Shark Week 2025 with Jesse Colaizzi: What It Really Takes to Make the Ocean’s Biggest TV Event

1:00:02 Welcome back to a special episode here on the Beyond Jaws podcast. It is Shark Week once again, always having fun with searching for the good episodes. And I think, you know, there are some good episodes in Shark Week. There's some entertaining ones. There are some that are a little little out there. But today on the program, we have Jesse Kalazy, who is part of the production team that puts together some of these amazing episodes. And we talked to him about what it's like to be an editor for some of these productions and what goes into it. He works with Forrest Galante and it's in the really fun episode. So we talked to him about Shark Week and what to expect in the episodes.

1:00:45 He's part of two episodes this week. So we're going to talk to him about these episodes. I can't wait. Let's start the show. Hey, everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the Beyond Jaws podcast. I'm your host, co-host Andrew Lewin with my other co-host, Dr. David Ebert. Dave, Shark Week 2025 has begun as of this publication. Yeah. What do you think? What are you looking forward to? Here we go. Well, we had it's it's going to be another fun year of like interesting. It's almost become like the titles of some of the episodes are kind of interesting. You know, and Jesse is the perfect guy to have. We had him on last year to share his journey, his story about how he got to be a coming editor and everything.

1:01:30 And he was such a he was such an entertaining guest and had so much insight. We just felt we had to have him back again this year to share some of his stories and his insights. As you mentioned, he worked on a couple of episodes, but he he knows about a lot about some of the other episodes because it's a small community. They all know each other. And yeah, it was it was really it was entertaining having him on as we expected. And so we're looking forward to the podcast. And it is interesting how they come up with some of the names for some of these episodes as well. Definitely some teasers in the names. I think. Oh, yeah. Today, we're going to be talking with Jesse about his work on Alien Sharks, Death Down Under, which is one that he played a significant role in editing.

1:02:12 And then he played another role in an episode. So that one's playing July 23rd on July 25th. There's another episode called Florida's Death Beach, which is an interesting one as well. Like you said, these titles will make you think and sometimes it makes us shake our heads as we're doing now. But other times you're like, hey, this could be interesting. And some of these episodes are saying there's always some science involved. There's always some interesting questions being asked. And the production that goes into it is a lot of work. And we thought it would be great, right, Dave, to get Jesse on. He's been on the podcast before. We got his backstory, but really to talk about what kind of storytelling gets played into when you go into. An editing room and like you're chopping down episodes and you're chopping down footage and stuff like this.

1:02:54 We get all into that with Jesse and it's a lot of fun. So let's I'll tell you what they were going to we're going to talk about that after this interview. So let's have the audience listen to this interview with Jesse Colleagues talking about Shark Week twenty twenty five in the episodes that they're doing. Enjoy and we'll talk to you after. Hey, Jesse, welcome back to the Beyond Jaws podcast. Are you ready to talk about sharks and TV? Yes. Let's do it. Well, I was now. Yeah, last time. Yeah. Well, I want to welcome back to everyone to Beyond Jaws special inside Shark Week episode. This with the amazing Jesse Colosse and Jesse, if you recall, was on the episode 72 last year.

1:03:38 It aired in June of twenty twenty four. And we such a great time with them. Well, we thought, well, what the hell is having back on the show? So maybe Jesse, you just remind us who the hell you are. That's it coming out with the big questions. Big question. So I'm one of fours producers and also his fours galantes producers and his senior editor. And we've been working together since the early days of Extincter Alive way back in the day. And, you know, starting around twenty twenty, we've been doing a bunch of shark weeks and having so much fun doing shark weeks, of course. And it's been I think I just did my tenth and eleventh maybe this year or ninth and tenth maybe.

1:04:23 Mm hmm. Oh, wow. Amazing. That's great. We'll want to we'll definitely got to hear some more about your about your shark week. So I guess we looked at we're looking at let's start with a couple of ones, talk about a couple of ones that you worked on with Forest. And you did it had some interesting names. What was the alien sharks and the title death down under? So, OK, OK, I assume it wasn't a shark attack based on the I'm saying that based on the poster because it had one of my favorite sharks on there. It had a ghost shark on the cover. And, you know, as I was saying a few minutes ago before he came on air, it was like, you know, Forest moved up in my friendship lift way up at the top of the list now by featuring a ghost shark, a plow knows ghost shark, actually, of everything else.

1:05:09 So freaky looking. Yeah, it's freaky looking. So can you just share kind of an outline of this story giving everything away or if you want to go that's fine, too. Let me see how I do it. So, you know, there's there's these two venomous sharks that live in that area. They have spines on their backs and they are, you know, covered in a venomous whatever kind of residue, whatever it is, you know. Yeah, that's it. Yeah. And, you know, there really isn't much existing knowledge about what happens to a human if that venom is in there. And so, Forest took it upon himself to do the OG inject thyself route and, you know, do the old mess around and find out approach to science.

1:05:53 See what happens. Why not? And he I mean, I don't want to give it away whether he found out or not. But yeah. Yeah. When he does something like that, like you guys are good friends, right? You've been working together for a long time. When the idea comes up like that, we know he takes chances. He's that kind of guy. Do you ever like just kind of take him aside and be like, hey, hey, Forest, do you do you sure you want to do this? Like this, this seems a little little odd, little, little dangerous. You know, not really only because he's just got a pattern of doing crazy things. And we figured that's his base level, you know, got way up there.

1:06:34 Yeah, out of the frame. So we, you know, we we we can tell just in his tone that he does have an inkling of what he's getting into and definitely how to handle himself in those situations. I think he's really good with wildlife, you know, like just, you know, just watching like the hours of raw footage. It's not just the stuff that makes it in the show. Like it's days of raw footage. And, you know, he knows how to move through the bush and through the woods and through the water very well to be able to bring animals in super close and show them to people. And that is like a thing that I feel is special and worth playing up as much as possible. No doubt.

