documentary, but you have many tourists who are coming to Tahoe from all over the states.
So these bears could be potentially attacking these tourists who are on the hiking trails as well, right? Yeah. And so black bear attacks on humans are super rare, right? But it's more of like they're getting so used to people being around. They're so used to connecting humans with food, right? So bears start, they start breaking into cars, they start breaking into people's houses. And a situation where the bear only knows the way that it came in to get out, right?
So if a bear gets in through a window into someone's house and they're in their fridge and someone comes down and is blocking that window, that bear is now trapped in its exit. The only way that it knows to get out is blocked. It freaks out and it doesn't have anything else to do. So it just does what a bear does. And unfortunately that's pretty taxing on humans with their claws. Like we've got soft skin, so a bear can do a lot of damage to someone.
So it's just like this problem of the trash just leads to a whole bunch of different things. And even out hiking on trails and stuff, like there's some places in Tahoe that get a lot of kind of tourist attraction, especially in the fall with salmon and the bears eat the salmon. So people come to see the salmon and there's bears all over the place. And people don't realize that it almost feels like a zoo.
There's a boardwalk and it feels so not wild where people are going up and trying to take selfies with bears. People don't realize that they're wild animals. They are so comfortable around people, but that's because they're so used to people being around, they're so used to being surrounded by people all the time. So they're comfortable around people, which isn't typical for a black bear. Black bears are really skittish and really afraid of people like you said in other parts of the country.
A black bear should run for the hills and climb a tree as soon as it sees a person. But in Tahoe they're so used to people being around and it's almost like they don't feel as wild as they are. And so people don't really respect that. And they put themselves in bad situations. And yeah, it all comes down to the end result being the bears get euthanized. And it's not their fault. They're just trying to do their own thing.
We're encroaching on their habitat and we need to respect that and give them the respect and space that they deserve. They're wild animals. I mean, we're the higher intelligent beings. I had no idea that people also came to Tahoe to see the salmon. I thought that was just his own thing that bears were able to hunt in peace. But it makes sense. I mean, people go fishing out there. So are they just viewing the salmon or are they fishing for the salmon as well?
Yeah, so you're not allowed to fish for the salmon at this time of year during the salmon run. But yeah, so there's this place that people go to see the salmon. You can go to this underwater thing and look at them through glass and see the salmon and stuff. And people don't necessarily go there for bears, but sometimes there are bears around. Yeah, and then people don't really realize the danger involved. Black bears aren't necessarily, obviously they're dangerous.
They can do a lot of damage, but they're not out to get people. Black bear attacks on humans are so, so, so rare. But it's when they get so habituated to humans and food conditioned, when people feed them, they start pairing humans with food. And then all of a sudden that breaks that barrier of fear and can lead to potentially dangerous situations. So there is places that the bears can go and be away from people and eat salmon. But the hotspots are where this center is where people go a lot.
So yeah, we just kind of find a balance. Yeah, man. I mean, I'm way more terrified if I was to encounter a cougar in the mountains instead of seeing a black bear. I'd rather see a black bear 10 times out of 10, man. Because I do all the sunrise hikes. So I mean, the likelihood of me seeing a cougar in the morning is very high as well. I would rather it be a big old bear making monster sounds than a cougar who can sneak up behind you. Yeah, for sure.
I feel like with the mountain lion though, if you see it, your chances of having a bad encounter with it go down drastically. It's kind of the ones that you don't see. But yeah, for sure. I would rather spend time with black bears any day. But mountain lions are a huge fascination of mine. And I'm definitely looking to find some at some point. So the document. But that'll be something that will involve a little bit more research and time. Yo, that's going to be epic, man.
So going into this documentary, what are some things that you can share that you've learned about the wildlife industry in terms of filming them? What did you learn that you didn't know at the beginning of this? I would say I thought that the wildlife space, I kind of knew already that in order to make a full film about an animal, you need to spend an absurd amount of time out filming to piece together a story. I have some, all the different scenes throughout the film are all individual bears.
