The “Hero Clip” is where you are touching your Deer for the first time. You’ve all seen them on TV and videos, some of them are more painful than watching Dancing with the Stars. My rule of thumb is simple. The time limit for the Static motion portion of the Hero Shot, that means the camera is on the tripod, should be 1 minute or less. Please read that again – 1 minute or less.
Unless you have the next World Record Whitetail, nobody really cares to listen to you drone on for 10 minutes about how great your shot was while holding your dead animal. When I see bowhunters experienced with videoing going on and on with their hero shot, I can only think of two possible reasons for them to subject us to this torture: First, they are trying to eat up time because they did not have enough wild footage to make up a show. But more than likely, it is because their EGO will not allow them to stop talking. Believe it or not, lots of guys who do hunting videos really do fancy themselves as hunting’s version of Russell Crowe.
The Hero clip is nothing more than the final segment, which concludes your hunt journey. By keeping it short you maintain viewer interest and wrap up the hunt successfully at the same time.
This clip is vitally important. Without it, you never close the loop between shot and recovery. But some of the most successful hero clip’s I’ve seen were also the shortest. Walking up to your deer and running your fingers across it is a great way to end your segment. You need not say a word.
I’ve made this mistake too. On my Grizzly hunt (the one where I got charged) I filmed one hero segment that went on for 4 minutes. I was not in a good state of mind at the time and failed to film a short narration. When the smoke cleared and my Grizz was skinned out, it hit me like a blunt in the back of the head. Luckily, instead of just talking about my shot, I narrated the sequence all over again and gave myself an out. I simply ran clips over the narration, which actually made a nice summation of a difficult hunt and saved me from ruining a fast-paced, compelling story.
Here’s a quick list of Edits to film for your HERO segment.
- Walking up to your dead critter
- Kneeling down behind it and pulling up the head
- Saying a sentence or two
- Cut in close to the deer’s head from several angles