1:07:15 I think it's I think it's also with the alien shark stuff to have been involved with those in the past. They you're highlighting some species that most people don't think about and especially like with the with the go sharks. And I've said this before in the podcast, if you if you say chimera or ratfish or which are some of the other common names for them, people, their eyes just glaze over. It's like, OK, ratfish. But if you say go shark, it gets attention, it gets people's attention and everything. And so I I think that feature that in the cover, like I said, it was kind of moved up in my thing. I know I know I know one of these sci fi channels or something a few years ago, they had one of these shark attack movies that was called Go Shark and everything looked like a great white shark attacking people from out of the water everywhere.

1:07:59 My wife just brought me a nice cup of tea, by the way. That's very nice. That's super nice. So anyway, so that was so I was kind of hoping since we gave we gave the gave sci fi the kind of the idea for doing a movie Go Shark, they might like kick us a little support. But that didn't seem to come through. But well, you know, it's funny, Dave, we've done the last couple of years we did the first alien sharks we did was called called Strange New Worlds, which was a Star Trek. You know, it kind of had like a Star Trek throwback. And then the next one was the Japanese alien sharks, the Japanese angel shark. So as aliens and angels. And then this year it's aliens and ghosts, which is I think those two go together well, because they are like you go down as we find a lot of critters in this episode.

1:08:44 But there's a lot down there at night and stuff that comes up out of the deep and all kinds of cephalopods and just really interesting looking animals. Well, I saw this. I'm not giving away because this is post on his social media. He had a picture of him with a weed. He see dragon, which I which I've been I've been diving down that area. I've seen those we there's a freaking amazing things to see those weed. He see dragons are just hard to believe are actually a type of seahorse or fish. Yeah, just like just bizarre, bizarre looking critters out there and stuff. And so you guys found a lot. So you see you went looking for and I guess he tells what the other besides the ghost shark. What was the other one? The other one was the Port Jackson shark, which we actually investigate first and set out because those are pretty abundant shark in that area.

1:09:35 But because it was their egg laying season, you know, it is tough to find them at that point because they do kind of stay in little pockets and don't move. And so we did have a couple little fun exploration moments. But eventually, you know, we do find one. But I'll I'll let it to be a mystery. What happens next? Yeah, it's funny, though. I always think when I think alien sharks, I think because one of the shows that I saw was always deep sea sharks are these was this in the deep sea or how deep? Did you guys have to go to find these sharks? Well, they were relatively shallow. We tried to time it with the mating or the breeding season and they're coming into the shallows.

1:10:17 And so a lot of those sharks are actually like fished a lot. Like the ghost shark is is a heavily fished shark. Yeah. And so we figured best the time it when people know they're there and, you know, we always kind of trust the local fish and fish for men because they tend to I mean, they discovered sharks and fish markets before, you know, like that. That's that's they have their fingers on the pulse. Yeah, always. He forrest is an angler. He's an extraordinary angler. He catches so many fish like seriously. And he he, you know, very respects everyone's opinion about that kind of thing, you know. Yeah, I always say it's right. A target based on their knowledge. Why is it that those ghost sharks are those those plow nose ghost sharks?

1:11:00 They have there. They're actually the fishery in there in both Australia and New Zealand for those things. And so they and I think in New Zealand, they have like a quote on them because you they're they're sort of cousin that lives in South Africa, the St. Joseph's. I mean, you get in shallow water less than 50 meters, man, you you'll get thousands of those. Oh, really? Well, you know, the thing was, it wasn't even the fact that we weren't sure if it wasn't that, you know, it's a tough fish to find. It's going to be in a pocket. But the thing is, is that that migration is so fast, they actually thought they had missed it. And that was really the big thing is like they thought they had gotten there too late. And, you know, what happens happens after that to be continued.

1:11:42 Well, well, well, I know at least at least forrest is still post on social media. So welcome back, buddy. We know you made it. Yeah, exactly. I mean, he's yeah, he's not extinct. He's alive. Yeah, that's good to know. That's good. How does a how does an idea like this, like these particular species come up? Like, how did you I know you guys have come up with some pretty interesting topics before this like, you know, sit around the table and just kind of shoot around and be like, we should we should talk about this species or just kind of comes up in conversation. Well, you know, honestly, I don't really get involved too much in the pre production. They there are little bits where while like Mitch Long, by the way, like he'll do a lot of that up front work in those shows.

1:12:24 That's the showrunner for those shows. And so I usually start to see things right around the time that they've got an outline and they're about to go shoot and what their plans are and how this all going to go. And it kind of has the pitch deck that they had prepared for the network that involves. But it all kind of comes down to their brainstorming sessions. And honestly, if you ever get a chance to talk to Mitch, he'd be a good guy to talk to about that. He's definitely he's definitely someone I want to have on the podcast here at some point to talk about the stuff he has. Yeah, they are. He's good. Oh, yeah. So I guess when you guys go out and I'm saying this in the context is people been watching, you know, we started a YouTube channel now with my own series Searching for a Law Sharks.

1:13:09 And so I've been doing the writing the stories and everything and sometimes half that I had kind of a general outline when I leave. But then I use everything changes once I get in the field and see what I'm actually getting. Is that kind of how it works for you guys when you got there? You have kind of an idea like, yeah, how does that whole process goes when you try to, you know, think about the things that are likely to happen. Like you hope you run into ragged tooth sharks, you know, and you do that. That's like you got to put those hopes out there. Everybody's very positive about that kind of stuff. You go into it just knowing you're going to you're going to work to get it and do do those really good animal tracking skills that he has to be able to get in close and not spook them away, you know, and allow them to be comfortable around him.

1:13:53 And that's a really big selling point. And so, like, you go into these things hoping to see the endemic creatures, you know, you spend extra time for the really important ones like the Port Jackson. And shark and the ghost shark, you got to just like give them as much time as you need to. And, you know, you know, so a lot of that stuff is all, you know, aimed at that. He's every every dive you see is an area that people see those sharks at and you hope to just jump off the boat and have one be right there. Yeah, you know, it never is. No, it's too easy. That's not. Yeah. So I always tell people like if I tell people I'm going to go look for a certain shark, I never freaking find it.