The original, the first scene is like a family of a mom with two cubs. And it kind of goes through with them for like a minute and a half or so. And that like, I encountered that family like five to six times in order to get the shots for that one little scene. And it's like a lot of the wildlife space. It's like, it looks like it's one day that all this stuff is happening. But it's like, you get one shot one day of a bear walking.
And then two weeks later, you find that same bear and you get it doing something else. And then it takes so many days out there to actually piece together a sequence and a story with an individual animal. And I kind of knew that going in, but it really like, that was really something, like definitely a learning process and took a lot of time to build sequences out for sure. Did you ever feel like it tested your patience? Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
Like especially the salmon scene, because it was like, yeah, like a month of me just sitting there getting absolutely nothing. Well, I got the whole bald eagle scene was shot when I was waiting for bears to show up. So that scene also took like a few different days of encountering the bald eagles to put together just that one like hunt. It was probably like three days worth of footage where I got a take off on one day. And then I got the hit of it catching the salmon on one day.
And then I got some other B roll of it flying another day. And then you put all that together into one scene and it all flows together. But yeah, like towards the end of October, I was getting pretty impatient. It was getting cold. The snow had already started coming and I was living in my van. So van life in the snow isn't necessarily super ideal. So towards the end of October, I was getting pretty impatient.
But then all that time kind of paid off one day and like the first week of November when it all kind of came together. So for those people who may not have that much experience in the documentary industry of filmmaking, was there, is there any other recommendations in terms of gear that you recommend them using when they're going out to do something like this? Yeah, so I feel like the documentary space is such a broad, such a broad industry.
In my case, my like this documentary, there's no people in it. There's no interviews in it. Like so it's, it was, I feel like it was a lot more bare bones than what a typical documentary would look like where you're setting up a bunch of different interviews with people and everything like that. I did all the voiceovers in just like in a closet with a microphone. But like my gear for that film was essentially just, I shoot on the FX3 now, but when I started the film I was shooting on the A7 IV.
So I was shooting with the A7 IV with the 100 to 400 and that's pretty much like the entire film is shot with the 100 to 400 on the A7 IV and then a Sassler tripod with the video head on it. And then throughout filming, I started picking up a little bit more gear, monitors, cages and kind of started building out a little setup and then the ending scene was all shot on the FX3 with the Sony 200 to 600. That's kind of where I ended up towards the end of the film as far as gear went.
But yeah, most of that was shot on the A7 IV. It performed great. I love the way that it turned out. I shot a lot of it in 4K 60 with a little bit of that crop that the A7 IV puts in. So that helps with wildlife getting as close as possible to them without kind of affecting their behavior. But again, with the Tahoe Bears, you can kind of get pretty close to them and they're kind of unbothered, which isn't the best. But yeah, it definitely made it easier to get those nice close up shots.
So for your sounds, were you recording the natural sounds in the real time events or were those more post production sound design works? Yeah, so the whole film is all in post as far as sound design goes. So that was a whole mix of using Epidemic Sound and Artlist and then also recording my own sounds.
So like filling up a bathtub and recording splashing in the bathtub or some of the chewing stuff I would give my dog something to chew on and I would get up close to his mouth and have him chew on something that had some moisture in it to get that salmon chewing sound. Or just like random stuff. Sound design is so fun because you can just kind of start thinking of crazy things to start making sounds.
Finding sounds for animals on those music platforms like Epidemic Sound and Artlist is pretty hard to find the right sound. You can get some footsteps and some stuff, but in order to really get the right sound for a lot of things, you've got to kind of make them yourself. So then that's where the creativity comes in where you're like flapping books in front of your microphone to get like a bird flapping sound.
Or yeah, like getting rocks and like covering them in like fabric and then getting like a gravel like kind of area and like making your own footsteps with like it's really fun. Like that was honestly like one of the like it was such a cool experience to like make a bunch of cool sounds for it. So yeah. Well that just goes to show how important sound is to the overall video. I mean that goes into pushing the story forward.
