Andrew Camarata interview - T.P.J.P by Sid Phillips

then one day i was filming something and i smashed the camera i did actually at least break it doing something cool it was when i was building my tower putting the top on it i had up on the top of the tower on a tripod filming myself and i think a big gust of wind got it and it fell all the way from the top to the ground and i was like oh man that's like 400 bucks right there let me i turned on that's when the day i turned on the monetization thing to buy it to replace that camera this is andrew cameron here i have a youtube channel with my name andrew cameron i do a lot of construction work welding work built a very unique building which is all covered on there talking here of sid phillips today you got a bunch of questions for me here yeah mate welcome to the proper job podcast it is uh cody's birthday today it is he is one years old and levi's still going strong yeah he's doing good he's like 14 and five months something like that 14 14 years but he's doing good we had a good day today really nice weather out today i mean yeah we're getting into winter though so it's getting cold tell me a little bit about the heating solutions you have for the place where you live it's only one little room i heat right so it's really easy to keep it heated because to try to heat that whole building would be hard because it's enormous although i did just install a pellet stove on the second floor um and it definitely warms it up but hasn't gotten real cold yet so i'll see how it works once it's winter time but it's a huge building and it's not insulated so heating the whole thing will be a little tricky yeah yeah but i usually don't care i mean i don't mind just letting it be the same temperature as it is outside i just kind of feel like if i just force myself to get used to it yeah it's tough for a few weeks the first few real cold weeks but then i just get used to it and it's really not bad yeah just put more layers on it what kind of i mean a trick is to kind of freeze yourself early on like when you start wanting to put on a coat like in november or december the trick is not to just be just get used to it and then once it actually gets cold it's i'm generally used to it by then so i think that's what actually appealed to me most about your videos is you you're problem-solving and if you can't solve it well your work ethic allows you to overcome it and that makes me wonder like how did you get on in school i did the regular high school thing to 12th grade and then one great thing i did do they have this trade school program at high school where you take the bus essentially to another building and i took computer repair in that and that was a lot of fun i learned a lot of stuff i also took small engine repair in high school that was good then after high school i went to college for more computer repair stuff computer networking but then i kind of realized i did not want to do that as a job but i also went back to that trade school and took some welding classes and some auto repair classes but i wouldn't say that's the only place i learned from probably far from it but it was still a good experience to to see a lot of that stuff how did you get on the school system though did you did you kind of fit in with the whole like sort of lesson planning and structure or did you find it a little bit tough for someone like you who seems to like to do things his own way i did all right i didn't do as well with some classes in high school like english and spanish class for some reason i didn't learn a drop of spanish that was a waste of time but i did i did well with math and science those are the ones i did good at so what was it about the computer repair that appealed to you at the time i mean my dad had computers early on and i just you know i always spent time with them even like our first computer we had a zios 386 it was like a 33 megahertz computer and it was so it was there early on so it just kind of was fun fun to use oh right okay so did the passion for making and fixing things did that come from your dad too yeah one thing we would do was um we get stuff a lot of times are broken sometimes even just out of the dump you know people would throw stuff out all the time and you know we'd take things fix it and then have like a perfectly useful item for essentially no money or very cheap that should be taught in school shouldn't it because that's a very useful skill to have yeah it definitely is we had the small engines class in school that was useful because you we're working on engines you know rebuilding them you know lawn mowers and stuff but it teaches you quite a bit so obviously once you've done the whole school system and you've you've learned these trades is that what made you then get into the the property maintenance business that kind of happened as a little bit more of a necessity so after doing school i got a job working at the post office delivering mail and that was a pretty cool jobs i mean i i had other jobs too but the post office at least paid somewhat decent but i didn't want to work for computers i was delivering mail but then i also kind of realized i really wanted to buy a piece of property so i kind of was working hard you know saving money for that and but then i kind of real like then i bought in excavators like oh i can make money with this i bought a bulldozer i was like all right this can i can make money with that and i can use it on my property plus i just operating that equipment really appealed to me so that's pretty much what got me started was because i was doing it on both fronts because i needed it for my own property and i figured it was stuff that was a good investment that i could make money with operating or rent it out or just it just seemed like it made sense all the way around and you know years later yes it did make sense so yeah i agree it definitely worked out for you i just want to move on to the house you built to give a little bit of context to the people listening you actually built this house yourself with very little help from others you utilize the vast amount of machinery you have including your own crane i mean building your own place is already pretty impressive but it's not exactly a normal looking house either it utilizes a bunch of cargo shipping containers uh some on the horizontal some rotated 90 degrees so they're vertical it's four floors high and it's made to look like a castle oh yeah yeah pretty much i take it it was obviously a goal for you to build your own place yeah that