A Conversation with Filmmaker Brandon Li

Highlights of ASMP Ohio Valley Tech Talk

Jan 25, 2024

On January 23, 2024, the Ohio Valley chapter of ASMP (American Society of Media Photographers) hosted a talk on Zoom with filmmaker Brandon Li. Brandon has traveled all over the globe making films and several of them have been featured by Smithsonian Magazine, National Geographic Society, BBC, Upworthy, Vimeo, Time, and more. His personal work led to commercial work, including for clients such as BMW and Nike. We had 54 sign-ups to hear him from New York to California and states in between, plus Hong Kong, Costa Rica, and Spain. Brandon himself was connecting from Thailand.

Let me share some of the feedback we’ve received so far:

“That was a fantastic presentation, and so glad I got to be inspired by Brandon Li, what a raw talent and down to earth guy” – Anne, Creative Director
“Absolutely worth my time. I learned a lot. I’ve met a lot of film cinematographers in LA but [Brandon’s] very unique so just hearing his perspective on things was wonderful”–Max, Indie Filmmaker
“Great program all around” – Tommy, Photographer
“Thanks to ASMP Ohio for hosting and thanks especially to Brandon for being so amazingly generous with his knowledge and time!” – Bob, director, cinematographer, editor, teacher and photographer
“Amazing” – Mark, photographer, filmmaker

The excellent ASMP member Jim Talkington, motion and stills pro, conducted the interview. I produced it.

A recording of the Zoom talk is here .

Note on the Summary

We had a glitch with the Zoom video recording when the host computer crashed during the Zoom talk, and we ended up losing about 15-20 minutes of the call. Alas, those moments are not included here.

Objectives for the Call

Introduce attendees to Brandon Li’s filmmaking. He is well known for his dynamic camera movement and editing style.
Show behind the scenes footage so you can see how he accomplished some of his shots.
Show how social media is “becoming media” and how he uses it now as a fundamental part of his business well beyond just showcasing his work for future clients
Discuss how photographers can add video to their toolkit and learn what resources Brandon provides to photographers so they can become filmmakers.
1. We did not end up having an extensive section framed specifically around “what a photographer should do to get started with video” but we did discuss a great deal of filmmaking issues that will be useful for a photographer to know. and we point people to his YouTube channel and online film school as places to learn more
Inspire attendees through not just his work, but by how he works
Give photographers and videographers who have been following his work, some for a decade or more, a chance to ask him questions.

Introductory Clip Reel

Brandon has a huge following on social media, but we also knew that some of our attendees were new to his work so we prepared a 5 minute clip reel for newbies. If you are new to Brandon’s work, or know only his travel films side, this is worth seeing to get an idea of the different types of work he produces.

Brandon’s Background

From the Midwest (St. Louis, Mo). Dad from Hong Kong. Mom from the US.

The Beginning

“I would say that my video style started when I realized that I was a terrible photographer because originally I wanted to do photography. That was the first thing I tried when I was getting into visual arts.

But I was so bad at composing a satisfying frame like it just never turned out the way that I thought it was going to look. And I realized that my specialty was not in the composition, but in the movement, in capturing the energy of something. So I started basically focusing on what kind of motion do I find intriguing?”

A photography-related story that Brandon mentioned to Jim and I prior to the Zoom call was that some photographers inspired him in how he approaches things today. He specifically mentioned that Bruce Gilden’s boldness in approaching people on the street inspired him to be more bold in approaching people to video them (though if you’ve met Brandon, you can bet his boldness is much more respectful!).

In fact, when Brandon talks about his “unscripted” process for going out on a shoot, in some ways it reminds me of what photographer Jay Maisel recommends when you go out shooting: “Be open….Try to stay open to whatever is in front of you.”

Video

He wanted to make videos and movies since he was a kid.

“I was the only one of my friends who wanted to do it…So I got to know how to do all of the aspects of shooting and editing because there was nobody else to help me out. And, you know, sort of became a one man band throughout basically my childhood and my adulthood.”

Went to Film School (University of North Carolina, the School of the Arts)

Was not a fan of long planning process (“spending months revising your short film before you ever actually shoot anything.”) and big crews

MTV

Follow Doc (“basically following people around and documenting their lives for the show”). More Freedom. Unscripted. Opposite of Film School. Armed with a camera, an AMEX gold card, and a folder for releases.

Dubai

After he left MTV, he was invited to Dubai for commercial assignments. He lived there for a couple years.

A Little Side Thing

From Dubai, he began traveling and making travel videos in his downtime in Dubai.

