143. Martin Smith on Documenting the Disney Parks at Martin’s Videos

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Back in the Internet’s early days, even a brief attraction clip was incredible. The chance to see the full experience of Horizons, World of Motion, or other past gems was a pipe dream. We’re spoiled today with virtually everything just a few clicks away. The best channels do a lot more than just present attractions. A perfect example is the work of Martin Smith, who has presented videos of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, and more online for nearly 20 years.

Martin is my guest on this episode of The Tomorrow Society Podcast to talk about his videos and a lot more. His extensive ultimate tributes include detailed backgrounds of the attractions and changes over the years. I’ve really enjoyed Martin’s presentations of classic EPCOT Center attractions on YouTube. We talk about what inspired him to shoot footage of the parks going back to early family trips in the ’80s and ’90s. Early material from those vacations provided the baseline for many of his recent projects.

Martin also describes upgrades that have made his work a lot easier. Copying from tape to tape wasn’t so feasible, so he needed to wait for technology to catch up first. There’s a lot more involved than just shooting a POV of the attraction. We close the episode by talking about some of his favorite things about the parks, including from Disneyland Paris. I really enjoyed the chance to learn more about Martin’s work and what drives his passion project. It was great to dive into favorite past and current attractions in the parks.

Show Notes: Martin Smith

Learn more about Martin Smith and contact him on his official site at http://www.martinsvids.net/.

Check out the newest videos and subscribe to Martin’s channels on YouTube and Vimeo.

Watch Martin’s latest Ultimate Tribute Video to Big Thunder Mountain Railroad at Disneyland Paris.

Transcript

Martin Smith: You’re trying to figure out when the Pooped Pirate actually became the Stuffed Pirate in Pirates of the Caribbean, and then you find out it was different on the West Coast to the East Coast, and then you find out Paris was different again. So it can be a bit of a pain trying to get it all right, but I think I still got a passion for it. It still interests me. It’s still my hobby, and I guess I’ll carry on doing it until I’m not interested in it anymore.

Dan Heaton: That is Martin Smith, who’s here to talk about the incredible videos that he creates of Walt Disney World, Disneyland Paris, so much more. You’re listening to the Tomorrow Society Podcast.

(music)

Dan Heaton: Thanks for joining me here on Episode 143 of the Tomorrow Society Podcast. I am your host, Dan Heaton. And I have to say, we are really spoiled right now. Given the amount of information and videos that are out there, they’re so easy to access on YouTube or other sources. And I think back to the early days of the Internet when I remember just being amazed to hear a short audio clip of Spaceship Earth on Intercot or Sounds of Magic or these other sites where I’d be like, “Oh my gosh, this is three minutes.” Or maybe even the whole ride, this fuzzy audio. Never imagining that then we would have full video ride through 4K HD.

You could just go on YouTube and almost find anything. When you can’t find it, it’s like, “What? This is frustrating.” And it’s a lot more than just ride-throughs. You’re seeing these well-edited videos where you have people taking shots from multiple angles, zooming in and out, focusing in on small effects from both current attractions and past attractions.

And one of the best is Martin Smith, who I’ve been following for a really long time. He has Martin’s Videos on YouTube and Vimeo, and he puts together these ultimate tribute videos where they could be 30 minutes, an hour, an hour and a half. Looking back at a lot of classic Epcot Center pavilions, when I write blogs about Horizons, World of Motion, Imagination, anything like that, I study his videos because there’s so much material there and it’s a lot more than just a grainy ride through. There’s research involved.

He has these little maps he puts together showing the ride vehicles go through the layout. And he also’s done recent attractions like Rise of the Resistance, for example, or even updates to Pirates of the Caribbean or Big Thunder Mountain, so much more. And that’s why it was really cool. I enjoyed talking so much with Martin to learn more about how these videos really come together and how difficult it was early on and what drives him to spend hours and hours and hours putting them together because these are not just shoot with your phone, put it up on YouTube. These take a long time.

I loved hearing from Martin just about everything that goes into these videos and then also what he really enjoys about the parks. So another thing I really liked about talking with Martin was diving into just Epcot Center, Great Movie Ride, talking about these attractions, which is something that really drove me to start the podcast in the first place, just enjoying chatting about theme parks with other fans. And that’s definitely the case here with this episode. I hope you enjoy it. Let’s do it. Here is Martin Smith.

(music)

Dan Heaton: My guest today has been hooked on the parks since his first visit to Walt Disney World in 1979 when he was seven. He chronicles both past distinct attractions and new ones at Martin’s Videos, where he does an incredible job documenting the parks and their history. It is Martin Smith. Martin, thanks so much for talking with me here on the podcast.

Martin Smith: Thanks for having me. I know it’s taken a while to get this together, what with COVID and what have you, but it’s great to be here. Thank you.

Dan Heaton: Definitely. I really enjoy what you do on your site and on YouTube and everything because I feel like it’s a great service for me, but just for a lot of people that haven’t seen some of the attractions or don’t know those level of detail, but I’d love to know a little bit too about kind of your history. What originally got you interested in Walt Disney World like when you visited as a kid?

Martin Smith: It was 1979. We were in Canada visiting an auntie. First time I’d been away. And my dad said, “While we’re here, let’s go down to see this new Disney World for a few days.” So we got on an Eastern Whisper jet and flew down to Orlando from Toronto. Two memories I’ve got of that trip. One is the entrance to If You Had Wings. And the other memory, believe it or not, was the construction wall for Big Thunder Mountain, which was still being built back then.

So that was ‘79. 1981, we went back again. I was nine years old. For a nine-year-old, it was great. Went back in 1987 to the first time I went to Epcot Center. Prior to that trip, I’d been following Epcot Center’s construction, its design, its layout because I was into the future, I was into space, anything technology wise. And back in the early to mid ’80s, there was no Internet, so you just had to rely on newspaper cuttings, magazine articles.

So by the time we got to Epcot in 1987, I felt like I knew the place inside out already. That trip, 1987, was the first one where I started to take note of attraction design, attraction layout, ride systems, lighting, audio, basically how the parks work. And it kind of went from there. That became a bit of a hobby, of an interest. Went back in 1990 with one of those massive on the shoulder video cameras that took full size VHS tapes that we had to carry around the park all day.

And I shot a lot of footage that trip. Me and my dad shot footage. I covered all the legacy Epcot Center attractions a couple of times because I was in my element back then. Little did I know back then that in the future, again, I was interested in the future, you’d be able to have a thing called a PC at home, which would enable all that footage to be edited and put together.