that was the goal that because like i mean you know who wants to live you know like before that i live with my parents like who wants to do that i skipped the whole you know apartment phase thing i just seemed like that was always just a complete waste of money so i went straight from you know and i knew i wanted to build my building the way i wanted to build it so i wasn't only i was only looking at vacant pieces of property and that's all i could afford too so it's a lovely bit of london yeah yeah it's up on a hill you know i think that's why it was a decent price at the time when i got it because it was all a hillside so but yeah that's what i wanted on the edge of town because i didn't want neighbors i wanted a big lot um because you know i always do things that annoy neighbors so it's best just that you know you need a lot of land for for doing stuff like what i'm doing so so where did the idea come from to build a container castle that came from well the idea appealed to me because the containers are relatively cheap and they're really strong so i figured i could put up a fireproof building that could go up very fast and i wanted it to be indestructible as far as not getting damaged from you know fire or time or stone like one time hurricane irene i had a ton of trees fall down knocked down buildings damaged buildings i saw plenty of other people's with their buildings damaged you know when i was at the fire department it was like we'd go to these house fires and i was like why would anyone you'd see these houses burned down and like why would anyone make something out of wood that's just crazy so that's what appealed to me i made the entire building out of steel and concrete and since i i'm you know a welder so it just was a lot easier to build it out of steel anyway and plus like when you start doing the math too it's almost cheaper to build the way i built like it's kind of expensive but it's kind of not so did you have like the design idea in your head yes well it took me a while i knew i wanted to do something like that it just took a while to figure out how to do it because i wanted a concrete roof at first okay and i didn't know how to do that and then someone suggested spam crete to me which is like a precast concrete slab that can be a roof and then once i started learning about all these different materials it just kind of came together i know from watching your videos you're upgrading the house too you're building on top of the roof and i've seen you utilizing sketchup and it seems you're pretty proficient at it was that something you learned in school i did not learn that from school the way i learned sketchup was when i first designed my building i got an engineer involved to help me with the plan so first when i built design my building i actually made a little model of it just out of like balsa wood and wood and cardboard just stuff like that and that's something my dad had did too once when we put a big addition on our house in the early 90s my dad actually did a really good job making the addition at a cardboard but i mean the thing looks like a photo of the house everything's colored right and perfect and he essentially showed it to the carpenter and said build this this is the addition so i just kind of went the same route i built my building out of i made a model and then when i was talking to the engineer with the plans he ended up drawing the whole building in sketchup and that's how we were able to communicate through you know emails just emailing the the building and the revisions back and forth and then you know sketchup was pretty easy to use you know you can teach yourself how to use it with the tutorials that are available so but that's how i kind of force myself to learn how to use it yeah you you talk about your dad and like learning the the sort of that like how to fix things and the computer things you've also got a very high skill level when it comes to business i feel was that something else that came from your dad uh no he didn't do any business stuff i mean he had a dump truck when i was a little kid and did gravel deliveries but it never got much more than that i mean he worked at the post office too so right okay as a postmaster and that's that's how i got started there and you also said something about the um being in the fire service yeah well that's just a volunteer uh thing i did i did that for about four years i mean it's that's a great thing to do to help the community i mean it's a little tough to be volunteering all your time to it's essentially a job you don't get paid for but um it was still a great good thing to do i'm not in it right anymore but yeah because in in the second edition of uh the build of of your house uh you you do talk a lot about fire safety and i take it that's come from this this volunteer experience yeah i just got a lot of training out of that and i kind of learned how not to build a building so did you have the business before that the property maintenance business um i mean it's kind of hard to pick a complete start time i mean as i was delivering mail i started picking up like lawn mowing jobs but they didn't really pay anything um but then once i got that first excavator i started taking excavation jobs and then started realizing you know i really like doing this and this can turn into a position where i actually make money um i mean you feel like you're making money because like you know you get paid a lot in jobs but you always end up putting it right back into the business but then i made i mean it was kind of i made a slow transition into that business because i was delivering mail but it wasn't a full-time job so it actually worked out really well because i had time to do both things so it'd be tough for someone who's working a full-time job to just quit what they're doing to start a business that that's hard that's a hard transition i i'd slowly ease into it so because of that though it's a little tricky to pick a start time i mean i guess you could almost say when i quit the post offices when i was 100 full-time but i was working pretty steadily you know you know for for years too anyway while i was still there so how long ago was that then 2010 i don't i feel like i should know this maybe eleven two thousand like so so nine nine years kind of yeah nine nine years let's say let's say i quit the post office nine years ago which that's geez that seems like a long time but that's maybe not actually i i feel like i should know that time flies eh i should have i sh i should have quit sooner i know