“From Dubai, I had the opportunity to travel to the other half of the world because Dubai is very centrally located to Asia.

And at first it was just kind of a little side thing because I had a lot of downtime and I just wanted to stay creative and it gave me an excuse to travel with my camera. But then I got more and more serious about them because I just really found a lot of inspiration in traveling.”

He posted his videos to Vimeo (“the art school version of YouTube”).

The Turning Point

Vimeo started featuring several of his videos on Vimeo’s Home Page as Staff Picks.

The Vimeo Staff Picks led to more people seeing his work, and that eventually led to commercial assignments all over the globe making films. “I worked in Hong Kong, I worked in mainland China, Greece, Italy, all around the US.”

“[G]etting stuff clicked on Vimeo was kind of the launch pad for me, doing work in my style. Instead of following a stylebook and doing work in the style of the show that I was working on.”
“So now I kind of was the show, you know, people were hiring me to do my thing. So that was a big transition point in my career. And you know, from those little creative side projects, I started getting professional projects that allowed me to have a lot of autonomy”

*Vimeo Staff Picks still exist today but don’t have the same cultural cache because Vimeo’s moment in the sun has passed, plus Vimeo repositioned itself as a corporate video platform solutions provider, vs being home of the arty independent filmmaker.

YouTube

As his profile grew, other people who wanted to learn about filmmaking started asking him lots of questions. And YouTube was growing and getting more attention than Vimeo.

So he created a YouTube channel as a public tutorial for filmmakers

It generated more followers, which led to requests for more videos, which led to more followers, which led to companies approaching him to make “sponsored videos”, which led to a new business unto itself and another outlet for his creativity.

So, again, a side thing led to a main thing and paid work.

Unscripted.com

Although he continues to share free tutorials on YouTube, he also created more in-depth videos covering his filmmaking techniques and offers them on his own online film school.

“Unscripted Studio teaches you how I make my films, from start to finish.

I’ve created my own method of filmmaking that lets me tell great stories wherever I travel in the world.”

Summary of Main Income Streams

Commercial Assignments
Sponsored Videos
Online Film School (shows the filmmaking techniques he uses to produce the videos he posts to YouTube)
AdSense Dollars

He shared an interesting reality check on AdSense dollars. Though he has 566,000+ followers on YouTube and his videos have been viewed over 30,000,000 times there, his AdSense dollars are not a primary source of income for him. To generate AdSense dollars that will financially support you, he said, you need videos that routinely are viewed over 1,000,000 times each, and his don’t routinely rise to that.

SmallRig iPhone 15 Pro Max Cage

One project of his that we did not get a chance to bring up was the iPhone cage that SmallRig came out with branded with his name. I listed it here next to income stream for completeness.

What He’s Doing Currently

Judging a contest for DJI called Sky Pixel Contest.

New project to be filmed in Hungary. Still in early stage

In talks to do a travel film on The Gulf State culture

Making small projects with friends

“Exploring creative ideas and also talking to some buddies of mine about doing more short films that are based on like action and stunts”

Video Clips Discussed

Jim spoke with Brandon about 30 second clips from the following videos:

Seoul Wave

Jim introduced the video saying “I think it's very distinctive, you know, when one of his videos begins, that you're just about to enter a different world.” Personally, I also love the ending sequence, with the two kids studying, the camera flies through the apartment, then pulls out the window and rises into the sky.

Director’s Commentary here.

Inside the Rugged Lives of Mongolia’s Nomads

This one appears on National Geographic’s channel exclusively.

Although people are attracted to Brandon’s camera movement and dynamic editing. Jim used clips here to make the point that it’s not just Brandon’s technical wizardry that we should be learning from. It’s also how he approaches his subjects, that he is presenting something for people to care about. “I cared about those people and their culture. There was a, I don't want to use the word nobility, but there was a strength in the way they live their lives. Every day is hard. Everything they do is hard….They seemed to have either just a stoicism about them, like there's no whining, there's no complaining, at least that I could tell. They just did it and they functioned and they stayed together.”

In Brandon’s talking about the people he met, he said “You know, people take these sepia toned photographs of them as if it's some 19th century artifact that they came across. But, you know, these are people they're still there now….[and I wanted to convey] their humanity”.

Morocco Arise

There is a director’s commentary here.

Inside a sponsored video

This clip shows the complicated camera movements that can be realized through the combination of 360 image capture and clever editing, with BTS shots of the image capture. It also is a great example of a how Brandon does a sponsored video.

