How we made it #4: Texas Route 66

Another in our Behind the Scenes series for paid subscribers!

About a year ago our Route 66 episodes came out, some 12 months before everyone else, and to make sure people weren’t bored watching 8 separate episodes from 8 states, we merged a bunch of states into one. Illinois got its own episode, then Missouri and Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas and Arizona was grouped with California.

I came to realize this was probably unfair to Texas and California, especially because we kept reusing the soundbite belonging to the proprietor of the U-Drop Inn in Shamrock in other Route 66 videos.

So many always asked me to name the one highlight from Route 66, and that was impossible to answer. There were so many of them. But for me, as a filmmaker—this one was it. It was the hands down best interview of the 2,448 mile, 8 state trip.

So as I looked at my YouTube analytics, and saw that the Route 66 videos were still getting views every day, I realized it was time to recut Texas, expand it, and let it grow from four minutes to a full 22 minutes.

Texas is the most recent—I also recut and expanded California 66 and will post that one next week.

In this series for paid subscribers to the newsletter, I offer behind the scenes commentary about how these episodes come about, the shots we used that worked and didn’t work, the apps we used, the fails and what we learned from them.

Paid subscribers can read all about it, directly below.