Who are we?
Wimpie and Tania. We have been married for over 20 years and have 2 daughters. They join us on trips now and then. We are in our forties and not ready to travel full time yet. We both still work so we have to fit traveling in between work and responsibilities. We are Afrikaans but we will keep everything in English for everyone to follow.
What is Flatdogs?
Short Answer. A Crocodile. We are not from Zimbabwe but crocodiles in Zimbabwe are referred to as “flatdogs”. We decided to adopted the name for our YouTube Travel Channel. The idea is to go places, filming it and showing the viewers what to expect when they go there. As time goes on the channel will evolve and we will also get better at filming and editing.
Social Media
Check us out. We have YouTube, Instagram and Facebook and we will upload more consistently in the coming months as we are still new at this and have a lot to learn.
Where are we going?
Traveling South Africa and Beyond. Showing you locations in and around South Africa. There are lots of beautiful places to see and we only have so much time. We hope our videos will help our viewers see what to expect at the destinations we travel to and make informed decisions.
Making money on YouTube especially in South Africa is not easy and will take a long time, so that is not our drive. There are tons of Travel channels on YouTube but we hope to bring something less scripted and more real. We are spontaneous people, so we don’t plan too far ahead.
Join us on our journey to explore South Africa and beyond. We all have to start somewhere and this is our start to experience South Africa and we want to share it to encourage you to get out there and live life. It’s a small start but it is a start.
In the near future we might look at a camper van or something to take longer trips and to more secluded spots. So subscribe to our YouTube Channel to see us explore South Africa.
Our Camera Gear
We use the Insta360 one x2 most of the time and we love this camera. It is small, fits in your pocket so you can take it anywhere you go, even swimming, it is 10m waterproof. Our arial shots are done with the Dji Mavic Air 2. This drone is all we will ever need to get arial shots, it has so many features and it is in 4k. We have an older DSLR (Nikon D5300) that we mainly use for pictures, but we are slowly warming up to using it as a video camera too. We don’t use our phones often but we have a Zhiyun Smooth Q3 Gimbal when we use our phones (Iphone 13). We have an assortment of small tripods, selfie sticks, brackets and lights. Using all of this equipment correctly takes time to learn. You can slap it together and get on with filming but knowing how to use it helps you videos a lot.
We need to get a microphone solution still and we have been looking at the DJI Wireless Mic. It is not cheap so we are saving for it. We have been recording our sound with a Huawei P20 using the headphones it came with. It’s not ideal but will have to work for now. The voice overs are done with a Boya MM1 Pro shotgun mic plugged into the Ipad. We can’t use this mic with the Insta360 One x2 because it is too big for the way we use our camera. Later as we get better at it, this might change.
Learning to use your equipment correctly is very important and we have a long way to go. If you see any filming mistakes on our videos, please comment and tell us what we need to improve on. We want to make good, informative, entertaining videos, and this doesn’t happen over night. Help us grow our channel for more and better videos. Subscribe
Editing :
We use Lumafusion on our Ipad and we use Storyblocks for the music and sound effects at the moment. We have a laptop for editing photos before we upload them.
It is a lot to learn and it will get better as we make more videos