“The way I shoot things. It's all very accessible to people who are working independently or they're working alone. You know, nothing that you see in my videos is something that another solo shooter who has some modern consumer or prosumer level gear could not do. I'm not out there doing like multi-million dollar level VFX.”

Brandon went on to say that because he is successfully making interesting videos with consumer and prosumer gear he is approached by manufacturers of that same type of gear to make sponsored videos (“product showcases”) for them.

“You’re basically making a commercial that is posted on your own channel”

Individual sponsorships, especially for product release, are a good source of income.

“[Sponsorships are] one of my major revenue streams.”

On Getting People to Be Natural on Camera

Film the subject doing something they are comfortable at first to help them become comfortable infront of the camera

Then just keep filming

Tell people not to look at the camera

Hang out with the people (eat, drink), let the kids play with the camera, ask them their opinions of what they think you should shoot that no one is paying attention to, etc.

Blur the line between shooting and hanging out

On His Shooting Practices

Always shoot for contingencies to allow as much flexibility during the edit as possible.

In an interview with Getty, Brandon noted “once you learn editing, you’ll start to shoot with your edit in mind, which means you’ll have completed scenes–beginnings, middles and ends.” This sounds similar to what wedding photographers mean when they say Shoot with the photo book in mind”

In one of his Unscripted Film School classes, he also explains that he will typically shoot the exteriors of buildings so they can act as transitional entry or exit shots from a location.

Working on Commercial Assignments for Nike, BMW, etc

Typically hired as DP by creative agency

Usually what happens is a creative agency will create a storyboard, and the creative agency may or may not also be the production company. Sometimes the creative agency will enlist a director's rep company, and the director's rep company will then enlist me. So I come in fairly late to those projects. Usually they already have existing storyboards, but generally the understanding is because they're bringing me on, I'm able to interpret the storyboards very loosely, but the storyboards are used to win the job.

Brandon shoots and does the edit

Is allowed to interpret the storyboard loosely to reflect his unique style (“if you compare the final product with the storyboards, usually with my work, the final product bears no resemblance. It's completely different because I just end up looking around with my camera, getting whatever shots I think are cool. And as long as the client likes it, we're all good.”)

Negotiates to do the edit since part of his style is the edit, not just the shoot

Doing the edit gives creative control and also increases income

On Social Media

“Social media” is becoming “media” so photographers need to take it seriously

Budgets that were going to be spent on a single TV commercial are now being spent on paying thousands of influencers

Influencer advertisement is a major form of advertising now, not a niche

The most profitable sponsored video is the product release.

He goes into detail on the kind of commitment and skill you need if you want to go the influencer route.. You can generate an income from a YouTube channel. There is a “middle class” on YouTube.

“You don't have to be super crazy viral. You don't need millions of followers. You can have 10,000 subscribers and still have an income off YouTube. Your videos can be getting 1000 views each and you can still have an income off YouTube because those big budgets are getting sliced up into little pieces and you might get a few hundred bucks per video.
And if you crank out those videos, it can turn into a sizable or at least a side income or, you know, your main income, just depending on how much you output. So it is possible. You know, it's not like a pipe dream to to make a living off YouTube. It's a pipe dream to make millions and have a brand new Beverly Hills mansion off YouTube”

It is not easy, though, and takes just as much work as a “regular” job.

What are your goals with social media? To generate more assignment work? to generate sponsorships?

To build a portfolio audience for work, be consistent in style and in frequency of posting. He goes into detail here.

He also indicates that most of us can’t solely depend on using social media to reach our clients

You just have to post first and if you reach a wider audience, then they will come to you… Otherwise, I think the connections that need to be made are they're offline, they're in person.

One of attendees asked for advice on how to reach someone at NatGeo, as he had done. Brandon said they reached out to him, not the other way around, and the people who had reached out have long since moved on to other jobs so he wasn’t even sure how to reach back to NatGeo now for himself.

“It's a matter of like actually hanging out with either National Geographic photographers, photo editors, talking to other people who are actively contributing, finding a community online. Maybe that's more open, like a photography community, or you know, going to one of those travel blogger meetups. There's many of them around the world and and just chatting with people and getting the word on the street, because I have not done that kind of outreach myself.”

