From Swimming as ‘Gator Bait’ for Richard Gere to Remote NYSE Broadcasts: Producer Shaun Trout on the Wild Realities of a 25-Year Filmmaking Career

I had the pleasure of talking with Shaun Trout.

Long before Trout was producing live broadcasts, filming professional sports, or building documentaries for streaming platforms, he was a teenager alone in a basement with a double-VHS copy of Braveheart. He had tried to convince his family to watch the three-hour movie with him. No one joined. By the ending, it hardly mattered.

“I was standing up going, ‘Yeah, freedom! Yeah, Mel Gibson!’” he recalls. Then came the more consequential realization. “Wow, somebody made this. Somebody created this art and created this experience for me.”

The distinction stayed with him. Trout was not simply moved by a movie. He became fascinated by the machinery behind the emotion, by the people who could make an audience feel something through pictures, sound, performance, and editing. He wanted to know how it was done.

Nearly three decades later, that curiosity has carried him through an entertainment business that bears little resemblance to the one he entered. Trout, a producer, cinematographer, and co-founder of Concrete Lion Pictures, has worked across commercials, documentaries, live television, sports, corporate media, and independent productions. Yet the more revealing thread in his career may be less about any particular credit than about his willingness to keep adapting. For Trout, filmmaking has always carried a contradiction: the technology can change almost overnight, but surviving the business still requires the old-fashioned ability to keep showing up.

His earliest jobs offered little glamour. Before Full Sail University, he found work through a community college career-development office filming county commissioner meetings. He shot dance recitals. He made short films that, by his own assessment, were “terrible at first.” One of those early projects involved John, who would eventually become his business partner at Concrete Lion Pictures.

There was no clean ascent from aspiring filmmaker to established producer. “You have one job and think, ‘All right, I can pay my rent this month!’” Trout says. “Then the next month you’re thinking, ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do. Do I need to take another job? Bagging at Publix looks pretty good.’”

That uncertainty never entirely disappears. It simply changes scale.

Trout describes filmmaking as “a lifestyle choice rather than a traditional career choice.” A project can materialize with almost no warning. Another can disappear just as quickly. He has spent long nights working sports productions and stretches away from home when assignments demanded it. A last-minute call once sent him to Dallas to cover FIFA games for roughly 10 days. The opportunity was exciting, but it also meant calling his wife and explaining that he would be leaving almost immediately.

“You have to be a little crazy and really love it,” he says.

The industry Trout entered was still dominated by physical film. He remembers working around productions shooting on 35mm and 16mm, when crews rehearsed repeatedly before exposing expensive stock. In 2008, while working on a Sonny’s BBQ commercial, he encountered a RED digital cinema camera and recognized the direction things were heading. Digital acquisition accelerated. DSLRs followed. Distribution changed even more dramatically.

Today, Concrete Lion Pictures can help produce live programming using remote cameras positioned far beyond its Florida base. Trout points to work involving cameras at the New York Stock Exchange, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia as one of the accomplishments he is most proud of. The company has also produced documentary work that has found audiences through streaming services and YouTube, including The Last 72 Hours of Lynyrd Skynyrd. The old rental economy that once surrounded physical releases has largely vanished. The audience, as Trout sees it, has moved online and onto the phone.

Artificial intelligence is now introducing another disruption. Trout has incorporated AI into administrative tasks and experimented with creative applications, including visual material for a documentary series about asteroid mining. Because some of the technology being discussed in the film does not yet exist, AI-generated imagery offered a way to visualize hypothetical machinery without the cost of traditional CG work. Still, he resists the idea that the software removes people from the equation. “You still need someone managing it and overseeing the output,” he says.

For all the technical change, some of Trout’s most memorable stories remain decidedly low-tech. Fresh out of Full Sail, he took an art department job on a Japanese commercial starring Richard Gere. The crew needed someone hidden from the camera to maneuver a boat around a Florida lake.

