How We Shoot the Wild Brothers Series

Some people are shocked to hear that our family is doing all of the filming, editing, and producing for the Wild Brothers video series.

Filming the series at first was mainly just messing around with the video camera, documenting our day-to-day lives, like interesting animals or things around the village.

As our video equipment grew and episodes began coming together, we began to develop a style and method for shooting the various scenes with more direction. We have a couple of video cameras, but it wasn't until I began experimenting with my absolute favorite camera, the GoPro, that I started to get excited. The possibilities were endless when it came to this compact, action camera. I could take it anywhere I went, position it pretty much any place my imagination could come up with, and document any situation I found myself in.

We started looking for unique shooting opportunities and also began focusing on creative angles to represent our life in the jungle. Our dad was putting together a video update for our home church in the States when he came up with a sort of "selfie" angle where we hold out the mini camera and shoot footage back at us as we walk down the trail. This is a fun angle and will likely be used throughout the footage to come.

From the bottom of the helicopter, to Newt's water bowl, to our butterfly nets, there are always new angles to discover! I feel that with relatively little equipment there is a flare that can be attained if you are creative and at the same time enjoying yourself as you document your adventure. That's basically what we try to do when we are out shooting footage together—just have fun!

When we are filming in the wild, we try to capture the beauty and life of the environment. God has placed us in an incredible location, so we try to take advantage of that. There is so much life in the jungle, just taking the camera out for an afternoon walk rewards us with priceless footage. Asher is very interested in macro photography, and we spend a lot of time trying to track down interesting insects to catch on film!

One cool aspect of this series is that most of the shooting comes straight from our family; there isn’t a film crew present to follow us around on our adventures. It's on-the-spot reality and the footage is pretty much raw action, not really knowing where each shot will take us. So much media these days (especially reality shows) are prone to focus on fabricated story lines where reality is left behind and drama is substituted to keep people's attention. But we never wanted to give a fake or overly dramatized impression of what it is like living as jungle missionaries. All of our footage is real-life footage.

As we continue to film and create episodes, we are seeing that the Lord has placed us in a unique setting and given us an opportunity to share our lives and a message with many people. We hope that our lives behind the lens will encourage many Christians to proclaim God's Word. We also pray that through this series many will be encouraged, challenged, and prompted to live their lives for Christ!