I got my first PC in 1999, got online for the first time, found there was a lot of people interested in the history of the parks like I was. Got my second faster PC in 2003 and found a little free program on there called Windows Movie Maker. And I thought, I wonder if I could take those old tapes that I’ve got, put them in the computer, cut out the boring bits, put some music over the top and make a little edit.

That’s how it started. I was playing around just as a hobby with my footage and relatives’ footage and thought, well, maybe some other people want to see this. You never know. So again, this is all way before YouTube. This was pre-YouTube. We went on a torrents site, Disney Central Torrents, it was back then, and started to distribute my videos as torrents. Then YouTube came out and Vimeo and it just made sense to try and put the same edits on there.

And of course, technology’s got better, quality’s gotten better. I’ve gotten better, I hope. So I found new software to make the editing more professional. I had more footage. There was more windows to try and put my stuff out there. But one thing that I’ve always said to myself is, it’s my hobby. If anyone else is interested in it, then that’s great, but I don’t do it for fame, for recognition, anything like that. I do it for myself. If anyone else just so happens to enjoy seeing what I’ve come up with, then great.

Dan Heaton: It’s interesting that you shot so much on the early trip with ..my dad had one of those giant cameras. We went in the ‘80s and ‘90s. And I see the footage now and I’m like, how did he even walk around with that on his shoulder and everything? It’s crazy. It was a beast of a machine.

Martin Smith: I mean, the batteries themselves were bigger and weighed more than my current 4K camera. We had three of these batteries that we carried around as well as the camera.

Dan Heaton: So you mentioned Epcot and interest in the future, because I know we went around that same time. I went in like ‘84 and ‘87 and everything. So what was it that, I mean, interested you about that before you went and then when you went that obviously I can tell made you such a fan?

Martin Smith: To start with, I think it was just the design of a futuristic city that you could walk around because there was nothing like that obviously back in the mid ‘80s. The topics themselves, energy, transportation, the land didn’t really hold much interest to me. It was just the thought that someone’s building this. To me, it was a city. It wasn’t the theme park. It was a city where you could go and experience all these great attractions, much like you kind of would expect in the Magic Kingdom where you see state-of-the-art ride systems, amazing special effects, fantastic music.

But someone had decided to set what turned out to be half the park in the near future. And to be able to walk around, look at all this amazing futuristic architecture, going all these state-of-the-art attractions, that was a huge appeal back in the ‘80s. And of course, you know, the first time you go to Epcot, the first time you go in Spaceship Earth and you actually go up into the sphere, the first time you go on Energy and the theater starts to rotate and then splits up, it’s like, wow, there’s nothing like this in the world. It was just so cutting edge, so futuristic. It just grabbed my attention instantly.

Dan Heaton: Yeah. I remember going in Spaceship Earth the first time and even the first scene, I was only eight when I went in…the cavemen. I was like, “What is this? ” It was the little creepy… You have no idea because you’ve never…very few rides have been like that. I mean, maybe Pirates or something, but it’s totally different. And then Energy, yeah, the theater starts moving and what?

Martin Smith: Everybody’s going, “Ooh.” Because back then there was no Internet. There was no ride reviews you didn’t know unless you had word of mouth or you’d read a magazine article, you didn’t know what was going to happen. And even then, it was such a surprise to actually experience it yourself. It was like, wow, this is really the future today.

Dan Heaton: So you mentioned that your dad and you had shot all this video. I mean, now looking back at it, you mentioned it was really useful, I’m sure, but how effective was it? Because I look back to footage that we have from our trips and my dad would shoot a little bit of this, a little bit of Horizons, a little bit of Energy. And I’m like, “Why didn’t you just hold the camera in one place?” I mean, was it just that your dad and you were really good at shooting video at the time? How was that still so useful?

Martin Smith: Basically, yes. My dad worked in broadcast television. He was a sound engineer for broadcast TV. So he pretty much knew how to shoot films properly. He passed that onto me. It’s like knowledge, if you like. And I learned a lot about, for example, Horizons, World of Motion, possibly Living with the Land. I rode it twice. Once I just kept the camera running all the way on a wide shot. The second time is when I went on and got my closeup shots of various cutaways, different shots of details, knowing that in the future, if it could be edited together, that’s how the professionals did it on television.

So that’s how I should do it. Even little things like making sure you get a nice wide shot of the building, make sure you get a tight shot of the sign, make sure that you’re not wobbling, make sure that you can read it. Just little things like that. I learned a lot from my dad about how to record things properly, I guess, in a way.

Dan Heaton: Well, yeah. I mean, that had to make a difference because I noticed that even with some of the videos, it’s really easy, I mean now especially, but even it’s really easy to go in and just hold up your phone or your small camera and shoot something from a POV. But to actually get, like with something like World of Motion where there’s so much happening, if you just did that, you’d miss like 70% of the attraction. But to get the closeups and everything else, that’s got to be so valuable, especially for attractions that are gone now.

Martin Smith: Absolutely. I mean, I’m lucky now that we have YouTube, so there is a lot of footage available and I kindly use footage that other people have shot if there’s something interesting like my Horizons video. Somebody sent me footage and said, “Listen, if you’re ever going to re-edit Horizons, I’ve got all these shots where I just went on the ride a few times and shot details of animatronic faces, TV screens, computer screens, seaweed, anything like that. “ And he sent me this footage and there’s so many different shots of things that the normal guests probably wouldn’t think of even trying to record, but it was so invaluable in being able to catalog the entire attraction.

Dan Heaton: Yeah. I mean, I can imagine with any of those, just now people are so… I mean, a lot of people would share footage to make some of your ultimate tributes you did recently, well, a few years ago to have so much because those are really impressive. You mentioned editing too, because I know that I’m sure early on it was very challenging. There was no Adobe Premiere Pro or Movie Maker, whatever the right one is now that people use. So how difficult was it when you made those first few clips to actually edit it together and make it work that made sense, I guess?

Martin Smith: Before I got a PC, I actually just gave up on it because you have two VHS machines plugged into each other. You press record on one machine, play on the other, playing the little clip that you wanted, press pause on the recorder, change the tape on the player, find the next clip you wanted, press record on the recorder, press play on the player to assemble the next clip along, press pause on the recorder, get to the next clip you wanted and so on and so forth. And it just took forever.

