ShinyShiny speaks to The Hatchbackers: adventure video stars on Veeemotion

This is a sponsored post written in collaboration with Veeemotion.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been exploring some of the unusual and awesome ways that the Veeemotion app could change the way we share video for good in 2015. As part of our series we interviewed the inspirational adventure duo The Hatchbackers. Calling these guys ‘vloggers’ is a bit of an understatement. They’ve embarked on a cheap and fearless backpacking mission and they’re not letting anything get in their way…

Well hello guys! Let’s get acquainted, can you tell us who you are and what you do.

We’re Elizabeth and Luke, ‘The Hatchbackers’. We’re backpacking Europe for a year on a very strict budget ($20 USD/day = £13/day) and filming every step of the way. We want to take people with us for the ride. We’re encouraging our friends, family, everyone to travel – and we’ll do this by showing just how rewarding and financially feasible it is.

We’ve long dreamed of this trip. But like most dreamers, we felt we couldn’t spare the time or expense. This year we realised that was all a farce. If long-term travel is something you really want, you need to go and do it. Make it happen. It’s as simple as that. The most difficult part of the journey is shedding the excuses and gathering the courage to leave home. You only live once.

We’re 3 months in and well under budget. We haven’t had to spend a dime on accommodation yet. We’re working voluntary work exchanges for free accommodation and food, couch-surfing and staying with family and friends we make on the road in between. Leaving the UK now and heading to Switzerland next!

So let’s get down to the nitty-gritty, what’s your favourite adventure been on your trip so far?

This trip we are on right now as a whole is the adventure of our lives. And I hope the beginning of an entirely new lifestyle.

And what’s your favourite place in the world (so far)?

Our favourite place in the world? The answer to that question is constantly evolving. At the moment, we are in love with New York City and London – Luke says London, I say New York! Both cities have so much energy, provide endless opportunity, make you feel like you could do just about anything. It’s electric. There’s 5 different languages spoken at every street corner and culture at your doorstep. However – we are still in the beginning stages of our travels. Those answers could change any day!

We understand you’re travelling quite light, so what equipment do you use to film your videos? And do you have any tips for those also wishing to travel AND record all of their adventures too? 

We’re traveling with limited luggage – we’ve got to keep equipment tight. We get just as much use out of our Panasonic GH3 Micro 4/3 camera & lenses as we do our iPhones. We also travel with a GoPro and a smaller compact camera. We carry a monopod, gorrilapod and the glif iPhone mount — all of those tools are for stabilization. We’ve got an external shotgun mic and a light we clip onto our gh3 as well when we need to get better sound/exposure. MacBooks for editing.

But we carry quite a bit because we are doing freelance video work in addition to filming our own travel series.

If you want to make your own travel films – you can really go about with as little as a smart phone. That’s it.

We know you guys are HUGE fans of Veeemotion. What do you like about using the app? And why do you think it’s going to be a big success in the future?

We use Veeemotion to cover quick editing, sharing and publishing of many of our videos.

All you need is a smart phone to film, edit and post. It’s an incredible tool; opening doors to ALL kinds of people that once couldn’t imagine themselves filming a movie – let alone being proud enough to share it with their friends.

At Sundance this year, a feature filmed entirely on the iPhone was picked up by Magnolia Pictures.

Inspiring.

We produce all sorts of short films; promo videos we only want prospective clients to see, videos we make for fun for our friends, private family videos we only want to share with family or close friends, and then our Hatchbacker series – that we want everyone in the world to see!

Veeemotion doesn’t just allow us to organize all of our content into separate albums, but it lets us decide who can and can not see specific video content. There really is no better way to store and stream all of your videos in one place online, organized into different functional albums, with differing privacy levels. It’s so simple.

We don’t need to make a whole bunch of separate accounts like on Youtube or Vimeo. The ability to share select albums privately with specific groups of people, ad free and without all the spam, makes it a much more intimate social networking experience. And intimacy isn’t something you’d usually associate with social media.

For example: We’re backpacking for a full year and like to keep in touch with our friends and family with FaceTime & Skype, but we are 9 time zones apart. That makes communication very difficult. Veeemotion allows us to film quick personal messages for our friends and family and instantly upload them to a private online album only for their eyes. This way, they can view it whenever they want. If they want, they can reply with a video in the same way, at their convenience – without missed connections, loss of video quality or strangers seeing their video. These videos are private and we don’t want everyone to see it, just those specific friends. Veeemotion makes that happen.

(Elizabeth says) On top of all that – Veeemotion is also the only online service I’d found that lets me upload videos from other websites that I want to save for my own recreational viewing. I can pull videos from Youtube, Vimeo, wherever and make my own personal library that I can view whenever I want, on my smart phone, wherever I want.

Veeemotion serves so many purposes for us; it’s a toy, a personal organizational tool, a social network, a cloud! And it’s free!

Do you have any tips about making a really awesome adventure video?

For anyone looking for tips on creating any type of video … keep the camera steady while shooting and continue filming for at least 10 seconds after you think the action has stopped. Sometimes you will get the best, most genuine footage when you hold for at least 10 seconds longer than when you initially want to stop recording. It may take your subject a little longer to loosen up, wait it out for the best stuff.

You can check out all of the videos from The Hatchbackers on thehatchbackers.tv Veeemotion.

You can download the Veeemotion app for your iPhone or iPad from iTunes for free.