Filming bone-rattling machines in the remote West Texas oil fields is incredible. You can feel the ground shake as the drill chews through the 250 million-year-old seabed that makes up the Permian Basin.

Our crew spent two days on site, embedding ourselves with the HDD crew to find and focus on storylines that emerged in the moment.

Interviewing customers is part science and part art—requiring a light touch, thought-provoking questions, a confident manner, the skill to extract the best from them, and the reassurance they need to walk away satisfied with their performance. In a lot of ways, it’s like writing with someone else’s words.

For this video series, I led my team through the whole production process—from conducting pre-shoot calls to familiarize ourselves with the operation to boots on the ground to seeing the edit through to final approval.

I’m incredibly proud to have been a key part of telling the story of this hardworking crew and their equipment.