1:14:35 I'll find everything else. But what I'm looking for, if I just say, oh, I'm just going to the fish market, look around, then I'll find like what I was kind of hoping I might find, you know, as soon as you target something, you're never going to see it. It's just it'll be gone on every ever try and psych yourself out and be like, yeah, like truly, you're looking for something. But then you're like, no, no, I'm not looking for anything in particular. You know, I tend to not get emotionally involved in it. I think that like when, you know, when I see the the outline of what they're hoping to accomplish in everything throughout the show, I start to read that in a very like tertiary kind of a very surface level of like tone vibe.

1:15:17 You know, what's this whole thing going to feel like? You know, I'm in this weird middle generation where I remember the old classic nature documentaries, but I also really appreciate the modern stuff. Right. So I try to find little areas where I could blend some old and some new and I think about honestly, I think more about the tone of the show and the flow of the show. And I let I let Mitch and Forrest, you know, do their thing in the field and really collaborate and really not just Mitch and Forrest. It's like the whole field team is like, right. Super tight knit, you know, like it's an unreal. Most people in the film business are not like lucky enough to get to work with such a super maybe maybe everybody. I don't know. But like, because I'm in a super tight knit and I never get out much.

1:15:57 So, you know, I mean, it's pretty much the same team goes most your core team, pretty much the same people most years pretty much. Yeah. Yeah. So exceptions. Yeah. But but at least you guys are used to working together. So you kind of know how each other works in different conditions and different situations as far as getting stuff as far as getting stuff done. Does it help you as sort of the editor puts the puts the thing together going out in the field versus if you're staying at home and you just get all this film sent to you as it help you as far as craft and everything. Yeah, I think it's good for a lot of things. It's good for just general enrichment as a professional, you know, to not just be cooped up.

1:16:38 And I mean, I have a lot of plenty of good creative space in my house where I work, but it's really great to get the out in the field. And I go out on a few. I'm actually working on a field, some field work on a new upcoming project that Forrest has going on that I am not able to mention just yet. But it's a very interesting show, I would say very raw and very emotional, but also very charming and enjoyable show coming out soon that I would love to say more about. But right now, I'm well, I will have to have you at Forest come back and talk about it when it comes out. Is it not going to be part of Shark Week this year?

1:17:18 Is it be a separate? This other thing is a completely different non shark week thing. It actually I don't think there are any sharks in it. Oh, it is. It is a bunch of other animals. OK, any of the other many of the millions of species in surviving. Oh, OK. Oh, that's cool. It's something to look forward to. If there's no sharks, yeah, no sharks and I might actually watch it. So I just because it's like if you're on vacation, you don't want to be working. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Well, I I tell you that story before when I came in from the field a couple of years ago, I'd been in the field for like three weeks. And I finally got to Lima, Peru. And I just thought I'm going to go have a nice cocktail and a nice dinner. I go in and order myself a margarita and why the guy's making the drink. I look up in the freaking screen and there's force and Mitchell speaking in Spanish and some freaking.

1:18:04 God awful place wherever I'm thinking like Jesus Christ. Well, the universe works. All the fucking things I have to see, they have to see I have to see extinct or alive. And I just came out of an extinct or alive like situation in the field. I hope someday I walk into a bar and see one of my shows. That would be great. Yeah. Well, why they're these is all dubbed in Spanish to those the other part of the thing. I'd love to see that. Yeah. I was I was I was I was what's that what's happening from the bars. And I think I took a picture. He said, oh, I said, Jesus Christ, I can't get away from you. Can't get away from you. I can't get away from you. Well, usually when he is doing something, he puts me on the other side of the planet. He's like, OK, we got to be over here. Where is the other hemisphere? I'll send Jesse.

1:18:44 Well, he doesn't send you out there to go find the grizzly bear like this. You wonder out there and take some. You go ahead a little bit. You know, take a picture or something. What's what you got the other what the other show you're doing is another catchy tile for shark week. Florida's death beach. Can you tell us about that? rely training, of course, I think and ways that would be reasons that would be making sharks come in, different species, and there's, like, you know, a lot of accounts of them interacting and attacking divers.

1:19:30 So, you know, definitely worth looking into. I think it's actually the shark sixth capital remained as Something like I could be wrong. I helped out another producer, producer editor like myself took a lot of that show on and I just kind of helped accelerate him for a few weeks when he needed some help. Cause we definitely all collaborated in the background. Right. Yeah, you know how it is. It's the tight knit community. What's it like actually though, when you like, you guys work as a team and like you mentioned, you know, this other producer had this project that he is, an editor that he's kind of controlling the editing for. Yeah. Like how does it like, how do you get like when you help out, oh, is it just divided up?

1:20:10 Hey, can you take a couple of these scenes and work through them? This is what we're trying to think. Here's the overall kind of show that we're trying to do. Like how does that work? How do you divide it up? Like even from a file, like I've had a little bit of experience with, you know, editing Dave's Lost Shark Guy shows and stuff, but you know, I've always done it on my own and they're, they're short, very, very short shows. Like how does it work with you guys? Like in terms of divvying things up? Well, the other editor and producer editor that I'm referring to, his name's Eric Kestin. He's really just talented guy. He's done a lot of other things for the, one of the studios that were attached to and just, you know, he's, he's all around good guy. And I think just getting to know how each other work and what our style is, because, you know, as you know, editing is a very intimate thing.

1:20:54 It comes from a very dynamic place of a range of emotions and places from within you. It's a really, it's an intense process. And understanding the people that are in your close hemisphere, in the post office that you maybe they're working on one show, you're working on another in tandem so that you can just know how to morph to their style a little bit and like work on a part of their show for them to relieve some burden if they're under a time crunch. That's usually the big crux of it is there's a time crunch and you want to just jump in and help and they, you know, we arrange for it and we do that. You know, I have to, you know, because we were talking before we got out to start the show here about, you know, Andrew and I have been doing this series on searching for lost sharks on my YouTube channel.

