Today we’d like to introduce you to Nathan Mallory.
Hi Nathan, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I grew up on a 145-acre farm, and when I was 8 (2008) my dad introduced me to 3D Remote control (RC) cars, planes, and helicopters. Since most of my friend’s parents never let them come over to my farm to hang out because they thought it was too dangerous, I spent much of my time on RC hobbies.
I ended up getting a sponsorship at age 9 for 3D RC helicopters and started competing in the Northwest against other RC pilots that were much older than I was. I did this until I was 13 and started to realize there were no young kids doing this so I quit and started doing what all the other kids were doing which was sports.
Fast forward to 2019 I was entering college not sure what I wanted to do with my life but I decided to follow what society was telling me was right. So I went to college on a golf scholarship and was studying accounting. During freshman year we had a dorm video competition and I decided to enter it because my dad got a drone and I borrowed it, with just recording on my phone and my dad’s drone I felt as if I was making a blockbuster movie.
I really enjoyed the way you can evoke pure emotion when visuals meet sound. I made my first video ever and looking back on it… it was pretty bad, haha and I ended up crashing my dad’s drone into class 3 rapids and losing all my footage. I ended up buying him another and I wanted one so I ended up buying myself a pretty beat-up DJi Mavic Air for dirt cheap because I just spent all my money on my dad’s new drone.
I started to make tinier videos for myself when I would go out adventuring or during my golf tournaments after I finished my round I would run out with my camera and capture as much as I could before the tournament ended. During my second year of college, I had to pay for my own college and this is when I started asking myself is what I’m doing all there is in life, go to school get a degree, get a job I’m not excited about, get a house and settle down and that’s it.
When you are forced to pay for your own college and have the choice to go into debt, you start making real-life decisions on your own for your future. It seemed so daunting to consider the possibility to drop out and let down my parents, professors, coaches, and friends, but I wasn’t living to make them happy, I was living to make myself feel like I have self-worth and I can wake up and enjoy my day.
I think the most powerful thing is the unknown it’s scary but so exciting because you can choose any reality you want. So I made the decision to drop out and make music videos for no-name rappers and…. let me just say it failed miserably, I felt like I really chose the wrong choice but I stayed with it and kept pushing. I ended up getting lucky.
This Winery found me and liked my work and hired me on as their videographer I worked there for 2 years helping with their marketing and video work. I started an LLC with 2 of my friends that were also working there with me. I started out making videos that were pretty dopamine-heavy visuals with no story but the more I practiced my craft I started to realize that there was another world of video out there where you can tell a real story with real emotion.
I started to fall in love with telling stories. I then got into FPV Drones right as Covid hit. With my eye-hand coordination from competing 3D Rc helicopters when I was younger it was the same concept as flying FPV drones now so I had a big draw to this. I built my first ever drone and used everything I learned when I was little about building, soldering and programming to make my first drone come to life.
I spent about 70 hours on a flight simulator before I ever took my first flight on it. Once everything shut down during covid I realized I can’t be stuck in one place doing nothing productive so I packed my car and started traveling in my home state for 14 weekends straight I went out and camped and made it a goal to capture content and practice FPV while still exploring and enjoying nature. I saw every environment my state had to offer.
I really fell in love with the idea of being present and enjoying the little things in life. Once things started opening back up from Covid I started really pushing on content for the winery and other companies, but I started reflecting on the entire Covid process as everyone did and I started asking myself the hard questions again of if what I’m doing is the right move, but over that time I realized I have been making videos for other people.
I started slacking on the content I wanted to create and I never ended up finishing any of my personal videos. This really started to kill the creative brain that I had, I had no motivation to go out and create for myself, and finally, I had a reality check with myself that, if I dropped out of college to choose to have a better life for myself where I can let my brain run free, I can’t settle here so I had to keep that radical decision train going. I started to ask myself what means the most to me and I realized that this chapter I have been living is coming to an end I need a change to really further what I wanna do, so I decided I was going to move to Bali.
Before I left for Bali I wanted to do one last road trip with some of my closest friends that could join me. This decision was as scary as dropping out of college and my world was about change drastically. I wasn’t going to see My family, friends or anyone in this new life. The comfortability aspect was going out the window. So then I set out for a road trip through Utah I made it a goal to document the entire trip.
This was my message from the video I made of the trip:
“These past couple of months, I started to understand the value of a moment. For me, I was coming to an end of a chapter in my life and I was moving away from my friends and family. Knowing my time was limited with them made me cherish the moments I had left with them. I recently went on a 7-day road trip with some of my best friends Sam and Morgan. We set out to make being present our main goal with no expectations of how the trip would turn out. This trip allowed me to capture moments that I will always remember.
Through this I learned how powerful it is to share a connection with someone when you both are looking at something bigger than yourself When you look back at moments like these, you wish you could go back and relive it all again and what you focus on the most is the feeling it gave you and not that dope ass photo.
So many of us get caught in the act of doing things to show off and look cool but most people at the end of their lives won’t remember what you said or did but will remember how you made them feel and how connected they felt through the power of memory. It’s easy to get caught up in wanting to see everything possible but this trip showed me that slowing down and enjoying what’s in front of me is all I needed to feel connected to the environment and people around me.”
