190. Filmmaker Ben Masters on Texas Rivers, What We've Lost, and What We Can Get Back

It seems like adopting wildlife is something of a theme throughout your life, either explicitly or something through the body of your work, really coming to understand and know the various creatures and critters that occupy Texas and the greater Southwest.

And I think many of us in Texas understand a lot of our ecoregions and wild spaces, those that we really appreciate a bit better because of what you've done in the last few years.

I feel the same way about you, bud.

Well, thank you.

That's high praise coming from you.

And I'm always curious too, you know, picking up a camera myself at some point and wanting to tell stories in that way about, you know, where we live and the places we enjoy.

What was the thing that took you actually from just appreciating being outside, being outdoors in these beautiful spaces and to actually picking up a camera and trying to figure out how to shape some sort of story around it?

I think for me, seeing just the impact that Unbranded made on people, you know, we got hundreds of horses adopted.

And it really...

Changed a lot of the conversations that were happening within the Bureau of Land Management, within some of the wild horse and burrow policy at large.

I was like 28 and was invited to sit on the wild horse and burrow advisory board within the Bureau of Land Management to represent the interest of wildlife on like 30 million acres, which looking back is way too much responsibility to put on a kid that age.

Film, it has a way of transporting people to experience something in a way that no other form of media has.

It's extremely powerful

and has

the ability to really inspire people.

For me, conservation efforts, that's what I care about.

So, you know, a door opened, I started, I directed my first short film called Water From Stone about David Bamberger, and then got to do a whole bunch of short films and then directed my first feature film called The River and the Wall about the insanity of building a wall on some stretches of the Texas-Mexico border.

that opened up deep in the heart one uh which we did and then you know now we're at deep in the heart two and have several films on deck so it's been fun

It seems like adopting wildlife is something of a theme throughout your life, either explicitly or something through the body of your work, really coming to understand and know the various creatures and critters that occupy Texas and the greater Southwest.

And I think many of us in Texas understand a lot of our ecoregions and wild spaces, those that we really appreciate a bit better because of what you've done in the last few years.

I feel the same way about you, bud.

Well, thank you.

That's high praise coming from you.

And I'm always curious too, you know, picking up a camera myself at some point and wanting to tell stories in that way about, you know, where we live and the places we enjoy.

What was the thing that took you actually from just appreciating being outside, being outdoors in these beautiful spaces and to actually picking up a camera and trying to figure out how to shape some sort of story around it?

I think for me, seeing just the impact that Unbranded made on people, you know, we got hundreds of horses adopted.

And it really...

Changed a lot of the conversations that were happening within the Bureau of Land Management, within some of the wild horse and burrow policy at large.

I was like 28 and was invited to sit on the wild horse and burrow advisory board within the Bureau of Land Management to represent the interest of wildlife on like 30 million acres, which looking back is way too much responsibility to put on a kid that age.

Film, it has a way of transporting people to experience something in a way that no other form of media has.

It's extremely powerful

and has

the ability to really inspire people.

For me, conservation efforts, that's what I care about.

So, you know, a door opened, I started, I directed my first short film called Water From Stone about David Bamberger, and then got to do a whole bunch of short films and then directed my first feature film called The River and the Wall about the insanity of building a wall on some stretches of the Texas-Mexico border.

that opened up deep in the heart one uh which we did and then you know now we're at deep in the heart two and have several films on deck so it's been fun