Trout volunteered.

He spent somewhere around 90 minutes to two hours in the water, swimming beside the boat and staying below the camera line. Years later, the Maryland native came to a distinctly Floridian realization: “I was literally gator bait!”

It is a funny story now, but it also captures something essential about the career Trout chose. Filmmaking can place a person inside remarkable productions and strange situations, sometimes before they have enough experience to appreciate exactly what they have agreed to.

If Trout could send one lesson back to that younger filmmaker, however, it would not involve cameras, lenses, or even alligators. It would be about marketing. Technical ability, he believes, develops with time. Learning how to make people aware of that ability is another skill entirely.

His answer to a hypothetical question about losing everything makes the point even clearer. Given $5,000 to rebuild, Trout would not rush to replace an expensive cinema package. He would buy a strong smartphone, get inexpensive editing software, and put the remaining money into marketing and creating.

“You start creating, market your ability, and roll from there.”

For someone whose career began with the realization that somebody had to make the images on the screen, Trout has spent much of his professional life learning the other half of that equation. Making the work matters. Staying adaptable enough to keep making it, through unstable jobs, new cameras, new platforms, new software, and whatever arrives next, may matter just as much.

Tavares: Welcome to The Game Plan with Tavarus Beverly, where leaders share strategies for lasting success. I’m Tavares Beverly, founder of Beverly Boy Productions. For more than two decades, I’ve had the privilege of working with leaders, founders, and creators from around the world.

This show is about the conversations that rarely happen in public — the decisions, the failures, and the lessons that shape extraordinary people. Today, we have an Authority Magazine exclusive. We’re sitting down with Shaun Trout, a graduate of Full Sail University, producer, and director of photography who has been in the business since 1997.

He is credited with television projects, commercials, live streaming, and documentary filmmaking. He has worked with clients like the Orlando Magic, NBC’s Golf Channel, United Way, ITV, BBC, and many more. He’s also the co-founder of Concrete Line Pictures. Shaun, thanks for joining us today.

Enough with the formalities — it’s good to see you, buddy. For 8 to 10 years now, I think we’ve been working together in some capacity, and I know my team loves working with you. It’s always a pleasure.

I think it’s important that we collaborate and share information with up-and-coming filmmakers and folks looking to get into this business, talking about what our game plan has been to reach whatever levels of success we’ve reached. Take us back to the beginning where it all started. How did you get your start in the production industry?

Shaun: I’ll be honest, I was probably 16 in 1996, and I remember Braveheart had just come out. I rented the double VHS copy because it was so long — three hours long. I remember watching that in my basement. I tried to get my family to watch it with me, but it was just me sitting down watching this movie.

I was really moved by the whole thing at the end. I was standing up going, “Yeah, freedom! Yeah, Mel Gibson!” Then I had an aha moment. All of a sudden I thought, “Wow, somebody made this. Somebody created this art and created this experience for me.” My heart was pumping, and I thought, “I would love to get in and do that kind of work.”

That started my path toward learning video — how you do it, what the techniques are — and trying to find classes and schools that taught it. That eventually led me to Full Sail in the early 2000s, which is where it started.

When I first got in, I was at a community college, and their career development department helped me get in with the local county commissioners. I was filming county commissioner meetings and shooting dance recitals — whatever I could get — just trying to learn how to do it. I also shot some of my own short films, which were terrible at first, but it was fun. Actually, one of the first films I made was with my current business partner, John, the co-founder of Concrete Line Pictures. He helped me out while we were both still in high school, and we really just had a blast.

Tavares: Nice. I know in the early days it can be tough when you’re just getting started — there’s no proof of concept and no real litmus test; you’re just trying to figure things out. Talk about some of the biggest challenges you’ve had to overcome from those early days and throughout building your production company.

Shaun: Sometimes you’re wondering, “Am I doing this right? Do we have the right systems in place?” Then you quickly find out, “No, I guess we didn’t have systems in place.” You also have to learn how to deal with clients and build those relationships.