that i talk about the business um sort of your entrepreneurial ship i think that's the right word to use is that one of the things i was watching your videos a tip you gave out for someone who perhaps wanted to get into something um which is similar to property maintenance was you would go past yards and if you'd see the they were untidy you you kind of go and knock on the door and and pitch your services yeah that has worked well in the past any tips for someone who wants to get into property management yeah make sure you do a good job and your customers are happy because most of my jobs were all like word of mouth um so if people aren't happy with things you do you're not going to have that best way of gaining business isn't it word of mouth there's not much that comes through sort of advertising it's uh always word of mouth i found i remember both i mean one thing when i was advertising i'd almost i used to advertise like brush hogging and lawnmowing and sometimes like you'd show up to do something like that and then you know you get your your foot in it like if you you meet cool people doing that and then like they'll have other projects and and that's too like you could suggest stuff to people too um so i've gotten jobs that way you know you're there mowing a lawn or something and then you know there's a tree job or have you been always that kind of guy that sort of get up and go attitude yeah you could say that you could say that you know here's another example too even when i'd be out doing anything even delivering mail i remember for a while i was fixing lawn mowers um and like i'd be you'd be driving by someone and hear that their lawnmower is running rough like there was these one briggs and stratton mowers that were super popular and i needed this fuel pump installed about every five years but people didn't know that and you'd hear them like running really bad and i'd stop say hey i could fix that mower for 40 bucks make it run like new again and i got a lot of them just like that like hey i'll pick it up and drop it off tomorrow and uh if any people were always thrilled to have their mower working perfect for 40 bucks you know and it'd be like a three dollar fuel pump that people didn't know about that was super easy to change so but yeah i did a lot of lawnmower repairs too because you could for kids that want to start doing something it's because you people lawn mowers around here like they'll stop running those push mowers they'll stop running people they throw them out buy a new one so it's super easy to get them broken for free or very cheap and then they're usually pretty easy effects and then you can put in that i was selling them on craigslist i put an ad on craigslist like lawn mowers for sale and then i'd you know write in the ad like hey you know i'll take trade-ins too and a lot of times people bring your broken ones as a trade-in you know you knock off 5-10 bucks or whatever on on their mower sale and then but you keep getting mowers to fix and so it was i don't know it was yeah it's a good thing to do are you surprised about what people the the kind of machines people throw out no i'm not surprised because it i mean because you could see it gets depends on the position you're in if you're making good money or whatever and you don't know how to fix a lawnmower and some of the people who fix them are charging too much or whatever no it's not it's not surprising i mean a little bit because sometimes stuff's really easy to fix not everyone makes the best decisions you could say so it's probably one way to look at it like oh that someone throwing something out that was fixable isn't a good call but because that's how you source most of your equipment isn't it it had had been yeah when i was first starting out and couldn't afford stuff right so it was sort of a necessity thing at the time yeah and that's now sort of like shifted a little bit because you kind of like purchasing sort of new equipment now yeah i mean that's that should be a goal with anyone's business to not be using junk the whole time but but i still have a lot of the first pieces i bought too like that first sex grader i ever bought i still have that that's been i've had that like 12 years now and it's been fine and have you always brought sort of purchase machines as you're going as you get a job to do and you might not have a particular piece of equipment you'll get it to do that job or do you perceive sort of adverts and say right i can fix that and then get the machine that way both definitely both so you can kind of like gather the equipment as you go along and then you can obviously expand your business into different areas i'll buy stuff that just looks neat too i mean if you watch my video you see that trench digger i wasn't looking for one of those at all but it was just for sale locally and i was like oh let's give this machine a try so is it the curiosity of how the machine works or a challenge to to see if you can work it and fix it both so i want to talk about your kind of your jobs um because i've got some written down here and you can add to them um i've got mechanic builder videographer youtuber business owner machinist welder property maintenance business yeah i guess you could put them all into separate categories i mean you could call them a few jobs because yeah there's people out there who specialize in any one of those and it's i mean to do what i'm doing i kind of needed to be able to do all that different stuff and a bit of a plug for people who are listening um do you design your own merchandise too well i have those t-shirts i don't know if i was gonna keep there it's kind of more work than it's worth selling those things i don't know how people want to push those so i almost kind of hide that i'm selling those but yeah i checked out the the link on your instagram yeah yeah i still have t-shirts i i think when i run out this time i don't think i'm gonna get more so yeah yeah i did design design knows i use um the back has a photo of my castle so essentially that was a photo i took off my drone and then used photoshop to make it look right as a black and white or you know two color thing on a t-shirt so yeah that's that's one one thing i learned in school we did have a photoshop class in high school that was useful and html do you think that's where the kind of the the light bulb or the seed was planted for kind of starting the videos for youtube um that that's a good question i was videotaping stuff pretty early on because my dad got a video camera right as they