So I thought, I think I might have done maybe a minute’s worth of editing tape to tape and I thought, “I’m going to forget this. This isn’t working.” Then lo and behold, MovieMaker came along and even though it was basic, the quality wasn’t very good, it was free, but it just showed me that if you like, hey, non-linear editing is now available to the consumer and it’s possible with a little box under the table in the spare bedroom and that’s how movie maker made me think, well, maybe I can make these edits again. And that’s probably the first five years that I’ve been editing, I was editing. So from 2004 to 2009, that all my edits were done on Windows MovieMaker.

Dan Heaton: As it went along though, I know more recently when you’re talking HD and 4K and everything else, what were some big technological developments, whether it’s through the camera or through the editing that have really made a difference for you and made things easier and more sophisticated?

Martin Smith: Probably two things. The first thing that springs to mind is when I stopped using tape and started using a memory card because suddenly these little memory cards can hold an hour’s worth of footage instead of having a box full of tapes, carrying spare tapes around with you all day, having to label each tape up and write on what’s on each tape or give it a number and a date. Whereas now it’s just a memory card that comes straight out the camera, straight in the computer, and it’s just so quick and so easy.

And the second thing probably that’s made it easier in the last few years when I went to 4K is now I’ve got the flexibility if I’m editing a full HD video, shoot it in 4K and to a certain degree you can zoom in on the screen without losing quality for full HD resolution. So you can shoot a wide shot, but you’ve also got some tighter shots as well at the same time. So you’re getting two for the price of one every time that you record.

Dan Heaton: Yeah, that has to make a big difference and just allows you to do things you couldn’t do before. And makes it really cool because instead of, like you said, just here’s some info, POV done, you’re able to kind of almost…it feels to me almost like I’m seeing the attractions I experienced in a way that I never saw them when you could do things like that.

Martin Smith: Quite possibly. Yeah. I mean, I shot Phantom Manor in Disneyland Paris in 2019 and I’m pretty sure we rode it six or eight times, but when you watch the edit, I’ve managed to go closer on so many shots that you’d think I must have ridden it a dozen times, maybe 15, 18 times, because you’ve got wide shots, you’ve got closeups. But all I did on Phantom Manor was just go through without zooming in on anything, knowing that afterwards in post, I’d be able to zoom in on certain shots. So long as what I want is in frame, I can zoom in time to on it afterwards.

Dan Heaton: That’s really interesting. Yeah, because the implication always is that, oh, I guess you went in on this one and just shot the particular effects or anything or just shot ghost in this scene where it’s like you’ve, for example, just like the big Wild West scene at the end where there’s all the different ghosts, you could have a bunch in the frame and go to each one, I guess, in a way.

Martin Smith: Yes. Just like that is great. You can zoom in a hundred percent on the 4K shot and still maintain full HD resolution. So long as the original shot is good quality and sharp and well lit, you can zoom in on that and in effect, you can zoom into any quarter of the frame and still maintain resolution.

Dan Heaton: Is there any challenge with having so many tools that…there’s so many different things you can do, it almost is like it’s so many options. Is there an options paralysis when you’re doing it?

Martin Smith: I think the thing to remember is don’t get carried away because you still got to get it right in the first place. You’ve got to make sure that you get all the shots you need, make sure that all the shots are good quality, short, steady. If you go and ride multiple times, Murphy’s Law says if you ride Pirates four times, each time you go through the auction scene, the redhead will be saying exactly the same piece of dialogue. So then you need to go ride a fifth time to hope that she’s saying another piece of dialogue. So then in the edit, you can try and piece the entire scene together.

Dan Heaton: That’s a good point. Yeah, I didn’t think about that because when you have the ones where you don’t stop and see the same scene where it’s actually kind of like the cocktail party thing, you could miss certain parts over, over. It’s like, “Just say that line. I need it. “

Martin Smith: Yeah. One thing I strive to do is to ride enough times to try and get full loops of each scene for no matter what attraction that I’m recording. Like Rise of the Resistance when I did that edit, I made sure that we had both lifts in effect. So you got both sides of the dialogue. As you go up the lift, you see different things. So I made sure that we’ve got coverage of all the effects on both sides.

Instead of just going through the ride once with one camera, you’re going to miss half the ride basically because where the vehicles split up, each vehicle sees, and here’s something slightly different. So you’ve got to try and hope that the ride vehicle you get on is going to go the opposite direction this time.

Dan Heaton: Oh, that’s a challenge I hadn’t even considered when I think about the videos is that the variability. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to do all the different Star Tours options. That seems like a lot to do.

Martin Smith: I wouldn’t even try. One thing about Star Tours as well, because it’s in 3D, you need to try and get rid of the double image. The only way to do that is you use a special lens or use some of the glasses on board, on the ride. But you try and do that, the cast member will politely tell you no videotaping. So I don’t break the rules. If someone tells me to stop, I’ll stop.

Dan Heaton: Oh, I’m sure. Yeah, that makes sense. And that’s an extra challenge for that one. Well, one thing I’ve noticed too, especially with some of your videos like your tribute videos and older videos, is that you have a lot of, it’s not just the footage. You also do a lot of info.

And I feel like you do more of that than even you used to in the beginning where you’re showing blueprints and or not, I don’t know if they’re official blueprints, but like your creation of the ride path and then other background, which I find really interesting, especially with some of the old Epcot where I’ll be like, “I never knew that.” So how do you go about doing that research? Because there’s a lot, as the Internet is, there is a lot of incorrect information. So how do you go about making sure it’s right?

Martin Smith: Being the geek that I am over the years, I’ve obviously collected all the books that everyone’s got or all the TV shows everyone’s got. And I’ve been lucky through my little hobby that I’m doing to meet people and then I get introduced to their friends, I get introduced to their friends and a lot of these people are very knowledgeable.

They are very interested in helping me out. So I get a lot of help from people that I know in that respect about details, facts and figures, what have you, so I can piece it all together and then I’ll try. I always try and verify. And any fact or figure that I put down, I try and verify it as well because I just want to…I don’t go to Wikipedia and think, “Oh, I’m going to use that number because that number’s correct.” You’d be surprised how many times you look at Wikipedia because it’s the first result that comes up and it’s wrong.

And then I have to go dig in through files, through books, through my archive. I have to send emails out hoping that somebody can get me the right facts. And sure enough, somebody somewhere can give me the correct numbers and they go in, but I always try and make sure things are right. I probably don’t get it right all the time, but I’d like to think I get it right most of the time.