There are a lot of challenges, especially when you’re starting out and bootstrapping your own production company — trying to find the right clients and market yourself. Some of the big hurdles have been just staying in the game, because initially when you start, you get discouraged. You have ups and downs. You have one job and think, “All right, I can pay my rent this month!” Then the next month you’re thinking, “I don’t know what I’m going to do. Do I need to take another job? Bagging at Publix looks pretty good.”

There’s a bit of that, but you tell yourself, “Okay, I’m going to stick it out and make this work.” Early on, I had side hustles, or production was the side hustle to a regular job until I could turn it around. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it takes a lot of hours and time. The biggest factor is persistence and sticking with it.

Tavares: That’s what I was going to say. What would you tell someone? Listen, we’re all traveling this road, and it’s a tough path to choose. You and I had a conversation a few months ago about how if you get into this business, you’ve got to be a little crazy! It’s tough, and the challenges, obstacles, and hurdles are just part of it. What would you tell someone who is watching right now, in this business, trying to figure things out during that challenging season? What words of wisdom or advice would you give them?

Shaun: When I talk to younger filmmakers and people in the business, I always say, “It is a fickle business. Things change on a dime. One day you have a half-million-dollar project on your plate, and the next day it’s gone. You don’t have a lot of control over that.”

I tell them that filmmaking is a lifestyle choice rather than a traditional career choice. It’s not a 9-to-5 job; it’s a lifestyle. You have to be able to weather that, understand it, and have friends and family around you who understand it, too. That part can become difficult because you’re out and gone. You get a gig and could be gone for a month, traveling, or working crazy hours.

We do a lot of sports production, so a lot of the time I’m not home until midnight. I was fortunate enough to cover some of the FIFA games out in Dallas, where you’re gone for 10 or 15 days, stuck in a tiny hotel room, working non-stop. Everyone says, “I can’t get ahold of you!” and you’re like, “I know, because we’re in the middle of a show! I can’t answer my phone.”

It’s a lifestyle, so be ready for that. If you love it, you’ll do it and stick with it. Like we talked about, you have to be a little crazy and really love it. Yes, you want to make money, support yourself, and build a future, but you have to stick it out and be fully committed.

Tavares: How would you say the industry has changed since you started? With so many new innovations, what is the biggest shift you’ve seen?

Shaun: There has been a lot of change over the last 25 to 30 years. We’ve seen the rise of digital. When I first got into the business, I was doing a lot of art department work on commercials and films, and everything was shot on 35mm or 16mm film. There were processing labs in almost every major city where you could develop actual film, and some of my early projects were shot on 35mm.

By 2008, while working on a Sonny’s BBQ commercial, I saw a RED camera for the first time and realized, “Oh man, they’re going digital.” Then that became the trend — it was RED, ARRI got into digital, and then came DSLRs. That was a huge shift that changed how we shoot.

When we shot film, we would rehearse four or five times to make sure we knew what the shot looked like before rolling. Now, there’s more of a mentality to “just shoot it all from multiple angles.” On the client side, there’s sometimes a mindset of, “Whatever, just shoot it, we’ll be fine.” It’s just a different game now.

Distribution has probably been the biggest game changer. What we’re doing right now wasn’t possible 30 years ago. We do a live show from the New York Stock Exchange every morning for the opening bell using remote cameras. What would have cost millions of dollars 25 or 30 years ago, we’re doing for tens of thousands.

Distribution is now centered on platforms like YouTube. We have documentary films and series on Amazon, Tubi, and other streaming services, as well as a few shows on broadcast television, but traditional business models have dried up. We did a DVD release for one documentary, but that rental market is completely gone. I can’t remember the last time I rented a physical movie.

Tavares: I just dug up my Blockbuster card about a month ago and thought, “I still have this thing?”