kind of first came out it was a type where you it was a handheld camera but then you had to carry the vcr with you in a in a bag yeah because it took the full-size vhs tapes but it was you know pretty much you're carrying the whole vcr with you so yeah i used to play with that video camera when i was little and then i got a newer one which recorded on like vhs c tapes which was a little bit better because you didn't have to carry vcr with you and then but then when i first got my first gopro that really changed things because that was a much more practical camera to use oh at that yes yeah i mean i always like taking photos and videos and it's it's it's cool to be able to you know video it's cool that people are interested in the stuff i'm doing and i'm able to share it with people you know so easily with this great camera equipment that's of you know that's come out in the past 10 years or so yeah i should have started sooner yeah well that was going to be my next question your first video i've got when i looked on youtube was published uh 2016 learnt for fab yeah yeah that's when i started putting it on youtube um i really really should have started sooner but um before youtube i used to have this web server just kind of hosted off my you know computer at my house and i'd share stuff that way i guess what in as far as videos like the one i did where it was it was titled me talking about every vehicle i've ever had that one's got a lot of really old footage in it i mean it's even got some stuff in there you know um i think when i was like four years i had talked about every car i've ever had so i even had me in my power wheels jeep when i was like three or four years old had me in my first three wheeler when i was seven years old my first four-wheeler when i was 10 years old um that's got some old stuff in it so you've always kind of collected the footage and stored it then yes right okay so you've always wanted to film things yeah yeah i was pretty much dead okay and then used to kind of upload your first video to youtube when did you kind of see the the results of i suppose people wanting to watch your videos i you know i don't even know why i started doing it i think i started doing because i always thought time lapse stuff looked cool and the gopro was set up to do time lapse stuff so if you look a lot of my oldest videos are just time lapse because it seemed like a neat way to film the excavation videos but then i kind of realized oh well i can you know the whole video shouldn't just be a time lapse i should do some normal speed stuff and explain the project and do like an outro and then i make sure whenever i do a video that it always tells a complete story you know i think that's you know key to why the my videos are pretty watchable because a lot of people don't have you know they'll put videos up but it doesn't always make sense to the person watching because it's not you know because the person watching isn't there they don't know what you know all the stuff that you know as a video taper so you gotta tell the story properly for you know someone else to watch because then so they can be entertained and understand what's happening and i'm sure there's like film school and stuff that teaches all that stuff but oh yeah there is but obviously you did you didn't go to that did you where did you pick up where did you pick up these sort of like ideas on how how to to you know like you said it needs to tell a story how did where did you realize that well probably just from watching stuff it's not a bad idea to just go watch bad youtube videos and almost kind of take notes you know why is this video bad what could have fixed it i mean one guy was watching on youtube for a while it was called bad movie reviews and he would just go through watch all these movies and just explain the problems with them whether it be the storytelling or cinematography errors or i mean you name it but i mean that's i think to this cinematography like i always push hard to make sure all my camera gear is as as good as it could be as far as the audio being good and looking right and so when did you see kind of you you sort of i suppose success in your view from youtube you know one day i just noticed i was putting videos up and i was posting them on i think facebook just to share with uh you know people i know locally but then all of a sudden i was noticing i was getting like subscribed i didn't even realize the subscriber thing i was awesome like oh look at all these people subscribing to to my stuff and i just kept on doing it and i i never even started you know i know people a lot of people want to get on youtube because they hear you can make money and yes that's true but i didn't even know that when i first started doing it i was just doing it for fun um and i didn't even want to monetize this word for that i didn't even want to monetize them i was like no that ruins and adds ads to them um i put i mean you know these videos like i do spend every night editing probably a good three four hours to for the you know because i i do everything myself it'd be nice to have hire like an editor but it's it's all me it is it is a full-time job editing stuff i think that's the the kind of the key takeaway message and that don't get into things for the money it's it's got to be about the passion yeah 100 and usually the money appears even when you're not pushing for it um if you're doing if you're doing something you're passionate about you know whether it's an art or or anything it it turns them it will make sense if if you're good at it so that that kind of started off with just filming new jobs did it because at the you know you say you spend four hours to three hours a day editing has that shifted how you are with your maintenance business i remember before i was doing lawn mowers you know i remember at night when it got dark out i would always feel i could fix like two or three push mowers a night um so i'd be working on them until about you know i'm kind of a night owl or whatever you call that and i'd be working till about midnight every night fixing lawn mowers um but since i've been busy editing now i'm doing that instead of stuff like i mean yes i do get less stuff done because of the amount of time i spend in front of a computer editing like you know imagine if i didn't have to do that i i could be something could be in a garage right now getting where i mean my dump trucks in the garage right now needs a bunch of bodywork um i could be doing anything inside really you obviously enjoy making