Was sound design something that you were familiar with before the documentary? A little bit. Like I would just it was more like I would put like ambient sounds in my videos. Like the sound of a waterfall or the sound of the ocean waves and stuff like that. Like I had never really dove into like specific like like really in depth sounds. But yeah, like this whole film was such a cool learning experience and it was just so new new to me.
And yeah, it was a really fun process and I learned a lot in a bunch of different ways. Making those sounds by yourself. I mean what was your thought process? You scroll on Epidemic Sound and Artlist. I've been through those and I know how they look and it is hard to find sounds. In your thought process, were you were you just thinking well I have to create my own sounds or were you just kind of stumped and like what do I do?
Yeah so like I would scroll Epidemic Sound and Artlist constantly trying to find sounds but a lot of the animal stuff that just wasn't right or you just can't find any sounds for bears or sounds for different like weird behaviors that you can't really pinpoint what the sound would be.
So that's when I kind of started researching like what do people do for like the planet earth documentaries and all that stuff and you can find on YouTube and stuff like the Foley artists that make those sounds for those films and it was like I went down this whole rabbit hole of watching all these like behind the scenes videos of people making sounds for wildlife documentaries and that kind of inspired a lot of what I did for the sounds.
But then even on Epidemic Sound and Artlist you can like find different sounds like there's a sound where the bear rips off like a bunch of skin off of a salmon and I used like a paper tearing sound off of Epidemic Sound and I just like added some effects to it to make it sound a little bit more like salmon flesh.
But then yeah but you can start you can use sounds that like wouldn't necessarily be for that specific thing but you can kind of tweak them and like add slow motion and different effects to them to make them sound right. So it was super fun. That is epic Ray. To go into a little more detail just how did you get better at telling stories? I feel like a lot of new videographers and filmmakers they get to a point where they understand how to take pretty videos but then that's as far as it goes.
Where did you go to start learning how to improve the actual overall story beginning middle and end videos? Yeah I think it all comes with time like putting as much time and actually doing it as much as possible you'll start to kind of get the feelers for everything. But then as far as for wildlife goes in the conservation wildlife conservation film space like I knew what the problem was. The problem was the bears are food conditioned to human food and like they're getting into trash cans.
That was the problem. And then I then I had to look for what's causing the problem. So then I figured out what was causing the problem. And then you got to figure out like what the potential solution would be. And then from there you kind of try to piece together the story. But with wildlife it's hard because you can't tell a bear to go sit over there and say a line you know. So it all kind of changes throughout the filming process.
But I kind of knew what what story I wanted to tell and then as I spent time out there documenting things and getting different footage I was like okay this footage will be great to help tell this story and this footage will be great to add this to the story. So I think like going into something with a story in mind but then like allowing the flexibility to make changes and tweaks along the way is super important.
And yeah I think it just like defining what the problem is and why it's happening and what the potential solution would be is super important just as the bare essentials of a story. And then like having the skills and knowledge of the camera and being able to take beautiful beautiful images that'll just help aid the storytelling process. But if you don't have a good story all those those skills with the with the camera and taking beautiful beautiful videos won't won't do it justice.
So you gotta have a good story and yeah. It just goes back to story as king. I feel like most filmmakers, photographers, I mean you said you were getting burned out. I've heard this story before from other filmmakers. They get burned out because they're just taking pretty videos and they feel like they're not doing anything with their skills they have. So you get to a point that you have those skills you built them up but now you want something more out of what you're doing.
And that's great that you were able to make this more known about theirs. I'm sure working with humans is probably a lot easier. I remember you doing a little documentary or film you were following these guys doing gainers off in Oregon in the NorCal area. What was that all about? I wasn't sure you didn't really post about it too much. What was that for? That was just for fun.
So like growing up growing up growing up near near Tahoe and kind of in the Northern California area I got into cliff jumping pretty pretty young. And then when I moved to Tahoe there's a huge community of like super rad cliff jumpers there that are doing insane stuff. So I kind of got in with that community and I've filmed a lot of cliff jumping throughout the earlier years.