How Get Access to Places and People for His Films

Hang out with people, get comfortable with them

Look for people who are receptive to being filmed and go all in

Connections through Social Media

“Before I got into social media, the way I did it was I literally just walked around the street and like filmed people and the people that were most receptive to being filmed, I just followed them like I was in Bali in 2015 and I saw a guy with a wheelbarrow by the side of the road and he was just shoveling something like moving something around. And I smiled. I pointed to my camera. I was like, Cool, cool. And he's like, Yeah, whatever. So I followed him and he dumped his wheelbarrow and then he went back home. I followed him home. He made some tea, sat down next to his kids. I filmed him doing that and then he went out to his field and he's there checking his crops.
I filmed and doing that and then I was done and I waved to him. I was like, okay. And he just wave to me. And then I walked away and I never saw him again. So that's how I got started.”

On Location Scouting

I would go out to a place where maybe someone makes me coffee, and then I start talking to them about the coffee and ask them, Hey, what's cool here?
What do you think's interesting? What do people film too much?. What do they not film enough of? What does nobody else know? That is really awesome in your city? Tell me all about it. You know, where should I go if I want to stay out past midnight and film something after everybody else is going to sleep?
What should I film? Where should I be? What neighborhood? And I just, you know, I ask them every question I can imagine until I see until they get really excited and then they get really excited about something. They know it's probably something interesting. And I just follow that rabbit hole, you know? I see where that takes me.

On Access to People

In his video Tips for Filming Strangers, Brandon mentions doing the “smile test” to gauge whether strangers are open to him filming them. If they smile back, he takes that as a tacit OK for him to film them. If they don’t smile, he takes that as a no.

I’ve linked to the smile test section in the Filming Strangers video.

In a different interview, Brandon mentioned social media has been critical to his film practice. He has found clients through social media (or rather, they have found him) and he has found collaborators and crew through social media. So, going back to the access question, I think he would also say that another way he gets access is by making contacts through social media and finding places to access through them.

Model Releases

He used to get model releases before social media was ubiquitous and he was aiming for film festivals

Now he is primarily shooting for social media non-commercially so he is no longer asking for signed releases. He has to turn down a lot of licensing requests because of this.

If he is doing a sponsored video, he will get a model release.

Managing large amount of footage

Every day’s video is ingested into its own bin, renamed to the day, and placed on its own timeline. He removes a unusable material from the timeline

The stringout becomes the reference for the day, not the raw footage

This process cuts out 60-80% of the raw footage

At end of a 17 day shoot, there are 17 timelines, one for each day

If inspired by one day’s footage, he creates another timeline called a scene, which is a cutdown of the stringout.

In summary, his edits go through a 3 stage process: stringout, scene, master

What does he miss about Final Cut Pro?

He now uses DaVinci Resolve.

Misses Magnetic Timeline. Very intuitive. Easy to move multilayered chunk of clips. DaVinci Resolve doesn’t have this.

One of the benefits of DaVinci is it lets you easily group different log sources, which simplifies color grading. Final Cut Pro, as of the last time he used it, did not have this feature.

Mixing 360 action cam with mirrorless

One situation many of us find ourselves in is having multiple cameras with different brands or capabilities capturing the same shoot. I asked him if he would mix the footage from a small action camera like Insta 360 One with Inch sensor with mirrorless footage. He said yes; he did that in his Morocco film. But he cautioned you need to be careful how you do it.

It's a specialty camera. It's good for natural light environments. It's not so good for artificial light environments because it will flicker, you'll get light flicker because you're using usually using a faster shutter speed.

Artificial colors look good, natural colors are less pleasing

It's also it's better with like art, like not artificial colors. So like graffiti looks good, but rocks, trees, forests don't look so good with a 360 camera just because of, I don't know, some technical reasons and some stuff I don't really understand. But it's so like in Morocco, because I was generally in artificial environments even though they were ancient, like the Riads or the the Medina's, the old city streets and the old houses.
These were static artificial environments with artificial color like paint on them that looks good on a 360 camera, artificial color. I don't know why, but it does. So I could use it a lot in Morocco. But if I did a film, let's say, you know, New Zealand or something and I was walking around a lot of forests, I was shooting in really contrasty environments with a lot of light and shadow and leaves and bark and, you know, waterfalls and stuff.

He said as along as you stick to what the Insta360 camera can render well, you should be OK. But you need to live within that zone.

His main use of the 360 is the overhead angle. Put the 360 camera up there and find the frame in post.