Dan Heaton: I haven’t noticed anything, but you’re right about Wikipedia, which can be valuable in terms of background, but it’s almost one of those, okay, there’s the info. Now I need to make sure with another place, whether like you said, like it’s an old book or Epcot Center has some great books for when it opened that I’m sure you have, or seen. There’s just a lot of good stuff.

Martin Smith: But also some of Disney’s information can be incorrect. I mean, they’ll put out a press release with X date on it or X figure. Years later, you actually find something a bit more detailed and you find that the original press release was incorrect. So even then, official information isn’t always right because you can…I’ve been looking to be able to verify certain things with people who were there at that time, who worked on that attraction at that time. And they’ll tell me, “Oh yeah, that information’s correct, but that information’s wrong and it’s from the same company.”

Dan Heaton: Well, yeah, even sometimes now there’ll be something on the Disney Parks Blog looking back and I’m like, “I don’t think that’s accurate.” It’s just because they’re taking it from some source that’s… I mean, it’s like a whisper down the lane thing. It’s hard to go back to the original and find it.

Martin Smith: Very much so. Yeah. So I try and get it right when I can. Hopefully I get it right a lot more than I get it wrong, but no one’s perfect and I don’t work for the company as such. So it’s not as if I can just go to the library and pull out the information that I need.

Dan Heaton: Oh, totally. Yeah. It’s something that I’m sure you’re doing so much diligence. Well, you mentioned obviously early on that this is a hobby and this is something that I know you spend a lot of time and effort on. But like now, I mean, looking back, I mean, what still kind of inspires you to spend so much time doing this and putting out these videos?

Martin Smith:I think it must be the love, the passion for the parks. Certainly, from my opinion, it’s more the history of the parks and the future of the parks, but it’s still something that interests me. Everyone’s got a hobby. This happens to be my hobby and I feel like I’m in a position where if I can put something out there that other people are interested in, then great. I also, like you know, I try and do some current things as well. It’s not just always the history of the parks. I do current shows, current attractions. I’m currently working on a Big Thunder Mountain and a Pirates of the Caribbean series where it’s looking at how the attractions have evolved since they first opened to present day. So that’s a lot of fun because you can see how things have changed over the years.

It can also be a bit of a headache because you’re trying to get certain changes nailed down date wise and fact wise and you’re trying to figure out when the Pooped Pirate actually became the stuffed pirate in Pirates of the Caribbean. And then you find out it was different on the West Coast to the East Coast and then you find out Paris was different again. So it can be a bit of a pain trying to get it all right. But I think I still got a passion for it. It still interests me. It’s still my hobby and I guess I’ll carry on doing it until I’m not interested in it anymore.

Dan Heaton: Well, yeah. And I can definitely connect with the idea of putting something out there and doing something for a passion that’s not a job even just doing this podcast. And I know that, but it’s still, I think it’s cool, especially if you have a passion for it to keep doing it. Just to mention, you mentioned those Big Thunder. Those have been your last few that have come out that I’ve really enjoyed. Even though I’ve ridden those attractions, especially, I mean, I’ve ridden the Paris one once, but then the Disneyland and Disney World a bunch of times and still seeing them presented that way, because Big Thunder, like a lot of attractions, you go flying past some detail and I’m like, “I’ve ridden that 10 times and I never see that little thing.” So I’ve enjoyed that a lot too.

Martin Smith: Quite often. I mean, the fundamentals were fun because I’ve been editing and I’ve seen things while I’m editing that I didn’t know were there when I was actually there. And it’s like, “Oh man, hey, that’s really interesting, right? I’ll have to get a little shot of that. ” And there’s one in Paris, there’s a sign just before you go into the spiral boot saying words to the effect of the bridge has been washed away.

I never saw the sign while I was riding, probably because I had a camera stuck to my face all the time, but watching back the footage, I’ve got the sign perfectly in shot and that just tells a great little extra part of the story that there’s a bit of danger ahead because the bridge has been washed away. So it’s great because I can use that detail in the edit, even though I never saw it myself when I was there.

Dan Heaton: Just speaking of newer attractions too, I mean, especially pre-COVID, I’m talking more of like the 2018, 2019, whatever. How do you go about…it’s different now than obviously just looking back to early footage and finding that; how do you go about documenting that, especially since I know that you’re not traveling all the time to Disney World and Disneyland. How different is it now to go and get footage of like Rise of the Resistance and Frozen Ever After and some recent things?

Martin Smith: Right now, I don’t think I would’ve even thought about Rise of the Resistance because of the screens, etc., etc., on the attraction. Some of my Paris edits is a mix of 2019 and 2020 footage. We went with family in 2019 and I shot Thunder Mountain. No, just Thunder Mountain, sorry. Went in 2020, we were lucky to get there last September. In Europe, it was between the COVID spikes. So traveling had reopened, you could fly with restrictions with masks.

Paris was very much like Orlando was, where you had to wear masks, social distancing was everywhere. So I shot Big Thunder Mountain again in September of last year. Now when you watch the edit, it jumps from masks to no masks to masks to no masks going through the queue, you’ll see the markers on the floor, then the markers disappear, then the markers are back on the floor.

So you can see how things changed during COVID in the theme parks. And it’s funny because it’s almost like a reminder of the time that we’ve been through and how things were during COVID and hopefully how things will get back to more of a normality if and when things get better. So right now, I’ve been lucky that I haven’t had to rely on much pandemic footage from the theme parks. A lot of what I’ve been working on was shot before COVID.

I was gifted, get this, I was gifted hours and hours of 4K footage of Pirates of the Caribbean in Orlando that was shot before the auction scenes changed. That’s one of the things I’ve been working on for the Pirates edit. So that’s taken me a few months of working on that. And of course, the Disneyland footage I shot pre-COVID. The Paris footage is a mix of pre and during COVID. So COVID hasn’t really affected the edits in any way apart from, say I needed to get an extra shot now of the Pirates queue in Orlando, all of a sudden it would have all the perspective walls up in the queue, which wouldn’t look very pretty. So I’m lucky that we’ve already gotten footage of the queue that we need that was shot pre-COVID.

Dan Heaton: I didn’t even think about with Big Thunder, like all that example, because yeah, it has kind of gone, especially in Paris, gone back and forth a few times, but that’s just extra…ehen that video is watched, I’m going to look at it and be like, “Huh, now I’m going to be looking out for the differences back and forth.” I’m going to be distracted from everything else and be like, “Wait, there’s the markers. There’s not.” But yeah, it just shows that’s how it’s just such a different scenario.

