Learnin’ Stuff: With Bobby Hicks

It’s my favorite time of the week: interview time! And today I’m talking with fellow former Floridian and all around cool guy, Bobby Hicks of @thisfellow. We are gonna learn about Dominos and drones, so strap in and hang tight!

Q: What’s your significant other’s social media?
A: My girlfriend, Keiko, runs the blog and social channel @keikolynn.

Q: How did you two meet?
A: We met in Florida, while she was going to school. We became really good friends and then she moved to NYC. So, I eventually moved to NYC to stay close and shortly after we started dating and the rest is history.

Q: What’s the theme of her content?
A: Her channel is based around beauty and fashion. She balances a retro-vintage clothing style with more modern cosmetic touches, like smokey eyes and other stuff that I don’t understand because I’m a guy. But she looks great!

Q: Do you ever work with her on it?
A: Keiko is really self-sufficient, so she will sometimes shoot her own photos, but occasionally I’ll help her photograph her outfits or film her and edit videos for her.

Q: When did you first get involved with her social media?
A: I started getting involved in taking her photos when I moved to NYC. She didn’t have anybody to help her and having an extra hand was easier than always carrying a tripod. I didn’t know anything about cameras and so she would set it up for me and I’d just snap the shutter. It took me forever to understand how to use a camera properly, but after so many years of shooting her… I still know nothing about how to take a decent photo.

Q: Do you have your own gig?
A: I work as a social media influencer with an agency called Socialyte. Basically, I do the same thing as Keiko, but not as well as she does. But I also do freelance filmmaking for other influencers. Video is really becoming less of a bonus and more necessary these days, so I’ve been really fortunate to not only have the skills I’ve learned, but also the connections to people looking for video content. They keep me busy.

Q: I know you do a lot of photography, is there a type that you like more than others?
A: I’ve always been drawn to the stars and time-lapses, so I’ve always been obsessed with anything related to Astrophotography and catching Sunsets. I could literally sit on a roof every single day and just take hundreds of photos of the sun setting and it would never get old. Then I’d grab a bite to eat and find the darkest, coldest place I could find and shoot the Milky Way. Unfortunately, I live on the East Coast, where it’s literally impossible to escape light pollution below Toronto. Canada is calling to me.

Q: I’ve seen you do some sick work with drones, care to talk about them?
A: I’ve always wanted to fly, so there are fewer things that make me as happy as flying the drone around. I have a DJI Mavic Pro and just took the time to customize the settings on it so that it has the best response and action for cinematic filming. Trick is to slow everything down, so it doesn’t just zip away when you want to turn or adjust your gimbal. It’s insane how easy these things are getting to fly. My goal would be to own one large enough to hold a 10-lb camera load, so I could attach a big camera and get some really epic footage.

Q: You’ve mentioned to me that you were in an emo and ska band, and used to deliver pizzas. Would you elaborate on these a little more? Any funny anecdotes?
A: So, growing up, I learned that if you played an instrument, you got the girl – so I started a band when I was 14 and played in various bands until I was about 21. The band I started was a Ska band because it’s Florida, and I played with them for a long time. While being in that band I made friends with the 8 other members and wanted to hang with them more, but they had to work. So, I got a job with one of them at a Dominos, as a delivery driver. Then slowly 6 or 7 of the other members were hired at the same job. This was always awesome, working with my friends, but when we would play a show, there were about 6 or 7 people that couldn’t work that shift and I’ll never understand why my boss hired us, but he was great.

Q: Do you have any passion projects or hobbies?
A: I’m really into filmmaking and just creating content based around the video format. I love shooting random clips that seem arbitrary at first glance but eventually tell a story, when cut with the whole. I have been planning out a documentary concept that I’ve wanted to create sometime this year and just use that as another tool to make me a better filmmaker. And I’ve recently gotten into gardening. Starting with baby steps – it’s hard to kill a succulent and so far my snake plants haven’t died, so that’s a plus.

I think that Dominos story sounds like the makings of a great sitcom, anyone else agree? I can imagine it now, a lot of Smash Mouth jokes, tons of gags about pizza, and at least one scene where they race pizza delivery cars to determine who will be the winner of Battle of the Bands! If you want to check out more of Bobby’s work you can go to his blog here. Back to my sitcom proposal though, would you include a laugh track, or is that too 90’s? Let me know in the comments!