If you've been following us for any amount of time, you know that here at Live Bearded it's our mission to help Beardsmen look, feel, and be their best. 

We exist to help your beard look great because we know when you look great, you feel great, and when you feel great, we believe you Do Better in all areas of your life.

You know what also helps you feel great? Laughter. 

That's why we try to put together videos not only to show you how to grow a better beard, inspire you to Do Better as a man, but also videos that'll make you laugh your butt off. 

We've created some fun videos in the past, but being in our fourth year in business at this point, we wanted to go way over the top and challenge ourselves to create something outside of our comfort zone that is bigger and better than anything we've done before.

The result...

BEARDMAN!!! 

Our hope for Beardman is to educate bearded men all over the world how simple but important beard grooming is, while evoking a chuckle or two along the way.

Let me just tell you that although this video was one of the biggest and hardest projects we've put together to date, it was without a doubt one of the most fun.

The concept of Beardman was curated from all of YOU referencing your Live Bearded orders as "Beardmail".

So really we owe all this to you guys...

We knew there was something here and it clicked when we found this sweet barely running rust bucket of a 1975 retired postal truck just a hundred miles south of our office.

It's "vintage" peeling white paint job and already red wheels made for the perfect canvas. so we snatched it up and went to work writing the script. 

Double Your Cost, Triple Your Time

Creating Beardman reminded me a lot of the process of rebuilding my 69' Camaro...a lot of blood, sweat, and tears went into both, and both I'm very proud of.

But both came with bigger budgets and MUCH longer timelines than originally expected. 

In the case of Beardman, we wanted it to be "perfect", or as close to it as possible in our eyes (at the time). 

So we wrote the script, then rewrote it, then rewrote it again, and again, and again, and again...

We rewrote so much of it that the end result only slightly resembled the original. What a crazy process.

It was a very fun experience, which was only half the battle. After writing it was time to actually shoot it and bring this idea to life.

Don't Film Outside in the Summer

I'll be the first to tell you I am NOT an actor, nor do I really feel super comfortable on camera. Even after all the videos I've put together, it's a bit awkward for me.

But, if 2020 taught us anything, it's that life can throw you some curve balls and you have to do the best you can with what you got. So the team convinced me to go ahead and give it a shot.

The filming process itself was brutal, spanning over a week of filming around the Phoenix area.

I know a lot of you guys look forward to the snow melting through spring and the summer months spent outside enjoying the warmer weather, right?

Well, the only thing melting here in Phoenix is your shoes to the asphalt in the dead of summer, and our timing just happened to put our filming with a lovely 112 degree temperature.

As you can tell from the video, nearly the entire video was shot outside, so our team (love you guys), had to endure the brutal weather and sweat their asses off while I stumbled through lines to capture what we needed.

I'll never get the words "open your eyes more" out of my head from Nathan as he used a reflector to shine the sun directly on my eyeballs. l could have sworn I was told not to stare at the sun as a kid.... 🤷‍♂️

Here in Arizona we love to tell people that "it's a dry heat" as if it makes 112 degrees less painful.

I am a sweaty kid as it is, but I had to wardrobe change literally every 5 minutes so you wouldn't see the puddle of sweat coming through my shirt!

And by wardrobe change, I mean sit in my truck I kept running with the AC on blast in attempt to cool down just a little.

Let's just say that's the last time we'll do that....I hope

Rattle Snakes and Heart Attacks

Filming Beardman was a complete pain in the ass if I'm being honest, and the heat wasn't the only challenge we faced.

Our cave shots were shot on the side of Camelback mountain here in town and, of course, not just steps away from the parking lot. 

So on the morning of our cave shot, we loaded up our equipment and started hiking around 4:30 to get the dawn lighting just right. 

As an avid hiker myself, I thought it would be just a quick 15 minute "walk" and we'd be good to go. Well, I guess I forgot that some of the guys haven't hiked in a while...or ever.

It was already 90 degrees at this time so imagine half a dozen bearded guys stumbling through the dark up the side of a mountain, sweating and swearing the entire way.

Credit to the team though because they rallied and we made it to the top. 

Well, almost. 

As we got to the top all I remember hearing is

"That's a rattle snake. Hell. No". 

Approaching the perfect lighting time we had to quickly decide to maneuver directly over the rattle snake with all of our gear, or back track a good bit and potentially lose our shot.

I won't name names, but let's just say that some handled getting over that snake easier than others.

What may stick out most from that morning, however, might be our brother Brian's dedication to doing whatever the heck it takes to get the job done.

We have nothing but love for this guy right here. Trekking up a mountain before sunrise to then gnaw into a chicken carcass dressed as a caveman is not something many people can say they've done.

I would have puked too, brother ;)

Now the heart attack part is true, and hits close to home. 

On set my older brother Justin collapsed to the ground after a full blockage in his widow maker causing him to have a massive heart attack.

Without getting into the details here, he has since recovered from a couple surgeries and a heart transplant with an entirely new appreciation for life.

Thank you to all the brothers who sent prayers and good thoughts his way.

For how intense this experience was for all of us, there is beauty in it all.

It's easy sometimes to view life through the lens of things happening to you as if you're the victim. But what if you saw things as they are happing FOR you. 

There is a beautiful lesson to learn in everything if you choose to look for it.

Post Production

After we got all the footage shot we were in the home stretch, right?

WRONG!

It turns out the post production of a video like this takes just as much work and time to put together.

I mean, Jones had to make me fly! 

From the 8 hours straight in the recording studio getting all the audio recorded, to the endless back and forth on graphics and sound effects, it was killing us on the inside being so close to sharing this with you guys but not quite there.

Coming to a "final" version took some tweaks but after a few painful months of editing we were ready to share it with all of you.

Shoutouts

I can't say enough about our entire Live Bearded team and how everyone elevated their game to make Beardman possible.

Nathan poured his heart into this and was involved every step of the way from writing, directing, producing, casting, acting, and basically everything in between. 

The talented Jonathan Jones blew us away with all the camera work, shooting, editing, and making our ideas translate and come to life.

Caveman Brian Wilson stole the show in my opinion and should win some type of award for his performance. You are salt of the earth, brother.

Mink for supporting us and all our shenanigans and trusting us to step up to the challenge and knock it out of the park.

Pete and Dusty for running audio, or shade, or really whatever the heck was needed.

Our amazing friends Ryan, Danny, Alan, Leo, Amanda, Kelly, Mackie, Steve, Tony, Harold, and Beast.

We can't thank you all enough for lending a hand and helping us out with this, you are all naturals!

Final Thoughts

We truly hope you watching this is half as entertaining as it was putting it together for you.

Our mission here at Live Bearded is to help Beardsmen look, feel, and be their best. Every day we ask ourselves how we can make our brothers day better. What can we do to give you a dose of motivation, grooming insights, or in this case, some laughs.

Hit that like and share button if you enjoyed it and drop a comment to let us know what you think. Thank you for your support, it truly means the world to us.

Live Bearded, Brother!