these videos yeah does performance motivate you too performance of what so watch count and other engagement metrics yeah i mean i want to make stuff that people want to see i thought so if video doesn't do well or i mean not well i mean i i guess not every subject is going to be as appealing as the others but yeah i mean a lot of the jobs i take now i try to do pick the work i do based on how interesting it is right okay so i gave up a lot of repetitive jobs i thought i used to do a lot of just gravel deliveries there's really no video out of that are very minimal um and it's plus it gets really repetitive so now i'm just if if a job is interesting i'll take it i mean a good example is like that i think my best video on youtube as far as view count is moving this antique truck and i i i remember actually that truck like i saw the ad come up because it was local it was like oh free oil truck it was a really cool looking oil truck for free across the river um and then my buddy calls me up he's like hey you want to help me move this truck i want i was like oh you want that oil truck yeah let's go let's go grab it i knew that'd be a cool video you know right from the start and um and yeah and it was that was um you know that my buddy wanted that antique truck for his shop he's gonna make it into a sign but it was sitting way back in the woods with no tires on it had been there 30 plus years um you know the one nate the property had just sold but the one neighbor came over as we were messing with he's like oh this truck you know he's an older guy he's like this truck has been here since i've been a little kid you know gave us the whole history on the thing um and he was glad to see it go to a good home because a lot of people were like oh you know scrap metal like no dude that's not scrap metal come on this is cool it's like in my front you know we brought it back took us a while to get the thing on it took every bit of three excavators yeah to get that thing moved and then um so that was quite the show right there and then uh you know we got on the trailer unloaded it it's still sitting in front of my friend's house but he just got he's gonna get that thing running people keep asking about it he got a new motor and transmission for it because the motor it's in it is completely locked up um but but yeah i take i take jobs based on how interesting i figure they'll be so that's a nice way to be isn't it at the moment you know being able to sort of pick and choose to work yeah i mean another great thing that's happened from it is i spent most of the year just working on my own building and i'm glad i was in a position where i was able to do that um because i wasn't stuck having to take all these different jobs to to make money i was able to just to to do something like that where you know it's where it caught you know whole cost money the whole way the whole project but and you're gonna glaze that are you you you're planning on enclosing that whole um metal roof structure yeah um pretty much since june i've been working pretty much full time on closing that whole thing in and i am extremely close to being done um the all the walls got made out of steel diamond plate with like metal studs everything's made out of steel like thick steel you know either eighth inch or three sixteenths thick and i put in a bunch of windows and it's it's it sealed the whole building up it's and there'll be a video on that probably in towards the end of november right okay there's been a lot of work in that yeah it's probably four or five months of work covered in that one video i don't know how long it's probably gonna be two or three hours long but just covering all the yeah that's that's why i haven't had a lot of videos out in the past few months is because i've been doing that and there's a lot of days where it's like not that much interesting stuff happened you know like a whole day will maybe be minutes in the video yeah because it does a lot of welding you know 80 percent of what i see you doing on that on that was was welding i guess you must be surprised in a way that people are watching your videos when when you are doing those sometimes yeah yeah it's neat to know people are interested in what i'm doing because what brought me into your video was when you were building the the container home and that's that i think that's got like a couple of million hits but you like just before i came on the call i checked your best performing video and and i think it's like 15 million or 12 million on doing the driveway really the gravel driveway yeah yeah that was a fun one are you surprised how sometimes some videos take off and then some some don't yeah yeah that one went better than i expected so when you were saying like obviously trying to get that that truck out the the stuck truck did do you have ideas beforehand of what you're gonna what you're gonna create in terms of content or it does it sort of come on the fly both right okay well i mean a lot of projects i'll almost make a a storyboard of you know i mean it's rare that i write like down scripts or or not really scripting more of a storyboard but usually it's just in my head um one you know a few examples of times where i've actually had to write down a big list of things to get for a video um like the video i did on excavator thumbs and unfortunately that one didn't get the views it probably deserved the amount of information and work i put into that one but it i mean i guess it's probably a little too much on the educational side but that's a but that one i had like a whole clipboard of shots i had to get for the day and almost like a script of things i needed to say because i was like thinking about that one for almost like a year just because people kept asking me all these and it's all it is on excavator thumbs and people kept asking me all these questions on excavator thumbs i was like all right let me answer all these questions in one video i tried to cover everything i could think of and i think i pretty much nailed it in that video do you enjoy the sense of community on on youtube yeah i've um met a lot of cool people from there too um people watching the videos and then you know it's local people or even if they're not local i've met people online this is one guy i met on there who helps me out with computer stuff you know pretty regularly and we've you know we've never met before but just you know we talk and you know if i ever have a computer question he's he's right there because that's that's what he's doing like all day every day's