I was doing some different films for some contests and just for fun in my free time going out with friends and whatever but yeah this whole crew of these young super talented cliff jumpers were going to do this trip up through Oregon to hit all the most insane waterfalls and the biggest waterfalls in Oregon. And I was like I have some free time I'm going to come with you guys and document it all.
So yeah we did this whole road trip throughout Oregon and hit all the waterfalls that you see on Instagram but like you just see photos of the waterfalls. Like they were doing like triple flips and like crazy stuff off of them. So that was super super fun like documenting stuff like that is just so mind blowing. The way that they use their skills as athletes and like the beauty of mother nature together is like super cool.
So that was a super fun a super fun project but that was just that was just for fun and I had some free time so made that trip happen. So at that point when I saw those videos I was only purely a photographer at that time and honestly those videos inspired me to shift over to the video side more because I started with video back when I was in high school.
So seeing your videos realizing like you can tell these epic stories even better than through photos that you can like do a live action video like that. And I was like dude those are epic. What kind of cameras man were you using for capture those ones jumping off the cliffs? Alright yeah yeah so with yeah with video you can like it's just so much easier and more engaging to tell to tell stories with I feel like at least from my perspective.
And like half the adventure is what it took to get there and what it takes to make the stuff happen like in the situation with the cliff jumping. Like it's not as easy as just going up there and jumping off a cliff. Like these guys are professionals they have it so dialed in. They depth check the water they like do all that they put all these measures in to make it as safe as possible and like that's that's the story.
It's like people have seen people jumping off the cliffs before but like to tell the story of like how they're actually doing it what like they're doing it in a really like safe way and professional way. I think video is such a such a key tool for that. And I was using pretty much the same camera equipment. I was using the a7 for 100 to 400 Tamron 2875 1728 the Sony a7 III I probably use that a little bit as well to get a second angle and then go pros.
I use go pros all the time for a lot of stuff. The GoPro Max 360 camera is super crucial for it's such a cool tool for cliff jumping because you can throw it off a cliff with them and have it falling next to them the entire time and then in post you can reframe it to keep them right in the center of the frame. So it's like I got some sweet stuff with that. So yeah go pros are super key and then I've been a Sony guy my whole journey so all the Sony cameras and DJI drones as well.
I think all the drone stuff in that video was the Air 2 and then now I'm on the Mavic 3. I'm not sure if I remember videos seeing you jump off with them but did you jump up any of those waterfalls with them? I dabble in cliff jumping for that trip I didn't do a whole lot of jumping I was mostly behind the camera but I can do I can do some stuff off of the clips. I kind of my biggest jump is 68 feet and that's kind of the cap of what I'm probably going to do.
I can do a couple tricks but nothing compared to what these young kids are doing and yeah I choose to kind of let them take the spotlight there and I'm happy documenting them. Okay dude my biggest jump was 50 feet and I was absolutely terrified.
We had this swimming hole up in our hills and mountains and you have to use a rope to climb up to get to the top of this waterfall and the way the slope is it's not like just a cliff it goes like this so you have to get a running start and get over the hump to get into the water and you have to hit the pool perfectly bro. Kid you not I'm 18 years old never jumped in my life and all my buddies want to go do it because that's the cool swimming hole you jump off into.
So I couldn't imagine jumping off the heights that they were jumping off do you know what was the tallest height they jumped from? Yeah 105 feet was the max on that trip so that was a waterfall in Oregon. The waterfall itself was like 99 or 100 feet but then the ledge that they were jumping off was five feet higher than that so yeah that was gnarly.
It's like three plus seconds in the air and like some of these kids were 15 years old dude doing like triple flips off of 100 plus feet like it's mind-blowing the talent that these kids have yeah. Dude you've had your fair share of experiences I mean bears, cliff jumping, now you're doing this YouTube series on wildlife animals and I wanted to touch on that just a little bit.