1:21:38 And it's like, it's, I mean, we're, we don't have the time like you to like do 24 seven, but it's, I can tell you, it's time consuming doing the whole process. Of course, Andrew and I are kind of learning a little bit as learning a lot as we go along on the whole process. And but I can imagine like when you work in these, like, I think you talked last year when you're on the show, like it's pretty consuming for months when you're working on one of these shows, especially because you're also working on a short deadline usually and stuff. So the pretty all is like, it's just like super intense for a period of time. And it's just, you know, 24 seven when you're doing one of these. Yeah. You know, even when you're sleeping and doing other things around the house, you know, it's obviously occupying, you know, most of your attention because you're thinking about things that you're trying to work through in a lot of different realms.

1:22:26 You know, you've got so much footage, for example, and you want to make it 41 minutes, 47 seconds and 10 frames. Not that anyone's counting, but, you know, the that's the standard for us. And and so just thinking about what what you can do without, you know, there's like so much stuff you want to deal with and have. Yeah. And yeah, I was going to say, you know, we tried. I was trying to make these episodes like sort of up to 10 minutes max. And like, you know, the three I've done, the last one was about 14 and a half minutes. And I just didn't know how to make it any shorter without interrupting the story flow. But you're working on it when you're doing like TV, like you are cable or network.

1:23:09 You you're pretty you're tied in like you've got, like you said, 41 minutes and so many seconds. And it's and that's pretty much it. So we're like obviously on YouTube, a little more flexibility there. But is the other thing, too, is we found out like if the little longer the episode gets, there's more works obviously involved trying to get the damn thing to get a complete story into the into the episode. Sure. But it's just like I think we talked to this last year, but like how much time like when you're working on like like the alien sharks when like like how much? How much time from when you get home from like, say, the shoot and you start in on it, like how much time is it?

1:23:52 Yeah, I'll walk you through week by week, actually, because there's a pretty well established rhythm at this point. You know, the very first week of the edit involves going through all of the raw footage and trying to find the easily, you know, do withoutable stuff, stuff I just know that I wouldn't use. You know, I wouldn't even say it's C level. I'd say like anything that's not not D like they did poorly, but just D like the quality of what was happening was either they were just nothing was happening and nothing was happening or, you know, it was, you know, just something that I would say. I don't know the nothing. Honestly, it's like the nothing stuff. Yeah, you know, like you just cut out all the nothing and then suddenly it's all something. Right.

1:24:36 And that's what kind of where I try to, you know, get to in the first week or maybe even four days is take all of the days that have been shot and take all of the nothing out and make a loose compilation reel that I think, you know, now having gone through these episodes time and time again, that something to something cut in that first week. I've gotten more and more aggressive with it over the years to where like it gets pretty good and short and in plump. You know what I mean? Do you know, like, how many hours of footage on average do you get? And then how much do you actually trim down?

1:25:39 I think, you know, on the shortest end would be about 80 hours. What? Like 40 hours, 20 hours? I try to get it down to my first. It's funny because that compilation reel, I try to get it down to about a half hour per day of all of the magic stuff. Okay. So to put that in perspective, that's over the course of often two and a half weeks. Yeah, sometimes to if they're on a crunch, even if it's like one week, that's actually six days. That's still a lot. And it and they have sometimes they splinter out and there's multiple crews and you just double that at that point. And you know, there's just a lot of there's a lot of material to go through and it is dense because there's just a lot of action and they're constantly jumping in the water, going on dives, looking for the thing, running out of air, going up, having an interval, jumping in the water.

1:26:30 And it's just like again and again, like they do their max dives every day. Like they can actually, well, they do their max dives every day and then some free diving afterwards just because, you know, that's the only thing you can do at that point. Yeah, they got to get there. They got to get their hours and you got to make the most of of being out in the field, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah. All day. Yeah. Yeah. I tell people I come off these things. I like it. It's pretty physically demanding when you do doing these shows because you're just constantly going on those show on those things. And it's like whatever 2-3 weeks, whatever you are on the particular shoot, it's it's a lot. You got to you definitely got to be fit. You guys are pretty fit that you got to stay for me. I got to really stay fit. I keep it up when I've done with you guys. I got to keep up with you guys.

1:27:11 Unfortunately, the boat that we were on had those nice cushy sides, you know, and so when you hit the waves, it at least was cushion. Yeah. Well, I remember when I did the show with you, the land of the law sharks in Africa, we went out in that Zodiac the one day there would have like we had three meter seas and like six seconds. You can see through the waves. You can see the next wave through the first wave. I remember I remember Forrest kept asking the skipper Spike. He says, okay to dive out here and spikes. Yeah, it's fine. And then and then and then you guys go like Forrest never asked if it's okay to dive. So it was I was just thinking it's rough. I was thinking like they were very brash to. We were having trouble finding them at the end of that dive as you remember and he was just you know cram in the last the big end of the carrot into his mouth like we'll find him like didn't even flinch. Oh, but there's a shot in that show Dave of in you're in it. I'm pretty sure where we were surface you were trying to radio with Forrest and there was no connection because there was no connection on day and and we went over this wave and the camera was rolling and you were sitting up on the front and the V birth and it just like smack down. It was like a deer. It might have been you or it might have been down. You might have been towards the back. It was one or the other but it looked painful. Yeah, I was sitting up by I was up by Spike at the front there and I just remember thinking like there's just no fucking way I'm going and diving down here. I mean it was like what eight eight ten not currents.

1:28:38 It was just like oh well that that's same it was earlier than that same trip. It might have been before you got there, but we were doing another surf launch and you know, it was a major part of his body out right. Um I screamed in his his actual his like anguish scream and that happened was it made the cut obviously it was right of course. Yeah. Yeah. That was the day I'm telling behind the stories here, but that was the day before you I was you you were shooting out there at up at up at Sadwana Cozy Bay and I went to I went to scout out that village and I ended up getting surrounded by the Mozambique Army and I was you remember that I do he got hurt and the force has sent me a message and he's like he's like how's it going? I go I'm surrounded by guys with machine guns and I really was that was at the border.