computer stuff so it's like you know he knows he's got it um but yeah i've met a lot of cool people from youtube too you know that one video i put up where i um did all i was welding and then this guy texted me hey you know i live a few hours from you or watch your video where you were got all that welding that needs to be done that's a crazy amount of work can i come up and help you weld and i was like just like i said yeah as i come over and the guy was super cool ended up going jet skiing a few times this year um and you know he stayed after he was up there like two three days just welding full time with me and we really got caught up on the welding because at that stage in the project i was working with uh two other guys putting all the steel in place and we put like we'd be setting all these big beams and stuff and then you know i'd weld them enough so they're not moving anywhere but as a full product i wanted everything fully welded to everything which really isn't necessary but i just kind of built it that way anyway and that was nice that i came and helped help catch it up yeah definitely one thing i i i find entertaining and and i also feel it can fit into like perhaps the negative side of youtube is is some of the comments um that people leave i want to call them um couch mechanics that where they think they know everything and and kind of tell you how it is does that affect you in any kind of way these people who who do leave perhaps comments that are negative um a little bit i mean you gotta kind of have to have thick skin if you're putting yourself out on the internet like that um i i do gotta say though my videos are probably i get a lot less of that than i'm sure plenty of other people too and and the other way to look at it too is you know i'm putting on stuff on there to to start discussions on projects so if someone has a different opinion on how to do something you know maybe they represented their opinion with the wrong tone unfortunately like they don't have to go throw an insult on something too if they don't like the way you're doing something but i do try to answer questions i mean there's not a lot of that it is you know a little frustrating when you see that too but when you've got when you're putting yourself out there that's that's just part of it yeah it just comes with it kind of thing yeah yeah it i mean there it it does bug you know leaving me in comments like that that was kind of um it can bug so it does bug people sometimes but it's understandable like trying not to yeah you know i can other people can read it from an entertainment factor and i i also see there are that you know your fans who who do back you up and sort of like shoot down these people as well yeah yeah i think the word for that is trolls sometimes they'll go i mean the best way to do it if you're gonna be a troll is to try to leave like a witty kind of comment but it's um i don't i mean it's i don't have a lot of it it's it's rare it's it's very rare that i have to like remove a comment from youtube or something like that so have you got any tips for anyone who wants to get into youtube that that one video i did on the talking about every vehicle i've ever done i wanted to have really good audio for that so i went and got this um so it's made by sure but it's like a audio audio interface i think it's called and it takes the like the professional type microphone with the big plug and the the big difference i noticed was even all the computer mics i had no matter what when you weren't making noise there was always a hiss in the background like it's even if it was very slight when i got this there's zero hiss whatsoever so just so the audio can be as good as it can be yeah there's a good point having good audio quality uh my audio's appalling i'm at my mates place at the moment and the fridge hums i also don't have a good microphone to begin with i'm just recording directly onto my ipad so no complaints please to the people who are listening what i think is actually more important is the ability to tell a good story or film in a sequence that allows that story to be told like you do with your videos have you got any tips when it comes to filming or the way you set up cameras i mean that yeah it falls into the cinematography category and making sure your cinematography is good as far as the oh i mean audio is a big one you know like you know wind is a good way to mess up audio um you know make sure all the levels are proper you know don't drown stuff out with music that was one big complaint i used to get it was too much music too loud of music so the only time i'll have music is if there's no sound whatsoever but now even a lot of drone footage i i try to get audio for it if there's audio that's available like if i'm using the drone to film a machine or something and it makes sense to have audio i'll capture it now you know from i'll use the uh i'll just i'll pull it from the gopro you do the clap to line it up you know three two one clap and then uh and then you got the audio for the then bind that audio to the drone audio the drone video what do you think these new cameras that can film a complete 360 image are you a fan of those do you use them at all yeah i use those all the time they work excellent i have the gopro i think it's called a max it it does the best on a selfie stick um doing selfie stuff so close up stuff uh action stuff works really well because the stabilization is unlimited um because it's impossible to shake it because it's recording every direction and yeah i've seen excellent results of the thing for i mean for that application i mean you're probably not going to record a whole video with a 360 camera but but there's um and there's two ways to deal with that footage so uh the first way the way i've been doing it is you get the 360 files off the computer then essentially what you're going through because it records every direction so you i at before editing what i'll do is i'll go through that file and i'm aiming the camera where the camera is looking where the end user is going to end up watching so that's a little bit of a chore right there but it it works because it does a really good job you know for the for some applications that type of camera the other way to deal with the 360 footage is to just upload it as a 360 file and then the end user the person watching has the option to look wherever they want and that the first time you see it it does seem super cool like oh wow this is really cool but then you kind of realize it's a little bit of a job to