This was the perfect trip I needed before I left for my next chapter in life. 2 days after that trip I left for Bali without knowing anyone there and it was my first time out of the country by myself, I was going to visit beforehand but work wouldn’t let me get time off so I got fed up with not having the freedom so I told them I was quitting and booked that 1-way ticket and haven’t looked back. I have currently been living in Bali for 5 months now pursuing the content and stories that make me feel most alive. Most of my jobs so far have to do with FPV and I’ve really been pursuing that a lot more here.
Thanks to that silly RC hobby when I was 8 I grew my passion to fly drones and learn to film memories that I can look back on for the rest of my life. I currently work as a full-time content creator/filmmaker and wake up excited about life to just go out and create and let my brain enjoy what I do.
Something that I learned while being here in Bali is your creative ideas have a shelf life and you have to act on them when you are in the mindset/mood because someone will either beat you to it or you’ll lose motivation to get it done. This mindset has allowed me to gain motivation when I get an idea to go out and act on it right away. This ultimately brings me the most joy to see my ideas come to life.
I now currently bounce back home and Bali for video work.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
No part of my journey has been smooth as anyone you’ll ever talk to that is working toward their dream, it always looks easy and smooth from the outside because that is what society likes to see but it’s the work that gets put in behind closed doors that matters when no one is watching. I had to make the hardest decision of my life and choose to risk a not guaranteed life or stay in school and take the safe route.
I failed right when I dropped out with what I was creating, the plan I had to make money right away went terribly wrong, and I beat myself up thinking my work was not good enough. After a year of creating, losing money and jobs, I stayed consistent with it and I finally got the dream job at the time working at a winery doing videos, but after a year and a half, I got into this funk that the work I was creating wasn’t inspiring me anymore and I started considering if doing the video was even what I wanted to do long term.
I got pushed to a point of over-creating things that gave me no value so I almost gave up and considered other options. I had video jobs that I got fired from because I lost the footage from the shoot or just had poor communication/time management skills. This was so embarrassing I didn’t want to tell people because I thought I had to be perfect at this thing called life.
Failing so many times made me want to give up and go back to school, but I had one conversation that changed my perspective on how I view life and my career and it was “You should treat life like there is no plan B because when you expect a backup plan you’ve already expected to fail, but when you only have a plan A you will do everything in your capabilities to make that happen because there is no other option and it is okay to fail because that is where you grow the most.”
I was so afraid of failing and having people come back to me with critiques of my work but the only way to fail is if you don’t try at all and with that conversation I was able to gain a clearer vision that I knew I wanted to do video-work but didn’t know how. I tried many options and one of the ones I ended up liking the most, and that was the possibility of traveling the world and so I got the radical idea to move to Bali.
I barely had any money saved up so every day I was here I was losing money and eventually would run out, this made me question things once again but I stayed committed to my plan that it will work out, and finally after 3 months of no work. People started to recognize me and my work and things just turned into a domino effect where I can create my own work that I always wanted to make, and work on bigger projects in different countries.
With so many failures and times of almost quitting I am glad I failed that many times because it taught me more about myself and life than if everything would have worked out the way I imagined. I still have such a long road ahead of me but I have finally found what I enjoy and I know at the end of the day if I keep trying and failing I will get there, like anything great it takes time. Practice doesn’t make perfect, practice makes improvement and at the end of the day, that’s all we can do to become a better person and student of life.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I am a filmmaker/content creator. I specialize in FPV (First Person View) drone work. I’ve built my brand around my drone skills due to my hobby from when I was little and being the most authentic version I can be. I am most proud of my recent work “The Power of a Moment” it shows how real life is if you slow down and embrace the present moment and that we don’t need to change our images for the online world.
I believe what sets me aside from the next filmmaker/content creator is my determination to produce high-quality content while keeping an authentic feel that doesn’t bleed into the next influencer’s content. Along with that my FPV drone work excels in smooth cinematic flying that you don’t see very often.
What quality or characteristic do you feel is most important to your success?
I truly believe that patience, determination, optimism, and uniqueness are the most important qualities to succeed as a creative because the road to success is a slow and confusing process with no guidance, and without those qualities, you will think no progress is being made. But if you keep believing and take a step back and look at the bigger picture, you can see that little progress every day can get you to your goals faster than you think.
For me acting on any creative idea I have right away allows me to be different and create the content that makes me feel most alive because if you are passionate about what you do you will create things that are you and that is ultimately the brand you want for yourself, you don’t want to pretend to be anyone else.
Every great creator, artist, musician, and more have gotten to where they are at by being 100% them in what they create and do, they have developed a new unique path that hasn’t been seen and is just their style. If they would have followed the rest of the crowd they probably wouldn’t be as successful as they are now. I take that same mindset into the things I create and I consider that success because eventually if I fulfill my life with what I love doing the right people, jobs, and recognition will follow.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.malloryfilms.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nathan_mallory72/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y%3D
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuTfp7aLKU8&ab_channel=NATHANxMALLORY