1:29:32 Yeah. Yeah. I went to the border. Yeah. And that was I didn't realize the village was on the Mozambique side of the border in the South African guys who surrounded us uh me and the uh young guys with Samoanga surrounded us first and I said what we're just looking for this village and you guys oh it's you gotta go through that gate there. So we walked through the gate. And actually I know I got surrounded by the Mozambique guys and that right then is what for sends me a text message. How's it going? I'm going a lot of machine guns here. It's like uh yeah. It's not exactly uh managing a spreadsheet for a living. No, no, no. It's a little more. I I just fear it's kind of to me. It's just sort of up here. I'm on another one of my field expeditions and typical and uh that's that's what it's all about. Yeah. But that was the day that guys with machine guns. Yeah. That was that was right at the beginning when he got hurt and so I know it was painful and I know it was painful for the whole trip after that uh to kind of get through um get through that trip. That's stuff people don't think about or realize when you're doing those shows, you know, cuz I come I I know about you. You do this all the time but I come home and all my friends are going, well, I have another cushy trip to Africa and I go, man, I don't know. I wouldn't jot that sweating.

1:30:36 Yeah, that's great. Well, the other thing I tell a story I was I remember like for you guys cuz you guys are all like pretty young and stuff and I was like just keeping up with you guys and I remember we'd go to we'd like work like a 20 hour day and be like, okay, see you guys in a few hours and go and get some ice. You know, go in there and call the front desk like send all the **** ice you got up here and do my ice do my ice plunge at night. I got and I will tell you, I'll give a plug for the ice but it freaking works. I gotta tell you, I did my ice plunge every night and I was I was ready to go and you guys were like whatever four or 5 AM. I was good to go but yeah, but that ice plunge did work and um if you're if you're wondering about it, natural remedies, they're always the best. Oh yeah, no, it's great. It was great. I had a fun. That was a really fun time in that on that one there but so yeah, it's it's interesting to do like a behind the scenes episode for like Shark Week or some just to show the maybe they have I don't know but just to show some of the stuff that goes on. I mean there is so much uh and there's I mean there's so much um a lot of the extra stuff actually one of the things we do is we of the of the very best things that we just could not put in the show. They ended up getting edited into the international cuts which ends up being about 6 to 8 minutes longer which actually equates to several more scenes not just like one more scene ends up being like 3 more scenes um and you know it's interesting so if you live in another country somewhere and you're able to watch these shows uh you'll actually end

1:32:07 up seeing more show. Oh, is it just cuz like censorship or something like like in terms of like what's the different markets is the different market the different markets have different formats and different you know ratios of commercial time and um right so you conform to that and it all comes down to in the us and you have a that 4147 10 is your mark and uh it expands and contracts depending on where in the world you are and um yeah it's a whole thing it's uh it's uh yeah so I guess back to when you're editing the show Jesse how does that work if you're if you know you're cutting one for like a us market versus a an overseas market how does that how does that affect you as you're as you're cutting the show well honestly uh um kind of like not really a technical answer unfortunately but I think it comes down to like decision making and trying to understand who all the different pop possible people are that could be watching and just try to relate to them the best you can and a lot of times it's just a lot of different types of people you know I think you go on the scale of things on one end of the extremes you have baseball which everybody at some point in their life watches likes if you look at the audience in a baseball stadium it's everybody like literally everybody and on the other end you have an audience that is just for a very specific person and both are just as valid because you've got you know a niche you're into sailboat enthusiasts over here versus you're into baseball enthusiasts over here and it could even be more you know niche than that you know the sky's the limit I think and so

1:33:38 there's always a place in between to where you are but I think just knowing who your audience is and being able to understand if they're just all kinds of different people what are some of the things you would do to relate to all different kinds of people because baseball does it so what would you do in that case and same would be said I think for a really targeted audience which we honestly don't try to target too much we try to go for that broad you know invite everybody you know everyone's got a welcome mat in these shows I think you know we talked to everyone right you want to obviously you're trying to get as much of an audience in there so they keep hiring you back next year to do another yet another episode funny how that works yeah I know it's funny it's all about following the money but you're but I think well I think is you know just kind of looking over the schedule this year with the do you know much about any of the other episodes are coming out this year do you ever get any inside anything is coming out it's so funny because we never get to watch each other's work and then when shark week finally happens you know it's like you're working on something else hopefully yeah and you know it's hard I try to at least watch like two or three other shows I don't know which ones it probably won't be the night of mine it might be another night just really get into like a different track I like to watch the other you know if I have a show at 10 o'clock I like to watch some of the other shows at 10 o'clock just to see what the other people are doing you know because I'm generally interested I think it's an interesting it's almost like a film fest for adults that you know I mean because we're all these different production companies are out there doing their aquatic films and they're rushing to get

1:35:08 these shark weeks and it's really interesting like like migration you know if you to use a pun in this business I haven't looked at all this year but I always kind of figure out like I figure probably like 75% of the episodes are gonna involve white sharks or tiger sharks pretty much so anything beyond that is like oh it's kind of cool see what else we're doing here and the fact you guys are doing go sharks to me it's just super awesome and you know force likes to go the freakiest and the deakiest oh yeah so he likes the weird ones yeah he likes the unique ones for sure oh yeah yeah yeah who doesn't know yeah that's my bag baby I mean why go for the thing every everybody else is I'm going off with you better to go off in the own direction and stuff like that this sort of thing is Dave's bag that's yeah have you guys ever come across any I assume in this episode in the episodes particularly Australian when you you you mentioned ragatoo sharks are going to call gray nurses in Australia do you guys have any other interest okay there any other interesting things you can talk about or oh yes cephalopods we have a really interesting little cephalopod that is a cuttlefish and he's just the patterns not only for the patterns like the textures all changing and morphing right in front of you like it's really right in front of your eyes and then earlier in the show oh yeah a what the heck was it a coffin ray oh very interesting actually I will say a very interesting encounter with a coffin ray I'll leave it at that what else I'm

