Filmer Spotlight: Mamlambo Fossils

Filmers
Written By Newsflare

Mamlambo is an amateur fossil hunter, fossil preparator (or prepper) and content creator living in New Zealand. He is a Software Engineer by day but on the weekend he is out exploring the countryside finding fossils which he donates to local museums. He's been creating fossil videos for the past 2.5 years now, he started off doing it to show his family back home the beautiful places he was seeing and became quite popular when he put them on YouTube. He says he's been really fortunate in that he has a few paleontologists that don't mind answering his random questions and helping him to identify the bones he finds.

How do you describe your videos to people?

I find rocks with fossils in them, sometimes I also remove the fossils from the rock! I would say my videos are pretty chilled, exploring new areas, seeing how beautiful New Zealand is and I take people along for the ride.

What would a typical creative day look like?

It starts a few days before the weekend with me looking into a new area, deciding whether it will be worth exploring and then making sure that the weather and tides line up. I will usually wake up REALLY early, before sunrise and make sure I have all my equipment (backpack, torch, water, food, emergency locator beacon, charged camera, extra batteries, rock hammer, bags for putting things in) ready before I get in the car and drive a few hours to the location. I try to get some footage that captures the mood, like if it's a hot day - cold with snowy mountains, mysterious and misty. Then it's about 6 hours of exploring, finding fossils and recording finding them. I usually cover 10 - 15 miles in a day. When I get back home I often have to research the finds and then spend about 2 or 3 hours putting the video together, often finding the right music can take an hour or more.. It then goes to my patrons for an early preview and they sometimes have suggestions that I incorporate into the final video.

What's the best thing about partnering with Newsflare?

Newsflare do a great job of promoting my videos, I honestly could never, ever get the reach I have without their help. They have also been very helpful with explaining video copyright, usage and other legalities as I had no idea how that worked. It feels like more than a partnership, it really feels like Newsflare have an interest in what I do and help me to grow my brand.

What camera/s do you use?

I mainly use two Panasonic 4k HC-VX1, one is often being repaired as I fall in rivers quite often! I also use a GoPro 8 for some time-lapse footage and when I need something waterproof.

What tools do you use?

I have some air scribes that I do 80% of my prep work with, I have a really nice one from the UK by Ken Mannion that I do most of my work with as it's very powerful and accurate, I also use vinegar to remove the stubborn last bit of rock if it is a bit sticky.

Can we see your collection of fossils?

Most of my good fossils are in museums but here are some of my favourites...

My giant crab that took 200 hours to prep! It's such a monster and weighs 15 lbs. It's a really beautiful fossil and something I am quite proud of having found and prepped myself.

I also love the plesiosaurus vertebrae I recently prepped, it was my first big acid prep job and came out great! You can see the plesiosaurus vertebrae as I found it, still in the rock. It weighed 50lbs, I removed around 80% of that.

However, there is one find that I have been keeping under wraps which I will hopefully be able to share with everyone early next year ;)

Any tips for other Newsflare content creators?

I try and really provide quality over quantity, sometimes I redo a video 5 or 6 times just to get the right feel and length to it.

What do you attribute to your creative success?

I'm actually quite surprised by it, I thought fossil prep was very niche! I'd say hard work and perseverance are key, I don't think there are shortcuts if you want to grow something sustainable. For some fossil preps I process more than 1 000 GB of video footage into 5 min or so of final video, it takes hours but is worth it when you watch the final video!

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