But flipping back a bit, I really enjoyed, I mentioned earlier, the Epcot Center Ultimate Tributes that you put out, I think two, three years ago and just having an hour plus about each attraction and so much info. So what made you kind of, because I know you had shot a lot of those attractions previously in terms of doing videos. What made you go back and get so extensive again with all these different pavilions for those videos?

Martin Smith: I thought I could improve the quality for a start from the last time that I’d done it. There was more footage available, more material was available. And I thought, well, why not? I’ll try one. And then I thought, I’ll do another. This is turning into a series, so maybe I’ll just try and do one of each of the original pavilions.

And then for example, I got to Imagination and I thought, well, I can now edit Your Imagination and the Imagination with Figment to a higher standard than what I did previously as well. So maybe I’ll do those as new edits as well. And then before I knew it, I’d gone around all the Future World and every pavilion had had the new treatment apart from maybe Seas with Nemo and Mission: Space. I thought, well, yeah, why not? And then of course things like Energy came up where Energy’s going to close.

So I need to get Ellen’s Energy Adventure shot properly, which we did. I’m fortunate in what I do that I’ve got some great friends in Orlando who do shoot a lot of stuff for me because obviously I live in England, I’m a tourist. I get there once a year unless COVID stops me like I did last year. So I’m lucky that I have people in Orlando who will go shoot stuff for me who are as interested in doing what I do as I am. And they’ll go as locals and spend a few hours if need be shooting stuff for me and then through the wonders of the Web, they’ll send it back to me and I can edit it.

Dan Heaton: Yeah, that’s a big benefit just of the Internet, but also just with so many people having like really good cameras and being very good at what they do. It’s a different option.

Martin Smith: I’m so lucky. I’ve probably got maybe half a dozen people I can call upon at any time who know what they’re doing, who can go to the parks for me. And either if they’re into it, they can shoot an attraction for me. And if you like, I can direct from the UK and then my cameraman in Orlando and I can direct what shots I need. Or if I’ve shot something myself, I get back home and I find that, oh, I’ve missed a shot. Someone over there can go get it for me and send it me.

So nothing’s missing. When I did the Great Movie Ride Ultimate Tribute, which I’m really glad I did when we did it before it closed, the main day that we shot the attraction, I think there was five or six of us. We had five or six cameras for one ride to make sure we covered all the angles of the attraction because obviously with the live cast members interacting with guests, I needed to make sure it was the same tour guide in shot all the time.

So we had five cameras running on Movie Ride going through and we got the gangster ride stop, we did the ride, we finished it, it came out great. Then I rode again a couple of times to get close up details of things that weren’t reliant on whichever cast member we happened to get. But of course, because when it was quieter in the fall, they weren’t running the cowboy ride stop, so we didn’t see the bank robbery.

So come December when the parks got busier and they were running both sets of ride vehicles again. I was lucky I managed to get four friends together on the same day to all meet in the park and they did the same thing. They went and rode Movie Ride and they rode in the front vehicle specifically so I could get plenty of coverage of the bank robbery and the big explosion, making sure that it was the same cast members in each shot.

And that is a great example I think of where I’ve called on people and said, “Hey, can you help me out? I can’t get back there, but do you think you could go shoot this for me? ” And it worked great. I had four or five angles of the bank robbery scene to put into my edit to make sure that I’d covered every detail.

Dan Heaton: Wow, that’s impressive. I didn’t even think about the live actor thing too. That’s another layer of where you can’t just be constantly going from different videos. And the bank robbery, I mean, I don’t think the last however many years Great Movie Ride was open. We would go during weird times. I don’t think I got the bank robbery; I was always the gangster every time because I’m not even sure they were even running it because it was so quiet, especially in the mid 2000s. I mean, they just wouldn’t run it in January and stuff.

Martin Smith: No, they’d only run it at peak times. Again, it obviously costs money because of all the gas they use, etc., etc. So it made sense just to run the back vehicle, to stop in the gangster ride stop, unless demand warranted that you needed to run two vehicles all the time. I mean, it was impressive because I remember the first time I went on Movie Ride when the queue was out the door.

Dan Heaton: Me too.

Martin Smith: And just watching the amount of ride vehicles pulling in, pulling out, pulling in, pulling out. And when I did my research and found out how many vehicles could have run at any one time, I did the little animation of the ride vehicles moving through the building at different speeds, which again, I was lucky at because I could pull some information that I’ve got regarding how the vehicles ran.

I also knew a couple of ex- cast members who worked on Movie Ride and they could fill in some technicalities, they could explain. Yeah, normally would get to that corner, would have to slow down a bit to let the vehicle clear in front, and they would talk me through how to use to run it with all the vehicles in the building. And that was invaluable to make sure that I got my animation correct, showing how the ride could handle so many vehicles at once.

Dan Heaton: Once. Yeah. And that’s something too where until early on I would ride it and I wouldn’t think like, “Oh, they’ve got it split up where part of you have one cast member with part of you in the back of half have this. “ Then how does that spread out? And then everyone goes through and it’s complicated. Like you said, I remember waiting when we went in ‘89 and I remember waiting through the entire queue of the props because there wasn’t much to do and the whole thing, but I mean, because the ride was so long, it’s not a case where you wait two hours and the ride’s two minutes.

I mean, I never felt like it was like a waste because it’s like your ratio is pretty high in terms of how long. Same with like some of the Epcot pavilions like World of Motion and others where early on had big lines, but you’re like, “well, the ride’s pretty long though, or Energy or whatever.”

Martin Smith: They were phenomenal. Those attractions, the amount of people per hour that they could handle and the amount of time the ride lasted for, you came out of it thinking that was worth waiting for. But to a certain degree, I think back then it was simpler times instead of today where it’s go, go, go from attraction to attraction to attraction. Back then you could slow down a bit more. The parks weren’t as crowded.

People could maybe handle longer attractions to give you more time to think about things, not knocking anything today because obviously I love Revenge of the Mummy like anyone else, but back then you could also ride Horizons or Motion, Imagination, Energy, Spaceship Earth, and you could take it in a bit more and you realize that when you came to unload, wow, I’ve been on that ride 15 minutes, but I didn’t think about the time because I enjoyed it so much.