keep having to look in the right spot when you know me the person who edited could have just did that job for them the one exception to that which doesn't totally fit with my videos is you can upload it you know sometimes some different people may want to look in different spots um you know a good example is that like if you're doing a 360 tour of a house for as maybe a realtor or something so you go through you just walk through the house recording and then people watching the video they can look wherever they want to look that's that's one application where there's probably a better way to deal with the footage you have a great attitude as it is with with with kind of things that if something's broken and you try one method and you you're very happy to show um your methods failing and then trying to overcome them is that something you you you want to demonstrate that failing is okay yeah i mean that's that's how you make learn a lot of stuff is from from failing you know because you you could demonstrate like oh here's a way to do it didn't work you know and you just re and then maybe take it take a step back reapproach it with a different method but it's it's good to show because sometimes like i'll do something and then someone will suggest like oh why didn't you do it this way and i'm like well well i did try it that way it didn't didn't work or wouldn't work or so it's nice to show just the whole process so what are the kind of plans for the future did did youtube surprise you because i i expect you you're making um a nice living firm from youtube it's happened slow it i mean i guess the best way is it's exciting because it opens up you know i'm not stuck doing things i don't want to do so i mean like i was saying before i was able to you know i'm not by any means being lazy at all i spent the whole year working on my building and i'm glad i was in a position where i was able to do that as far as future i mean yeah i know the future coming i wanted i can't wait for my that this building phase that i'm in right now to be done because i'm going to start taking a lot more jobs for customers again because that's been pretty light for the year because of the building um so because people have been asking like does this guy take jobs anymore i'm like yes i do i'm just finishing this building that took the whole year which you know i didn't want to spend a whole year building it but that's just how long it took so so yeah there'll be a lot more jobs again i'm my goal is to take interesting stuff um ideally things that take one to three days four days but just stuff that's really interesting that i haven't done before you know you know the thing i have a lot of b-roll stuff too where i don't feel it's good enough to publish on my channel so it's like kind of like what do i do with that i've been even labeling stuff that way lately too like you know b-roll because i feel like it waters down the stuff i put a ton of work into um which it's kind of a shame because i can't like i so there's there are people that want to watch anything i record um and i've been po i have i there's this fan club on facebook i didn't have anything to do with making that i wasn't even part of it for a while but i finally joined that and i started posting like a lot of the b-roll stuff on there just as unlisted and a lot of people say make another channel so i mean sometimes there's stuff that's not that interesting another video that's coming out i'm actually i was saving it for a year december 1st i had um i mean like you were saying before about like publishing mistakes um i had on my building project i had my old crane driving up my hill uh thing the engine quit the top of the hill and the brakes aren't what they should be and i had to jump out of thing and roll backwards flipped over and i didn't uh so i got a video on that that i'm going to publish probably december 1st because um i wanted to tell a complete story i ended up moving the crane along to my buddy who i hope he's got it fixed right now because i told him like dude i'm gonna publish this video in december if you want like because i'm gonna put in the description like here's the link to my buddy fixing the crane i've noticed that i've noticed that like some of the footage is kind of like a year a couple of years old you kind of like hold on to it until the right moment yeah i get behind on editing too so if stuff isn't that good maybe it doesn't get edited right away i mean there's a lot of stuff it's i mean it's easy to record stuff um you know when it comes time to edit it it's or if it's like a b quality i mean sometimes i'll post stuff they're like oh this is b quality nobody wants to watch it and like people love it like jeez that's i guess i should be posting more of it but um but yeah i have a lot of stuff that's just not edited that's so do you enjoy the editing process yeah yeah it just takes a ton of time but yes i'm still using gopro studio which it's it's not perfect but it i'm used to using it so yeah that's the thing with those sort of tools isn't it once you get into that the habit of using one piece of software it's hard to move on to another it certainly is yeah gopro studio has it i kind of want to make the jump to 5k soon because the new gopro cam that's pretty much what i use primarily and a new gopro records in 5k the one thing i learned from the past is always i used to like put the cameras on low settings or whatever like oh i'll save hard drive space or whatever now it's like in a bunch of years goes by and like you know hard drives are 10 times or more the size they were you know years ago and i kind of wish oh i had just cranked that camera up to its full capability so um everything i record now is in 4k i kind of want to make the jump to five soon but that's gopro studios kind of the bottleneck on that actually i think even youtube is too i don't know if you go to upload 5k to youtube i think it's only 4k at the moment one of the things i was thinking for you for your footage and stuff uh just just an idea is have you considered patreon yeah i feel like that's begging and people do ask me that pretty often and i've always said no i'm not gonna back from money i don't want free money i just i don't know it just doesn't it's a handout it's it's a i don't know it just doesn't seem i don't know if the words manly or whatever but it doesn't seem like money i mean it doesn't feel like money i earned right okay so that's why i've never taken that i mean i could change if i really don't want it to because i'm sure that