1:36:41 just trying to work through the show in sequential order without giving too much away say anybody go look at the call I know I kind of got an idea cuz I know what a coffin ray is if you don't know what a coffin ray is go look it up yeah only that's all I'm gonna say I can kind of like maybe bring a toaster I can I can I can kind of wild ass a pretty accurate wild ass guess what that probably involved but go look up a coffin ray if you don't know what it is so definitely interesting looking I'm just like oh yeah they're cool looking yeah I love all the the frilly yeah tail fins and everything yeah I mean that's the thing about alien sharks it's you know it's it's just you know we're used to land-based life and maybe birds a little bit and you know going underwater is something that I don't think a lot of people get to do that's another thing where you have you know you have to plan for a potentially anybody audience but you're you're taking them down to a reef somewhere where maybe most of them wouldn't be getting patty certified and you know whatever scuba you know so I think it brings them into a different world and it is it it's a there a lot there's lots to say about who's the alien in those worlds of course you know oh yeah oh yeah no doubt no doubt I actually venturing in there you're more the alien if anything that's that's kind of their world really you know yeah come into that stuff do you guys know how long in the process is like when you guys are doing like these shows like how much in advance do you like get a heads up like hey Jesse we're gonna do a show next year and here's we're gonna do like what at what point do they tell you like like how

1:38:12 much lead time do you typically have yeah it well you know we've always got these like you know this is where again where I think Mitch and Forrest really shine as collaborators and there are other people involved it's not just those two then the pre-production you know there's a lot of brain power going on as to what can be done and what themes can be explored and adventures we can go on it's it's it's not just about the science to like I really think the adventure aspect is a big character in these you know and play go into these places where you know it's a it really is a great way that to where if you're you know or not going to be leaving your couch and he can't get out of here anytime soon it's a really good escape I try to make it escape we started doing the shark weeks during covid you know Dave we were last saw each other and then everything shut down and I felt like well if everyone's gonna be stuck on their couch this summer I'm just gonna pour my heart into this and it just kind of carried through every year after that yeah yeah yeah I think that's a man's ago you want to it's like it's like you're doing an adventure you want you want to bring the audience along the people because most most of places like force and you guys go and even for some of these shark week shows and you know places I like to go places people don't even know about really are very very little about or it's a place I'll never go to you know they might just see other than seeing it on TV and so I think that bringing that kind of home to people seeing some place that they might learn a little bit about you know I think it's always kind of an important aspect is hugely important in the whole thing so but you don't have any as far as any

1:39:44 shark week shows for next year I mean you can't obviously don't give stuff away but do you have any ideas now or yeah back to your question good good point but the the the it depends on the cycle you know they when they decide it's time to start you know green lighting all of these projects and it's kind of just like suddenly a big title wave goes across the community of studios that do shows like these and everybody just gets right to work and that that will often happen towards the end of the calendar year into the very early maybe early spring at the latest. And then you move into production and then in that late spring early summer is just sweating in the edit pay we got you know fans from every direction.

1:40:29 It's that much of a of a time crunch then when you start like early spring so you don't do it like in the fall or something like that. So we always hope to and it always depends on the animal that ends up being featured in the show and where where they are because it's tough you know it's fun to go do those deep sea like the really deep sea ones with the baited underwater cameras because I mean what shows up there is amazing but I like to have a view of an environment where forest can be and I mean forest wants that everybody wants to be able to have him actually immerse into those places. And so I think it's fun to break away into some of those deeper sea things but when those sharks are up in the shallows I mean and they're in those cool looking reefs with the sponges everywhere and everything it just like really a sight to see you know the show has a lot of that.

1:41:19 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you get it was this filmed off of Victoria in Victoria and Nelson Bay and it was a yeah Victoria and Nelson Bay. I think Nelson Bay might be in a different area. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Started in Nelson Bay. Okay. I just curious what kind of from a from a lot. I'm sure people watch and I hope everybody watches the show to get a kind of see something different and stuff. I mean I'm kind of stoked for the go show. We have a map graphic so you'll see where it is. Well, as I told you I have a whole book coming out on go sharks the end of the actually in January so it'll be very timely. We'll have to run you guys have to replace your show. Yeah. Book comes out so because I mean it's pretty rare you see a shark we have anything with go sharks.

1:42:05 It's true. Something big and toothy but having something unique like that's really pretty interesting. It's pretty interesting to see you got another question for you when do you guys typically will get greenlit for like next year's show is it the way the ratings come out for like this year or they sometimes I'm probably the wrong guy to ask about that. Okay. You know, being that my involvement kind of gets in between ourselves. I said we'll keep between ourselves and whoever listening to the show. So it's a little later in the year though. You don't I think so. Yeah. Usually in the later, you know, it really depends. I mean, it fluctuates. It would be nice if it was, you know, sooner because sometimes the animals you want to go for are active in the fall and in the early winter and you know, but it really comes down to there's a lot. There's a lot of forces at play.

1:42:53 So it's like you right. You gotta just do it. I know my experience not not with you not with force but before I did a show with you guys a lot of the times they you know, they'll when they've contacted me, they'll say we want to go and do film this show at this time of the year and I'm like, well, the sharks aren't there. Yeah. Here's here's when you have to go. Here's the window. Here's the window and I'm just like, is you're wasting your time to go now because they're not there and that turns into like a big back and forth because the production guys want to go when they want to go and I'm like, well, there's not you're not going to see anything. They're not there. Yeah. And then so I can see that. Yeah. So I can see that the timing on that work. It's kind of screwy for you if especially if it gets into like April, May and you got a show it's doing July that well that was the way it was when we we filmed the mystery of the black demon shark in the sea of Cortez which was an amazing time. I got to go on this one and like this was trying to catch these whales and the whale sharks as they were coming around the bottom of Cabo San Lucas, you know, Baja California and ended up chasing out the whale sharks.