I felt like I turned on your one about the links while I was eating in and out with my girlfriend after one of our trips because I wanted to show her like what you do and I felt like I was watching Animal Planet bro that's what I felt like I was doing like the huh and like the what it's going to go get the the prey. Yeah I bet there's a lot of people who don't know that you put a lot of work into that film in what are the motivations behind documenting all these other animals.
Yeah so like I said before I'm very much at the beginning of my kind of journey into the wildlife conservation space.
The backyard bears was a huge kind of jump into the industry like I was like I need to I need something to show for myself and it was an important story that I really wanted to tell so that was kind of my leap into the industry and then this YouTube series like this is kind of like this YouTube series is all about wildlife and conservation it's about each episode about a new species and it kind of takes you through like it's like a narrated wildlife documentary for part of it.
It's a little bit of behind the scenes and what goes into finding the animals and filming them and then it kind of ties in some conservation stuff at the end and the goal with it is like similar to the bear film just to spread awareness about different conservation issues and try to spread my love for these animals and in the natural world and then and yeah so that's kind of like the motivation behind it and it's been super fun trying to put one out
every two weeks or so but I'm kind of realizing that that's like kind of a tight deadline for wildlife stuff especially because you can't really control what's happening like right now I'm out in Hawaii trying to do a lot of ocean stuff and I'm getting into a lot of underwater animals and like it's so up to the elements really. It's like for the past few days the water conditions have been super murky and you can't really go out and film.
You can go out but it feels super sketchy when you're out there and you can't see anything and then you can't film anything because the water's murky and everything so it really all depends on the conditions and when the animals want to be filmed right. It's like any of these animals if they don't want to be filmed or if they don't want to be around people they're gone and out so you got to have the right intentions.
I think the energy that you put out when you're out there trying to spend time with wildlife is super important and they'll kind of reflect that. So yeah the bobcat stuff there are subspecies of lynx and yeah that episode was super fun. I spent a lot of time early winter this year before I came out here documenting the bobcats and yeah they're fascinating animals. They probably look a little bit bigger in the film than they really are.
They're only about like 30-40 pounds max but they're super talented hunters just nabbing gophers left and right and yeah that was a super fun film to make about the bobcats and their hunting behavior. So you mentioned that the waters get murky. In my mind I feel like Hawaii waters are probably always clear. Is this murky waters situation something that's very common or is it something that happens during the winter time that is right now? It all really just depends on conditions.
It's like if it rains a lot which it rains a lot this time of year the mud runoff into the water. It turns the water to chocolate milk. If it's really windy and swells are picking up the sand will get kicked up and it'll be a little bit more murky. So it's just so variable and the weather patterns right now are a lot more kind of all over the place in the winter time here. So yeah it's like it rained two days ago.
Today like it rained pretty hard two days ago and today the water is still a little bit murky. So I haven't been able to go out and film the last couple days but I'm hoping tomorrow will be good and I'll be back out there looking for sharks and turtles and cool stuff. That's truly epic man. Is there been any other similarities you've noticed documenting these last three animals or have they all been pretty different for the most part?
I mean all the animals like the three animals that I've highlighted in this series so far they're so different. The first one is a land predator. The second one was sea turtles and then the humpback whales. They're all so different but it just goes back to the similarities being they're wild animals they're unpredictable.
You don't know like it's all up to them and so the similarities are in that case where it's kind of up to the animals what story they'll allow you to tell and you can go in to these films like with a story in mind but it's really all up to the animals. Like the whale video I didn't know what story I was going to tell about the whales.
I knew what kind of like conservation issues that they faced on the daily basis but I didn't know like really much about them but spending the last few months out here surrounding myself with people that were knowledgeable on whales and everything like that I kind of just started documenting any whale that I ever saw like I was just trying to film as much whale footage as possible and throughout like a couple months of filming that I started to get like some
repeat behaviors with whales and then like I could take those footage throughout the different days and kind of combine them together to make the tell the story that was there for me to tell. So yeah the similarities are that they're unpredictable and you got to leave it up to the wildlife and kind of see what their plan is. That's awesome Rayleigh. Is there any films that you're working on right now that you're able to share with us that you are hoping to share with us in the upcoming future?
