Read Chasing Spirits: The Building of the "Ghost Adventures" Crew for Free Online Page A

learn just how important this concept is.
    During this time I was teaching myself video editing—that’s one thing I didn’t learn in school. Editing takes a ton of time and focus. There’s so much that goes into the process: where you cut, how you match up the video to the audio, what to leave in, what to take out, keeping the narrative moving at a good pace, building suspense, and so much more. Editing is filmmaking.
    My sophomore year at UNLV was a time when I started making exciting connections. I was never much of a student, but give me a subject I love and I throw myself into it. I had my parents ship me their Hi8 camera so I could start filming more, and I was eating up everything I could on the subject.
    QUESTIONS FANS ASK
    Is Ghost Adventures edited? Isn’t it a reality show?
    One question we often get asked about Ghost Adventures is about the editing. I understand the question and the concern. People who have gone out on ghost investigations know it’s often not as exciting as watching a television show. Here’s the reason. In our lockdown we place multiple static X-cameras that roll pretty much for eight hours. Zak, Aaron, and I also have handheld video cameras, thermal and UV cameras, plus other equipment that rolls pretty much nonstop during the lockdown. So that’s dozens of hours of footage that will get turned into half the show, which is about twenty-two minutes of actual screen time on television.
    During the lockdowns, hours can go by where nothing happens. We’re obviously not going to bore our viewers with the misses. And sometimes our cameras or audio recorders capture something that we don’t experience until we’re reviewing evidence long after the lockdown is over. If we’ve caught something interesting, it goes into the show. If there are tense moments where one of us is experiencing something, that goes into the show. What you’re seeing are the highlights from hours of investigating a location from a ton of different perspectives—mine, Zak’s, and Aaron’s, plus the multiple static X-cams. This needs good editing, or all of that time in between investigations would drag out more.
    One night at school, a film pro, who had just produced a small movie, gave a lecture about his experiences in the business. There was a fee to attend his talk, which I gladly paid. The roomful of people listened to him talk about the industry, how to get projects going, and where to take them. When the talk was over, I waited to chat with him about what I was doing. I told him about the film I was trying to make and how I was goingto get my own thing off the ground. I was talking this guy’s ear off, until eventually it was just two of us left in the room with the filmmaker, seeking advice. The professor looked at the other guy standing there and said to him, “You want to make movies? Work with Nick.” I introduced myself to the other straggler, and we shook hands.
    “I’m Aaron Goodwin,” he said.
    Aaron and I kept talking about filmmaking. I came to find out he wasn’t even a student at UNLV; he just loved film and wanted to be in the business. There are people who go to film school and there are people who are straight-up filmmakers period. Aaron is a filmmaker.
    We continued talking, and he told me about this project he was working on—some funny skits called the “Aaron and Brad Show” where he and a friend walk down the Vegas Strip and do things to hurt themselves to get a laugh—like
Jackass
before
Jackass
. And I told him about this short horror film I was working on for college. I asked him if he’d be willing to help me shoot it, and he said, “Hell, yeah, I will.”
    So Aaron helped me on the project and we became fast friends. Our first project together was a bloody horror short. Veronique’s in it too—she gets a crowbar to her back and blood comes spilling out. I would never hurt her in real life, but she was always game for being a victim in my school film projects.
    It was a