1:43:52 And so we ended up chasing out to an island and which would have been a place that they would have been gathering lots of nooks and crannies and stuff and of course we found one. But that was one where we couldn't shoot until I think April 15. I don't even think we left the house till April 18. It was like just after tax day. And so we filmed until May, and then came back and had a cut out. And so we filmed in the real time, a Memorial day. Or no, it was it was a week after. It was something pretty insane. I had help that day too on that show too. You know, my process would be to go through the you know those first initial like I said the comp real we do that first week.

1:44:38 spend making an assembly edit with no scoring, a little bit of dress up, you know, with the visuals, but just to get the story together, really line it all up and get like, get the show to like 60 minutes, maybe 70 if there's 75, if there's a lot of good stuff. And then I might enlist the help of someone like an Eric Kestin, like I mentioned earlier, any number of the other collaborators that do the kind of thing I do on other shows, and they kind of even would morph into my style a little bit. And I might give them like, you know, a middle or late section of the show so I can work on the beginning and then they help accelerate things. And that's how those time crunches work. Like you, you can't do the time crunches by yourself. That's where it really comes into being able to work with people and make it happen. You know, Well, I was going to say when I did that, uh, the show back, I mean, the show, we went out and got the mega mouth shark. Cause that's a very specific one. You know, we didn't, we didn't film that till May. And because I just said like, they're not there. And I said, the first, the first conditions that they were going to be there, we went, we went there in May, went out there and we got one right off, which they were obviously pretty happy about that. But if we'd have gone like a, when they wanted to an April or something or a week or two, even a week earlier, we wouldn't have saw them. Cause I just, I know cause I knew the guys there, I knew the fishermen, I knew they said, this is when you'll get them. And we went and got, and we got it.

1:45:59 But I, but that was, that was a really tight cause they had like basically two months to pull that one together. And I was, that's what's kind of curious what your, it's often you are, you know, you just gotta be clever in how you structure your workflow at that point. And it's a very well choreographed thing. Having done it a lot. You know, I kind of know what I'm in for when I see the dates of when they want to propose the shoot because the deadlines are always the same. They usually Memorial day weekend is the big rough cuts out to the network time. And a lot of the network executives are working straight through it, you know, cause they know they got to get the, their notes back to you right away. And it's a very quick.

1:46:40 So that's, that's a part of the process too. So you get your, sort of your, your rough cut, whatever to the network execs, and they got to sign off on it before you can go to the next step. Yeah, usually there's always, there's always, they're, they're collaborators too. Like it's a very collaborative process. You know, we do everything to make these beautiful shows. And at one point I have to get, you know, give, give it up to the people that I collaborate with internally with the studio to be able for them to be able to come in and say, how about we try this? How about we try that and open it up to one layer of the onion of collaborators. And that, that involves, you know, forest at that point. That involves other Eric, his, his one, another Eric, his business partner that they both run fantastic as pictures together and are, you know, they're, they're, they're one and two together. And, and then once everyone within that community is really happy with how it is, and it's represents what they wanted to look and it's polished and the story's clear.

1:47:45 And, you know, having those fresh eyes is, you know, and so key for someone like me, because I get to that point where they're just starting to see it and I've seen it a thou more than a thousand times. And so then they give me their fresh perspective and I trust it with my every ounce of my gut. But then after that phase, then it goes off to our collaborators at the network and they have been wonderful with us over the years. They give us very good notes and they have also really good perspective on how to just keep elevating it all the way through the refinement process. So it goes back to them after you do the, like the first round of changes after they've seen it the first time and then it goes back to them again and that feedback loop is continuous until...

1:48:26 It's, it's limited. It's maybe two rounds. Sometimes there's a third if you need a little extra check, but they really trust us and we, you know, give them exactly what we, you know, want them to have and what they want. So, but that also comes, that also comes with experience too, like you've worked with them before forever. Yeah. So it comes like they, they know the process as you know the process and they know how you guys work, you guys know how they work and I think that probably helps out right now. And it's pretty much been the same people too. Yeah. Yeah. Which is pretty unusual because like said my experience, like it's always a, it could be a different crew. You might have one or two people might be people you've worked with, but then a lot of times that the other parts of the crew be just completely different people. Very few changes over the years. I mean, there's been a lot of stuff going, but you know, very few changes. Yeah.

1:49:14 It's been good. Yeah. So you got any, you got any like things people should watch for this year? Obviously it should watch your tune in to catch your show, Alien Sharks Death Down Under. And that's on, when's it on? Wednesday at 10 PM Eastern time. That's Alien Sharks Death Down Under. And then Florida's Death Beach is Friday. And that was the one that, you know, you know, Alien Sharks is my baby. I did. Oh, I was, Alien Sharks, I was able to own a hundred percent through the whole thing. And I really love being able to do that. And then Alien Sharks was that other editor, producer editor, I mentioned Eric Kestins and he did a fabulous job with it along with our, our post supervisor, Chris Stout, who he's kind of our middle fresh eyes. Like we have like the, the, our, our jaded eyes. And then right before it even goes to the forest and Eric, you know, kind of people, we have somebody who is a hired fresh eyes and he provides the most critical fresh eyes at the most critical moment right after that first assembly happens and it's time to like give it its first, you know, and so he was a wonderful team.

1:50:22 And I mean, the list could go on. There's way more people than that. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So, but well, hey, Jesse, this has been like super interesting and it's very, we appreciate your insightfulness on the whole short week show and your episodes here and maybe it'll make this a regular thing. Have you come back next year and tell us what all the cool stuff's going on and yeah, give us all the insight into everything and yeah, but thank you so much for taking your time out here and I think I'll have to give Mitchell a shout out to have him on the show here and talk about a different perspective on stuff. So anyway, thanks very much, Jesse. Appreciate you coming on. Yeah, definitely appreciate it. Thank you for having me. Just keep doing all the awesome stuff you guys are doing. I love it. Oh, you as well.