Dan Heaton: And I agree. I mean, I love Flight of Passage and it’s four minutes or Soarin’ or whatever. So there’s plenty of short things that are good now, but that is something that, I mean, in general too, I look back at the videos of yours that I find that I end up watching a lot of the, well, I mean Great Movie Ride or some of the early MGM, but also all those Epcot tributes from Future World because I think part of it might be the fact we’re there longer and then they have all the post show like in World of Motion where it’s like, I think that’s another half hour.

And I don’t know, I think it was just like you said, it was a different era of the company because I was curious just for you, my expectation would likely be that a lot of people who watch your videos are very interested also in kind of those similar Horizons, Imagination, some of those just from that time.

Martin Smith: Yeah, it was a different time. I go back again to ‘87 to the first time we went to Epcot Center. I remember we got there, we had breakfast in Odyssey, get that. We had breakfast in Odyssey.

Dan Heaton: Nice.

Martin Smith: And first attraction I rode was Energy. And I think we did Energy, Spaceship Earth, Horizons, World of Motion, TransCenter – the World of Motion Post Show. And then we realized it was time for lunch and that was the whole morning had gone just on one side of Future World. So then you have some lunch, you go do Imagination, Image Works. I think Captain EO may have just opened when we were there, ‘87. Yeah, Captain EO was showing. The Land, the Living Seas, you’d have some dinner, you’d have a quick looking CommuniCore, then it was time for Laserphonic Fantasy.

And that was the end of the day. We came back the following day. We did CommuniCore late morning now, and then we thought, “Well, we’ve only done half the park and it’s taken a day and a half.” And then we had to go and do World Showcase, which incidentally, I had no interest in World Showcase whatsoever. I wanted to stay in the future. I didn’t want to go around boring countries. We went in Mexico, I turned the corner, you go in the pyramid, you turn the corner, you walk out into the courtyard and it’s nighttime in the middle of the day with a volcano in the distance and boats floating past and I was in awe.

I think that’s when it really hit me what Disney could do when I saw that vista in front of me and suddenly these boring pavilions, I couldn’t wait to move on to the next one and see what the next one had. I loved the CircleVision films. American Adventure was a work of art. There was no Norway back then, obviously. And suddenly I thought this park as a whole is just nothing like it on earth. It’s just so state of the art, so futuristic, so well done. That just cemented my interest in park design, how the rides are run, how they’re designed, how they’re laid out, all the technology behind the attractions. And I guess it stuck with me ever since.

Dan Heaton: Well, yeah. I mean, I think about, I was a kid too, and some of the things, my favorite things now, like Impressions de France, American Adventure, Living with the Land. As a kid, I was just like, “Ugh, do we really need to do that? ” But yeah, like American Adventure is a good example. You go in thinking we’re going to sit there and there’s just going to be this show and then it’s like, whoa, this is not what I was expecting. I think that’s a lot of Epcot at the time and World Showcase, but I’m glad some of the shows are still there. And again, I’m not trying to just look back. I think I’m just glad I got to…both of us got to experience that during that time because it was a really cool time to be there.

Martin Smith: Absolutely. Time moves on. I’ve said on fan forums time and time again, if Epcot Center was still the same today as it was in 1982, it will be an absolute disaster. It would be so corny, so out of date. Things have got to change with the times, but they’ve also got to change well. Personally, I’ve not yet seen the new CircleVision film in Canada, Canada: Far and Wide, because of COVID, we’ve not been able to get to Orlando since it opened.

So I’m really looking forward to this new CircleVision movie. As much as I like the original O’ Canada, and I thought the update was a good update, but I’m really looking forward to this new CircleVision movie because it’s a new movie. It’s an updated version of a classic and you have to sympathetically update to move forward, otherwise things will be a museum.

Dan Heaton: Oh yeah. I was really excited that they did do that update and that they still may do an update for China at some point, if that works out.

Martin Smith: China’s meant to be on the way. I believe COVID may have delayed it for all the problems of obviously traveling, but China was actually in the cards before Canada. They were designing the new CircleVision rig specifically for China and then lo and behold, Canada’s got a new movie. So hopefully China’s still on the way. Who knows, especially France may get some updated scenes as well and want to decide what they’re doing with that theater because like you know at the moment it’s staggered between that and Beauty and the Beast.

Maybe if they do update Impressions to France, then it will get more show times. I know that they’ve been talking about it, whether it will happen or not because COVID’s affected a lot of the future direction of the theme parks, either in budgets, in time, in scheduling, timeframe, what was going to happen this year may not happen for five years, etc.

Dan Heaton: Yeah, I’m sure because really, I mean, they’re going to finish things that are close like Ratatouille or Tron or whatever. But I can imagine that even for updates, they’re kind of going, “Okay, we’re going to let people come to the parks for a few years and get some money and make sure that COVID is really mostly gone before we do more.” But regardless, I think it’s really cool that they’re going…because you get to a point where I didn’t know if they were going to make another Canada film or China film or even…I hope that they would update Impressions de France and make that more prominent. It’s cool that that’s even possibly in the cards because they could decide not to do that. So I think that’s at least a promising sign.

Martin Smith: Absolutely. I mean, Canada, we’ve got a theater there. They could have closed the theater and turn it to a restaurant and just use the streams as some kind of skylight vista while you’re having dinner. So the fact that they’ve decided, no, we’re going to put a new film in there instead, does show that there’s still some people left in the company that get it, that have the passion to do things properly.

I think that’s really important to moving forward that we don’t forget how things should be done by the Walt Disney Company, as opposed to maybe taking the cheap line or the quick line. It shows that they can still do things right by doing that. And also by updating the American Adventure. That’s nowhere near as popular as it used to be in the ’80s, but the updates American Adventure has had have been fantastic. And it’s just, again, it’s the little things that count just to keep things fresh, to keep things current, even though it’s the same format that’s been there for nearly 40 years now. It’s still state-of-the-art.

Dan Heaton: Spaceship Earth is a great example where I know they were going to do something and there’s still a question of what that was going to be, but if done well, I mean, that’s been the same for 14 years and I know it might be a while, but if done well, there are areas of that attraction that could be improved in certain parts and hopefully would be to that level.

Martin Smith: Yeah. It could be made fantastic again. We don’t have to change everything. A lot of the animatronic dialogue, believe it or not, is still 1982 dialogue in Spaceship Earth. If you listen carefully in the cave sequence, the Egyptian sequence, Phoenician merchant sequence, the Rome sequence, the dialogue is still the 1982 script, but still playing today. So you don’t have to change everything. Just change what needs to be changing to keep things fresh, keep things up to date, keep things not looking or sounding dated without having to change the whole thing.