Shaun: That’s a collector’s item! But that whole market shifted. Sales agents I speak with are still figuring out how to monetize content effectively.

We had really good success with a music documentary we produced called The Last 72 Hours of Lynyrd Skynyrd, which covers the plane crash in Mississippi. We released it in 2019, and it has been on Amazon, Tubi, and several other platforms. Recently, the distribution company placed it on specialized YouTube music doc channels, and that has generated some of our best recent revenue. It’s crazy to see, but it really shows where the shift has happened and where people are consuming content. Everyone is online or on their phone. Every television show is now a podcast.

Tavares: It’s true. How do you think AI is changing the industry, and are you incorporating it into your workflow?

Shaun: That’s definitely a hot topic and a challenge. I’ve incorporated AI into my daily workflow for administrative tasks, and almost every software program now has AI integrated into it. I joke with the other producers here that soon every software will do everything — you’ll log into QuickBooks and be able to edit videos, write scripts, and handle post-production all in one place.

It’s tough because a lot of young creatives work for us, and artists often push back against it. However, there are practical applications. We’ve used AI for voiceovers and tested it for simple scene creation and replacements. There are clear advantages, but it doesn’t eliminate the human factor. You still need someone managing it and overseeing the output because it doesn’t always deliver what you want.

We found great success using it on a documentary series we’re finishing about asteroid mining. We started right before COVID hit, which derailed us for a while, but we got back on track. There were CG elements we couldn’t afford on our budget, but using AI creative tools allowed us to generate engaging visuals and B-roll for the interviews. Since asteroid mining technology hasn’t been built yet, AI helped us visualize hypothetical machinery and processes at a fraction of the cost, making the project far more visual than just relying on talking heads.

Tavares: Speaking of your projects, you’ve worked on a lot of cool stuff over the years. What is a project you are especially proud of, and why does it stand out?

Shaun: That’s a good question. I feel proud of what we’ve built with FinTech TV, where we set up a remote production workflow. We have cameras in the New York Stock Exchange, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia. Building that infrastructure for live broadcasting, going live every day to produce hour-long shows, and managing the back-end content is something I’m very proud of. We deliver a high-quality product on a much smaller scale without a big network budget. It has been a fantastic challenge over the past three or four years.

Tavares: Nice. What would you say is your workhorse right now? What camera gear are clients asking for, what can you rely on, and what’s your main go-to?

Shaun: In terms of camera systems, we leaned into Blackmagic early on when they released the original URSA Mini around 2015 or 2016. It was a solid camera with some limitations, but at the time, it was one of the best-priced 4K-capable cameras available.

We stayed in that Blackmagic ecosystem. Now, we have a virtual wall in our studio and shoot on the 6K Pyxis, which delivers great image quality and works well on the video wall because of its open gate recording.

Some clients still request Sony as their go-to, and I started on Sony and love their cameras — especially for broadcast and sports production. For our standard productions, though, we lean heavily into Blackmagic. Over the last 10 years, Blackmagic has really upped its game, and people who used to doubt them now recognize their quality.

We also use DaVinci for color correction and editing. While we still use Adobe Premiere, I think DaVinci is going to give Premiere a real run for its money. We’ve been using Blackmagic’s cloud storage tools alongside DaVinci, which allows us to handle live editing. During live broadcasts, we pull down cuts, clip out interviews, and format social media clips while the show is still airing. By the time the broadcast ends, the team can immediately start posting social content, which is essential given how fast news cycles move now.

Tavares: You’ve been doing this for decades, working on a myriad of projects. What is the craziest project you’ve ever worked on — one where you look back and think, “I can’t believe we were part of that”?

Shaun: I always tell this story. Right after graduating from Full Sail, I was doing a lot of art department work. When you’re young, you agree to almost anything.

They were shooting a Japanese commercial for a spa called Dandy House, starring Richard Gere. The scene involved him waxing a boat and taking it out onto a lake. Coming from Maryland, I didn’t think twice about jumping into a body of water.