Question on how new filmmakers can improve their pacing in the edit

Pacing expectations are changing as social platforms like TikTok take over

For the kind of films Brandon makes:

Pacing is a function of the subject
Pacing doesn’t come from the edit alone, it comes from the nature of the subject
If you are having pacing problems, it may be the footage, not the edit

In Brandon’s interview with Getty Images, he advised

“My main tip is to learn how to edit. Chances are you’re a great shooter, but normally the troubles all come in the edit. And once you learn editing, you’ll start to shoot with your edit in mind, which means you’ll have completed scenes–beginnings, middles and ends. The biggest problem photographers moving into film find is that they’ll have lovely visual shots but no complete story in order to put them together. I’d say the least important thing is equipment and settings.”

In a 2017 interview on the Sony Alpha podcast, he is also praised for and asked about his pacing, and he answered where the pacing comes from this way:

The way I get it right is I sit there in my room for 16 hours straight a day, for 3 months, not every day…I’m just sitting there and moving shots around, 8 frames, 3 frames at a time, watching it, thinking its awesome, going out getting a coffee, thinking it’s awesome, coming back, thinking it’s crap, throwing it away, and starting over. That’s kind of where the pacing comes from. It’s just a whole bunch of trial and error.”

On music and editing

He makes his initial cut without music, with a metronome in his head

Then he adds music after the cut and adjusts the edit to fit the music

He’s concerned if he adds music too early in process, he will lock in his editing to what may be a dead end if he later decides he doesn’t like the music.

Looks for drops/hit points where the music and action are in sync

Will adjust the edit so that the action hits the sync point

On commissioning music

Would prefer to commission music all the time so the music is associated with his film only.

Composer costs can vary. Usually charge per minute of music, may be from $200/minute - $1,000 minute, or more if they are experienced and well-known

You Can lower the price by not asking the composer for exclusivity. e.g., ask for 6 month exclusivity to protect the music for a window where the film may be in film festivals, but after that the composer can freely license it. This can lower the cost substantially, by more than half in one case he cited.

Try to send as close to final cut as possible before sending footage to composer. If you are not sending final footage, you will likely pay extra in fees as the composer needs to tweak the score to match the final cut.

On Indoor vs outdoor

For commercial shoots, he uses artificial light for indoor, though indoor lighting is not his speciality and he leaves it up to the production company to execute properly. Gaffer and grip truck from production company handles lighting under his guidance for what result he wants.

He tries to avoid lighting setups that are too restrictive since he shoots improvisationally.

Where to Find Him Online

YouTube (youtube.com/brandonliunscripted) Tutorials, Tests, Product Reviews, New Personal Work

Vimeo (https://vimeo.com/rungunshoot) Older Personal Work.

Unscripted.com–Film School

Instagram (@brandonlivisuals) –BTS

brandonli.com

The following sections are questions he was asked and my paraphrases of his answers

His Future Goals

Explore other formats and genres, not just travel videos

Narrative short films, action, projects that straddle documentary and narrative

Eventually longer form work, whether for VOD, film festivals, or just for art’s sake

Keep up the YouTube channel, look for more ways to do product showcases on longer timelines that are bigger and more creative

Continue developing as an artist

“ It’s all about injecting creativity into my work and to do things I haven’t done before”

Learning More About Brandon

I came to Brandon by way of his Insta360 videos only last year. I had been googling Insta360 for inspiration on what creative things can be done with these 360 action cams and my mind was blown when I ran across his. So I’m going to start you off where my journey with his work began. The thumbnail doesn’t particularly inspire you to click through but watch the first two minutes and you’ll be glad you did. This is a sponsored product showcase video, and I loved every minute of it.

The Accidental Famous Drone Shot (2016)

I don’t know how I missed this story at the time. It was reported everywhere, from his on-camera interview on BBC to The Weather Channel

https://petapixel.com/2016/09/28/perfect-drone-shot-newlyweds-rooftop-total-accident/

Learning From Brandon

He has lots of great tutorial videos on his YouTube channel.

He also has his Unscripted Studio Film School.

I found Filmmaking for Photographers, which is one of a handful of videos that can be purchased a la carte independent of signing up for the full Film School.

Here’s another class, Fusion, from Unscripted, which covers using multiple cameras in one shoot: “MIX & BLEND MIRRORLESS + 360 + ACTION CAM + SMARTPHONE VIDEO SEAMLESSLY”. I just bought that but haven’t had a chance to watch it yet. But it’s definitely a scenario I have encountered.

What Does He Shoot With (2023)

Also,

https://unscripted.com/faq/

Note that the older the video is, the more his opinions may have changed because the technology has changed.

Interviews

Here is a link to many interviews and profiles. I particularly enjoyed the Getty and MusicBed written interviews and the Refilmery podcast interview, but they all have something to offer.