And things happen sometimes for a reason in theme parks, like say they built Equatorial Africa, say that got built in 1983, I think it was planned. That came within two weeks of them starting construction, and then Africa had its issues with government over there. So suddenly the project went quiet, then it fell flat. If Equatorial Africa had been built and if it was there today, the shows inside will be so dated now that they may not know what to do with it apart from bulldoze it.

Dan Heaton: That’s a good point because I’m fascinated by that. I mean, there’s a section in the book, the Epcot book that came out, Creating the New World of Tomorrow, about that, and it describes the 360 movie and all that things. And I think that would be amazing, but you’re right, because even you think about, I mean, 1980s to now, they’re already making changes to things like Jungle Cruise and Pirates and everything, some much new changes, but it’s like Epcot would be a completely different. It would be, I think, even possibly more challenging to find the right tone for it. I mean, I guess you could take similar to how they’ve done at Animal Kingdom, but you don’t have the Safari, it would be a different setup.

Martin Smith: Yes. They’ve got to find that right balance. And in today’s more politically correct world, you’ve got to find that right balance even harder if it doesn’t offend people or doesn’t portray people in a negative way that maybe had they done the plan that we’re planning on in the early ‘80s for Africa, maybe for Meet the World in Japan. If you look how it would seem to today’s audience, it could seem incredibly dated, it could seem biased, which would obviously mean that it would need to be updated. But there again, would there be a will to update it fully or do you just change the whole format of the attraction totally? Like something like the Maelstrom, do you give up on trying to make it more current and you just take a left turn and go with something totally different?

Dan Heaton: Yeah, I’m sad. I mean, yeah, they could have been like, “Okay, we’re just going to theme all this to the Lion King or whatever.” Just something that was pretty basic rather than really, really pushing it to the next level.

Martin Smith: Yeah. Change is happening in parks for a reason. Some are good, some aren’t so good. Changes have to happen to keep the parks relevant, to keep the parks moving forward, but it’s just walking that fine line, walking that tightrope between changing for changes sake, changing something because it needs changing, or making sure you don’t change it into something totally different that maybe isn’t as good as what used to be there.

Dan Heaton: Speaking of what is coming forward, I mean, so what you mentioned doing Pirates and Big Thunder. Are there other videos you’re currently working on for Martin’s Videos that you’re planning to do or would like to do?

Martin Smith: Pirates has taken me pretty much all this year and Big Thunder Mountain pretty much all last year. So Thunder Mountain in Paris comes out next weekend, possibly by the time this podcast is out, Paris Thunder Mountain will also be out. After that, there’s a five-part Pirates of the Caribbean series, looking at each of the five individual rides around the world, how they differ to each other, the similarities, the backstories, how they’ve been designed, etc., etc.. All the stuff that some people find really interesting.

I’m looking at maybe Holiday Illuminations coming out for Christmas time from Epcot, the original early ’90s show that they used to do over the holiday season. And then into next year, I’ve got a list of ideas that I may do at certain attractions I may revisit. I’ve got a Dinosaur from Animal Kingdom edit that I started years ago that’s still not finished.

Next time I get to Orlando, I may be able to shoot some stuff that I want to shoot to finish it and then put my heart into looking at the back story and the design. So that’s kind of like an update from an old video I did. I still got some ideas for Paris, for Anaheim, for footage that I still got that I’ve not used. So we’ll see where we go, but I’ve certainly got enough ideas for another couple of years yet.

Dan Heaton: Oh, definitely. Yeah. And I would think by the time this comes out that at least the one from next week will be out, but I’ll make sure that I mention all of what’s going on. But before we finish, do you have time for a few questions about things you enjoy at the parks?

Martin Smith: Sure. Yeah, go on.

Dan Heaton: All right. I promise I’m not going to try and stump you. These are just for fun. It’s just a fun way to get to learn a little bit more about what you like. So real simple, let’s start with this one. What is your favorite all-time Epcot attraction or pavilion?

Martin Smith: A really tough question, but it’s not. It’s going to have to be Horizons. Imagination may be a close second, the original Journey into Imagination, but Horizons, it just hit the spot. Not only did it encompass all the themes of Future World, but everything from the pacing, the design, the story line, the music, the amazing score that it had, the special effects, the visuals. I still got in my head, first time I rode Horizons, you left under sea, you went up into space, the stars started to appear in front of you.

You’d see one of the smaller space stations being constructed way up in the distance. Then the vehicles turned a corner and suddenly you were hit with that massive Century space station, the projection where that space station’s rotating in front of you and it just, it blew me away. I can still remember it now, but the music hit the crescendo as we turned the corner. You see the space station, you see the animatronics floating in front of you, but building another space station talking to each other and just something like that. It’s like, God, this pavilion, this is just like everything I’ve ever dreamed the future should be.

Dan Heaton: Yeah, I’m right with you on that. It’s still one that when I look back at it, I marvel at what they were able to accomplish and it’s something…I know it seems a little obvious, but it’s also the truth for me too, even given I love Spaceship Earth, Imagination, World of Motion, but Horizons is always right there. Well, setting aside Epcot, what is an attraction that is no longer at any of the Disney parks besides Epcot that you miss the most that you would like to ride again?

Martin Smith (00:50:55): Ouch. You could say Movie Ride. Even something back in the day was so insignificant as Dreamflight. Dreamflight to me back in the ’90s was the classic Disney attraction. It had high capacity, a simple but effective ride system, great music, great visuals, even though they were quite low tech. It told a simple story; it was air conditioned. I don’t know why, just Dreamflight I really enjoyed. It was just such a fun attraction to do. I’d love to ride that again as much as I’d like to ride movie ride Energy again.

At Epcot though, we can’t talk about Epcot. Lovely Dreamflight, believe it or not, it really hit me. That was something that where I came off it and I thought that was a really fun Disney style ride. That was Disney at their best. Even though now we know it didn’t cost a lot of money, it had no amazing special effects. It was just a collection of very well done parts and the attraction itself was greater than the sum of its parts.

Dan Heaton: Oh, I love Dreamflight. When I was a kid, we loved If You Had Wings, but right into Dreamflight, just for the same reasons in a lot of ways, both of them were pretty simple. But yeah, Dreamflight, there was a scene where it was like, you’re going to go supersonic and they just shine this light on you. And I was like, “Oh, that’s such a cool effect.” And it’s probably so cheap, but it doesn’t always take that much. It’s like some of it, if you stage things correctly and you add the right music, and like you said, it’s like you don’t wait in line long, there’s air conditioning, and it’s just everything lines up well, it can be…and I love speed rooms, so I mean, come on, it’s one of the best for that.