So the YouTube series I'm working on more episodes for that. I've got a project that I'm having some meetings about and that's kind of in like the pre-production phases that I can't really dive super deep into but then back in Tahoe I'm hoping to make some follow-up stuff with the bears this summer and then just some normal client work to keep the bills paid until I can kind of start kind of going deeper into the wildlife space.
Awesome Rayleigh. So one question I had in mind I try to get people to think about something long and hard so for you if you weren't doing filmmaking and photography, couldn't do it, what would you be doing?
I would probably I would like to say I would be an athlete of some sorts in like I grew up playing baseball and soccer and like throughout my younger years baseball and soccer were like a huge a huge kind of thing in my life and me and my brother were super into baseball and soccer and I was kind of like our family was super sports oriented and my brother he's the shortstop for University of Arizona right now so he's kind of taking that to the next
level and he's pursuing pursuing his dreams in the baseball space and I feel like if I didn't kind of find a camera I would I would have probably worked a little bit harder in in the the the sports space and maybe maybe still be playing sports but yeah I don't know I feel like I just this is what I want to do this is what I've been doing for as long as I can remember so yeah I don't really know what what I would be doing.
I feel like it'd be something creative though I always kind of had the creative side to me whether it was music or some sort of art drawing and and whatever so I feel like it'd be either something with sports or or something in that in the creative space but yeah.
Well we got that at Comic-Me and I played soccer throughout high school too and I remember playing against the guys up north I did club soccer the whole thing so that would have been cool to imagine Riley playing sports but man the Bears wouldn't begin as much attention without you finding the camera so that's awesome man. Is there anything else that you would like to add for the listeners here today just something inspirational tips for them starting out?
Yeah I would say like when I was when I was starting out I think the most important thing was just getting out there and doing it as much as possible.
It doesn't have to be a big project it doesn't have to be something that's that's paying the bills it doesn't have to be something that's going to change the world but just getting out there and using your camera and getting everything super dialed in where the camera is just an extension of your hands and once you find the stories that are important that you want to tell you don't have to worry about any of that and you can just focus on
the story and all that camera and all that that time and energy that you put into learning your camera skills in the past will just make the storytelling process that much easier and produce a much better product so I would say yeah just get out and do it doesn't really matter what it is just go out and make it happen.
Will said I know I told my girlfriend when I'm doing photography video I don't love photography and video because of the technical stuff I love photography and filmmaking because of the doors that can open for me and the things I can do with it.
Not just taking the pretty photos and the pretty videos you're being in like being intentional with the things I do with it whether it's connecting with people like you I mean I wouldn't have connected with you unless I've gotten to this industry and for you the bears wouldn't have gotten enough attention if you didn't get into learning the camera and this goes all back to telling the story so well said Riley.
Where can the listeners find you at man social media website things like that where can they watch you?
Yeah so Instagram I'm probably the most active on Instagram it's just roaming with Riley with an underscore at the end and then YouTube is just my name Riley McCleary I'm starting to get a lot more active on there and trying to build that up and then my website is Riley McCleary media I can just send you links and stuff that you can put somewhere but yeah that's where you can find me that's where you'll see all the all the upcoming stuff in behind the seats of what I'm doing.
Awesome we will link you down below if anybody didn't catch that he's roaming with Riley on Instagram he's Riley McCleary on YouTube but his series on YouTube is roaming with Riley so I'm sure if you search that up yeah that those three videos would pop up. That's it.
Hope you guys stay tuned with his adventures because I'm telling you guys are missing out you guys don't want to miss the next episode and you guys should catch up on the last three and if you want to follow more about this podcast it's the Nick Amp podcast at Instagram TikTok and YouTube.
You want to follow me about more mountains adventures I'm at the Nick Amp and a quick way you guys can help the podcast out is just sharing it with a friend leaving a five-star review we appreciate you for tuning in and listening we hope that you get the most out of this podcast learning from other people's perspectives. Riley thanks for coming on man it was a pleasure. Yeah thanks for having me this was fun.