The crew said, “Richard Gere is going to hop in this boat, and we need someone to swim behind it and maneuver him around the lake.” I said, “I’m in!” Working with Richard Gere on one of my first gigs coming out of school sounded awesome.

We were in Clearwater, Florida, in a large body of water. I swam around for about 90 minutes to two hours beside the boat, hiding below the camera line to push the boat. At the time I didn’t think anything of it, but looking back, I realize I was literally gator bait! I can’t believe they let me do it, but that remains one of the wildest project experiences I’ve had. I get a kick out of it now, but I can’t believe the art director let me do it without saying a word!

Tavares: You definitely find yourself in some wild situations in this business.

Shaun: You really do, but that’s one of the great aspects of the business. You end up in places you would have never visited otherwise — small towns in Mississippi, Alabama, or Georgia. We did a project for your team in Rome, Georgia, about an hour and a half north of Atlanta. It was a fantastic little town that I never would have visited on my own, but I’d definitely go back.

Tavares: That’s what I find as well. Through documentary or narrative work, you experience different cultures, cuisines, and backgrounds. You learn about so many facets of life. Every day is interesting because when the phone rings, you never know where it’s going to take you.

Shaun: Exactly. Getting the chance to shoot World Cup games for FIFA came from a last-minute call when someone fell ill. They called and said, “We’re flying you to Dallas tomorrow to shoot these games.” I flew out and stayed for 10 days. But as we discussed earlier, that’s where the lifestyle aspect comes in — having to tell my wife, “Is it okay if I’m gone for 10 days starting tomorrow?” It definitely takes a strong support system.

Tavares: If you had a time machine and could go back to the mid-90s or mid-2000s to give yourself advice, what would you tell yourself?

Shaun: Understand marketing! Marketing is one thing your team has always done exceptionally well, Tavarus. Learning how to market yourself effectively, consistently, and without hesitation is crucial. That has been one of our toughest challenges: putting ourselves out there effectively and consistently.

Tavares: To piggyback off that, another lesson I learned years later was the importance of seeking out mentorship, especially starting out. I didn’t do that early on, but as I grew in business and entrepreneurship, I realized how pivotal the right conversation can be. That’s why we launched this podcast — because experienced leaders like you have insights that benefit both newcomers and veterans in the industry. Mentorship and marketing are key: it’s not just who you know, but who knows you.

Shaun: Absolutely. The technical skills will develop over time, but understanding how to market yourself is vital.

Tavares: One last question: If you lost everything today, woke up tomorrow with all your gear gone, and had $5,000 to rebuild your business, what would you buy and what is the first thing you would do?

Shaun: That’s a great question. I would buy a high-end smartphone. For around $1,200, you essentially have a complete production studio in your pocket.

Recently, I saw an article about a crew shooting an entire soccer match using iPhones mounted to full ENG Canon lenses. The technology is getting there.

With $5,000, I’d buy a good smartphone, subscribe to an editing app like CapCut for $80 a year, and invest the remaining money into marketing my skills and creating social media content.

Tavares: That’s a great approach!

Shaun: Absolutely. You start creating, market your ability, and roll from there.

Tavares: Where can people find you online or hire you for work?

Shaun: Our website is clpictures.com, and you can find us on Instagram and Facebook under Concrete Line Pictures.

Tavares: Thank you so much for joining us today. We wish you continued success. My team and I love working with you. You’re not only an incredible filmmaker, but more importantly, a genuinely great person.

Shaun: Thanks, Tavarus. You guys are fantastic as well, and our partnership over the years has been awesome. I look forward to working on more projects together. Thank you for having me.

Tavares: Absolutely. Thank you to our audience for joining today’s episode. Remember, success rarely happens by accident — it happens with a game plan. Thanks for joining us. Peace.

Shaun: See ya.