Martin Smith: Absolutely. Yeah. It’s kind of like all the stars aligned perfectly for that attraction. It was so simple, but it was so much fun.

Dan Heaton: Yeah, it was great. Well, looking into Paris, I went once in 2006, loved it, loved so many of the attractions there. And that was before some of the things that have come more recently, like Crush, Ratatouille or everything, but still got to do some of the classics there. So what is your favorite attraction at Disneyland Paris?

Martin Smith: That one is tough. That one is hard. To answer. It’s going to be, I’d say Thunder Mountain because I think it’s the best of all the Thunder Mountains. As you’ll see in my coming soon video, the reasons.

Dan Heaton: Yes, it’s the best.

Martin Smith: But it’s also the one that’s changed the least from other versions when you compare to other attractions in Paris. Phantom Manor is a great retake of the classic Haunted Mansion, which as you know, it’s got the most amazing score, classical score going through it. But I think I’d probably say Pirates of the Caribbean is my favorite because it’s such a lavish version of the classic Pirates ride where they…the Pirates in Paris, basically not only did they take the storyline and correct it again from what some see Orlando being out of order with.

So the story is more cohesive, but they just, like all the other main attractions in Paris, they went back to basics and they said, “Right, we’re going to build the attraction from scratch. Let’s pretend we can spend as much money as we want. What should we do? ” So they took the Anaheim version and just reworked it into something better than Anaheim’s, something more lavish. They corrected some of the mistakes, like they thought that the method of dropping down into the basement was too boring.

They also had water table issues, so they couldn’t go down, which is why in Paris, they went up first, but they made sure that when you go up the chain lift, that’s telling the story of going back in time. And then of course, you’ve got all the special effects in Paris where in 1992, everything was state of the art. The attraction reopened after virtually been rebuilt a few years ago and now it’s even more impressive than it used to be. So I probably have to say Pirates in Paris is my favorite attraction there.

Dan Heaton: That’s a great pick. Yeah. I was wondering if it would be Pirates or Phantom Manor because both of those, the fact that they just, I mean, I wouldn’t say threw money at it, but that they tried so many things, like you mentioned. And I mean, I remember, we were only there a day and I was only able to ride Pirates once. And I just remember coming out of it. Even when you go up that first long lift till, I was like, “What is this going to be? When are we going to do this big drop?” Because like you said, it’s a water table thing, but that’s kind of the feeling of the whole attraction. It’s like it is Pirates. It’s not as divergent maybe as Phantom Manor, but it’s just everything.

Martin Smith: It’s familiar, but different. Everything’s familiar, but everything’s wrong because of where it is, how it’s staged, how it’s bigger than what you’re used to it being like. You float through the jail scene near the beginning of the ride and the jailed animatronics at either side of the ride path, they’re not just on one side and you go past them, they take your attention away from the fact you’re about to go down the first drop. Now, if you’re used to the Orlando version or the Anaheim version, you know that you go past the jail cell and you’re virtually at the end of the attraction on the same floor. In Paris, you go past a jail cell and you go down the first drop and you think, “Whoa, where does this come from?”

Dan Heaton: It’s all different, but all right. Well, one more question here, which Dreamflight really could answer this, but I will…so what’s like an underrated current or past? It can be one that’s currently still there. Underrated Disney attraction anywhere that you think deserves more attention than it gets.

Martin Smith (00:56:23): Dreamflight probably back in the day was like that. Nowadays, I’m probably tempted to say the American Adventure, because you go into that theater and the amount of people it can hold compared to the amount of people it gets, the technology and the story and the attention to detail, it’s Imagineering at their best, that attraction. But if people go past it because they’re not interested or they’re in a rush or they’ve got a fast pass somewhere, FastPass rest in peace, if they need to go somewhere and they haven’t got time for an attraction.

I know people that have gone past the American Adventure and didn’t know there was an attraction inside and that to me screams, what a shame. If only they’d have known that it could have gone in. Even if you sit down and it’s pleasant, it’s a nice place to sit and cool down. The show itself is phenomenal and it’s still phenomenal. The more you look at how they built it and how it operates, the more you realize just what went into it. For me, probably the American Adventure is still the most underrated attraction today.

Dan Heaton: That’s a great answer. I had visited fairly recently more with young kids. So I was there late 2019. I was there and it was just me. And so it was like 9:00 p.m. They were open late that night. And so I went to the American Adventure and hadn’t been in there for a little while and was just like, almost like I saw the attraction again for the first time. They’ve done some updates and I was like blown away. There was nobody in there too because it was late at night, but I was blown away by it and was just like …and it still amazes me that they could build…I know they’ve made updates, but that they could do mostly what is in there now in 1982, even before that with the technology, incredible that they could do that.

Martin Smith: It was a stunning attraction back in the day and it still is today. It still holds its own today.

Dan Heaton: I can’t wait now to show my girls that because they’re old enough where I think they would get more out of it and just because it’s one of those, just like you said, it’s like a headliner attraction at the beginning that now, especially given its place in the park as far back as it is, you could easily miss and never get to. So it’s great. Yeah. All right. Well, Martin, this has been awesome. I would hope listeners are aware of your videos, but if they’re not, where should they go to find them? And also if they want to connect with you, if they have footage or anything, what should they do?

Martin Smith: Okay. I’m on YouTube. It’s a YouTube channel called martinsvids.net, all one word, or you can actually find me on Vimeo. I’ve got a website which is martinsvids, V-I-D-S.net. That’s a website address. It’s martinsvids.net, and that will link you from there to all my videos from Vimeo as well. And at the end of each video, I’ve got a credit sequence and right at the end, a couple of e-mail addresses where people can get in touch if they want to.

Dan Heaton: Well, awesome. This has been great. I’ve loved the videos for years. And after doing this, I just want to go back and watch some more, I think, right now.

Martin Smith: Yeah, give me some more clicks.

Dan Heaton: All right. Well, thanks a lot.

Martin Smith: No, I never do it for that. I never do it for the clicks. Like I said, I do it for the love, for the passion. And if other people just happen to enjoy watching what I make, then great. If someone can smile from it, that’s what it’s about.

Dan Heaton: Totally. Thanks so much. And you can definitely sense that in the videos that it’s a passion thing.

Martin Smith: Thank you very much. You take care.