1:51:03 Thanks a lot. We're big fans. Thank you again, Jesse, for joining us on today's episode of the Beyond Jaws podcast. David's always fun having Jesse. He's so into it. He and I have to admit, like he's a huge fan of the podcast. It's always great to have somebody on who listens to the podcast and really gets into the people that we have on and loves the science and loves the conservation that we talk about in just the career path. Very interesting career path for him. We've talked about on the podcast before this episode. We really got we dove into the production and how production really plays a role in editing plays a role in storytelling. Even just the fact that like going from like was eight hours or something of footage down to four just initially like or two to four like just initially just to find the great, you know, the great action shots and shots that will could make it to the final cutting floor.

1:51:54 What did you think of the interview and what he goes through? I thought I thought it was interesting. I mean, I've been really fascinated how just how much time, of course, you and I are learning this kind of the hard way doing our Searching for Lost Sharks documentary series on YouTube at Lost Shark guy, by the way, on the YouTube channel. If you want to check it out and but I have to do it ourselves. Now we're really getting to see what he does and he's doing it a whole different level than we're doing it. He's been doing this for, you know, he actually had went to school and had training for it. He's been you kind of work the steps up the way where you and I just kind of jumped into the deep end at once try to figure it out. But but no, there's a lot so much goes into it. And you know, like you said, he only works on like a couple of these a year and maybe he helps out on another episode or two kind of in a periphery and a peripheral role.

1:52:41 But you can really see just how much enough people realize is how much goes in behind the scenes on these episodes to come to take all these hours and hours of video and just basically carve it down to like 42 minutes. Yeah, really, really. It was and I, I thought the other part I thought was interesting is he talked a little bit about how when they do different editions like a and I kind of knew this, I guess we did a little bit like to do foreign editions. And that has a different cut that might be four or five minutes longer than the like the North American version. And so so that's a whole added layer. He needs to he needs to work with and but I just kind of find it fascinating. I think people listening to this, they might get critical about shark.

1:53:26 We can certainly things you can be critical about. But but you know, it's it's interesting how much energy and effort they do put into it. Really, when you think about it, storytelling and being I think being in the field like myself and many in my field, you kind of look at it a very different way than someone who's has no knowledge of it. They just flip on shark week or some shark show. Yeah, you know, for a week a year and that's all their exposure to it. And so you kind of hope they put together a decent story. They've always got to have a catchy title that bring somebody into to want to watch it. Like, why don't want to go watch this? You know, if you if it's, you know, death down under versus, you know, oh, come watch the, you know, plow nose chimeras, which is probably not going to attract the same audience.

1:54:14 Right. Right. Right. Yeah. And I, I got to say the fact that the that particular episode that Forest is doing that Jesse added having the those plow nose go sharks is kind of the featured thing. I kind of warm my heart. I was like, you know, I I I sent Forest a message said, buddy, you moved way up in my list of friends featuring that and still mean that that's pretty cool. So I'm definitely gonna look forward to checking that one out. Yeah. And seeing exactly what all is entailed there with those things. I mean, the one thing is those spines are pretty I can tell they're pretty nasty and you don't want to get impaled by those things. They can they can you can seriously injure yourself. And as we talked about, I mean, I found some of those in sharks like in some sharks and stuff. And I'm sure sometimes those sharks are killed. Right.

1:55:08 Is we know seal. We know seal sea lions have been killed eating them because we've seen the carcasses wash up. But I don't think people sometimes the sharks may die that way. And unless it one happens to wash up, you're not gonna not gonna see it. So it's right. There is some there is a threaded truth to the whole story about that. And so I love to see what Forest and Jesse have in store for us on Wednesday night. I'm looking forward to it. I think it's gonna be a lot of fun. I think it's gonna be really interesting. I want really, I want people to really like really look out for the science and let us know what you thought about the episode. So that's on July 23rd at 10 o'clock Eastern time. Check that out. So it's gonna be it's gonna be a lot of fun to check it out. So again, Jesse, thank you so much for joining us. We're looking forward to having you back on talk more production. You know, one thing actually before I before I say before we say goodbye, the one thing that really gets me is kind of mentioned earlier, Dave, is how they have to fit a certain time slot.

1:56:07 You know, and they have to tell the story within like 42 minutes and 30 seconds or whatever that might be. And then in the foreign, like in another, I guess, market is a foreign market, they add five minutes or two minutes or three minutes, which that's a lot in storytelling. And that could be a lot more, a lot different in terms of how the story plays out. You and I, we've been working on the last shark guy series in the extinct or alive. We're lucky. We it's a YouTube video. And so it goes on. It can go on for as long as we want. We try and keep it, you know, short. You know, short to make sure that it's the sink, but we don't have to fit it within a certain time span. I think that would be a challenge in and of itself for us. Yeah, but it's it's it's it's definitely a challenge that we respect and everybody who gets to be a part of that to actually put it within that same length each and every time. So that's a it's a really cool thing that I want to shout out Jesse for doing and his team.

1:57:00 But thank you again, Jesse, for joining us. So people want to watch again, July 23rd. It's a really cool thing to do. And then on July 23rd, it's alien sharks down under at 10 o'clock Eastern time. And then Florida's death beach is on July 25th Friday at 9 p.m. Eastern. And since it's Shark Week, if you want to check out our YouTube channel, yeah, at law shark guy on on YouTube series searching for lost sharks extinct or live shorter videos, but they're really informative. So check that out. Absolutely. Check it out. It's going to be a lot of fun. We'll put the link in the show notes so you can click over and watch those. And of course, give us feedback. Let us know what you think in that in those comments. But Dave, if people want to get a hold of you other than going to the lost shark YouTube channel, how do so Instagram? It's lost shark guy on Instagram.

1:57:49 And same with Facebook. So, you know, we're going to keep it up and leave it. Leave us a message. So wonderful. And if you guys want to get a hold of either Dave or I, you can go to law shark guy or beyond Jaws Pod. Leave message there as well. We want to thank you so much. Jesse, thank you so much as well as Dave. Of course, it's always fun to do a podcast with you. And I want to thank the audience for listening to us. We really appreciate it. This has been another episode of the beyond just podcast. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time. Enjoy Shark Week and happy conservation.