would uh i'm sure that would be quite a bit because i've had a lot of people saying oh let's um i remember one time two i was putting these videos on my old truck and someone's like dude let me let me buy i mean i don't know what how that guy's position was and how well off he was but he's like let me buy you a new pickup truck i'm like nah i did that's come on that's too generous of over wow i i i don't want handouts that's kind of how it just the way you've been brought up huh yeah i mean i can't say 100 some of those attachments that have shown up in videos um i don't want my videos to be commercials at all but people have given me stuff like hey you want this you know it hasn't been anything spectacular but the few of the skid steer attachments that have come recently have just been um you know like hey you know we see your videos you're cool i think this could help you out one example that mixer that was probably the best give uh thing that was handed to me um that's me i actually wanted one of those too and then the company reached out to me like hey we think this would be perfect for you so it's definitely opened some doors for you yeah yeah i haven't i haven't jumped on all of them at all but it's i'm sure i'm missing out but the amount of people that want to talk to me just from those videos too is a little overwhelming so it's kind of i'm sure it's it's not everyone i have people got like annoyed or whatever you're not talking to him it's like dude the amount of people that want to talk to me i could spend all my time just playing on that phone responding to messages respond so i limit to that to a certain amount of time per day you know i did this one with you like it's kind of there's other people that wanted to do people pay like offered to pay me money for interviews and stuff like i don't want to do that's weird i mean i don't know but at least something like this i feel like oh i can reach out to a big crowd of people or whatever and maybe answer a bunch of the commonly asked questions how's that fame gone down with you vayne is it has it been a little bit uncomfortable no no not really that's right it's all right i'm not i don't want to use the word fam sometimes you're out somewhere and someone's like hey i watch you on youtube it's and that's that's fun that's fun it's fun to meet people like that too so what kind of career questions have you got asked that maybe you want to answer in this um oh that's a good question um yeah i think we've covered some of them i'm trying to think of yeah i like i i liked your question like oh what do you want to continue doing in the future i mean that's i guess i i mostly answered that it's going to be yeah i more i can put some some crazy projects out there too like that i kind of want to do that may not get done like i wanted to get this uh i'm trying to buy this other piece of property and i'd love to build a small version of my building i think that'd be fun okay i know people would love that so and and when i built my first building you know the castle i didn't film it from you know day one so in this case i could start you know like i may do things a little bit differently and film it from day one so that's that's a project i'd like to do so kind of the things you've learned from building nut and the lessons that maybe you do things a bit differently um a little bit i don't feel i made any mistakes on that building if i was to build that building again exactly if someone if someone else wanted that same building which i think makes sense i think that is a very practical building to build use to build it wouldn't be much different um the only thing i'd maybe do a little bit different because i knew it was going to be you know that hot the the you know right now to things like four stories i knew it was going to be four stories but it was two stories for years before it was four stories i got maybe to build the the framework a little differently if if you're going to do the four stories in in one shot but that's i mean it's not really making it different it's just what's the reason for wanting a smaller building is that that's why i was asking about doing things different was it the practicality of heating it no no no no i just i thought it'd be fun to build like a little mini castle it's just like almost a scaled-down version but i was gonna do more concrete more poured walls that's something i kind of might get into is concrete form stuff so tell me a day in the life andrew like for the people who because you said you said something early about coming across lazy and i certainly don't think you come across as a in any of your videos what what kind of time are you waking up uh i'm not an early person usually nine or so okay maybe ten i mean sometimes earlier depending but you i'm not an early bird at all yeah i mean as far as day in the life i don't know i start to have breakfast and then just go to go outside and start doing whatever whatever the job is right so is there a plan in your head yeah oh actually that's one thing i do pretty often is i'll make notes of what i need to be doing i just make lists of stuff to do just listening to just cross them out as they get done and how long are you working for because you say about like doing your your editing in the evening um well now the days are shorter but it it really depends on the day in the job that's getting done but um yeah i mean today i knew i had this so i came and got ready for it but yeah i mean usually since it's i'm usually there's plenty of editing to do so like once it gets dark out i just start editing so you work with like the seasons by the sounds of it yeah right okay okay so what what is it then you do to relax is it is it editing or is it about because i know you you do your jet skiing and you go off on your atvs and things like that is there anything else that people don't perhaps see um your passions are i probably have i mean i've watched tv sometimes i've maybe watched 20 minutes of tv before bed yeah stuff on youtube mostly mostly educational stuff but you're not always yeah you don't really come across as much as a as a tv watcher to be honest andrew it's been lovely chatting you're welcome have a great rest of the day utah cheers bye-bye

Channel: Sid Phillips

Views: 235,415

Rating: 4.9345093 out of 5

Keywords: Construction advice, career advice, Andrew Camarata, interview, Podcast, Andrw camrata, Andrew cam, Camarata, Andrew camrat

Id: XNRHIN_OIcM

Length: 50min 37sec (3037 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 05 2020