Professional Seaside
November 29, 2023
HERMOSA BEACH, California — Daniel Freitas’ dream job, the one he has labeled as “doing enjoyable” for a dwelling, started as one would possibly anticipate: Abject distress.
He’d taken all the precise steps. Checked all of the packing containers. Bought his bachelor’s diploma at California Baptist College. Might have taken an additional yr to get his masters along with his ultimate season of eligibility remaining however determined towards it. He’d already been employed for a full-time job within the discipline he studied. His girlfriend, too, had taken a job.
It was time to maneuver on, proceed following the Turning into a Functioning Grownup Playbook.
“The group was balling,” Freitas, identified to most as Frito, stated with a rueful amusement, “and I’m simply placing numbers into Excel. Going from Division I school athlete to sitting at a desk was simply tough. It was superb, it was a very good first expertise, however you’re at a desk eight hours.”
And so the Grownup Playbook, principally for worse, continued. He received married. He received divorced. Racked up some bank card debt. Moved again in along with his mother and father. Talked life over with a therapist. When he had lastly saved sufficient to filter his debt, placing him again at zero, a pal requested if he wished to maneuver out of his mother and father’ home.
“My life is already being flipped the other way up,” he stated on SANDCAST: Seaside Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, “I’m simply going to do one thing else. I didn’t have six months saved up. I simply went for it. For the human mind, you’re solely imagined to do one main life change in a yr and I did three or 4. It was tough.”
So he moved, and continued flipping his life the other way up and inside out and shaking it out for good measure. Simply to ensure solely the very important components of the previous remained. He made certain one behavior caught: Video manufacturing.
Even when he was in school as an outdoor hitter at Cal Baptist, he’d arrive strapped, virtually actually, to the tooth in cameras.
“It was a pastime for thus lengthy,” he stated. “I used to be all the time into GoPros. I had a GoPro in school, had all of the attachments, the chest mount, the pinnacle piece, again when Instagram was horizontal and 15-second movies.”
He wouldn’t even purchase his first actual digicam till 2016, when a pal within the movie trade was unloading his stock on a budget. His upgraded assemblage included a $1,000 digicam, a couple of batteries, and a single lens. His portfolio was much more sparse. So he hustled. As soon as per week, he’d movie an open run for skilled basketball gamers referred to as Air West. He by no means charged a dime, capturing from 7-9 p.m., driving dwelling and enhancing a video that evening — all after working a full shift at his day job. That was each Wednesday for a complete yr.
“Earlier than it was figuring it out, barely earning money, barely charging something, as a result of they wouldn’t rent me if it wasn’t 200 bucks or no matter,” he stated. Slowly, nonetheless, the connections accrued, as did his expertise. Quickly, he discovered himself on the crossroads of connections and expertise.
A standard low season exercise for Los Angeles Clippers and Lakers gamers are sand runs or sprints and even the occasional sport of seashore volleyball. A pal of Frito’s since 2014, Sasha Vujacic, a guard whom the Lakers took within the fourth spherical of the 2004 NBA Draft, was no stranger to sand exercises. When Frito acquired his digicam, he’d sometimes shoot for Vujacic. This led to introductions to stars Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan, who commonly powered up and down the near-vertical sand dune in Manhattan Seaside. So, too, did Brittany Hochevar.
In 2017, Hochevar was searching for a videographer. If the man on the sand dune was trusted by NBA gamers, he’d definitely be adequate for a sport as rogue and uncut as seashore volleyball. Frito, then, with only a yr of expertise with an actual digicam beneath his belt, grew to become that videographer.
That yr, he was behind the lens as Hochevar and Emily Day gained the Manhattan Seaside Open.
“Every little thing I’ve gotten or have completed has been by way of connections,” he stated. “It’s been uncommon I’ll attain out to that individual or they’ll discover me.”
Typically these connections come by way of probably the most serendipitous of circumstances. Take the time Frito was taking part in a municipal golf course in El Segundo referred to as The Lakes. There he occurred to satisfy Tommy Zweibel, the Head of Content material for the Clippers. They stayed in touch, every maintaining with each other, till, in 2021, Zweibel wanted a shooter for dwelling video games.
Would Frito be up for the job?
The timing was, in so some ways, excellent.
Frito had simply upgraded his setup, with a $6,000 Sony. He’d additionally simply been informed he’d by no means make it within the enterprise.
In response to Frito elevating his charges, an agent of certainly one of Frito’s first purchasers grew indignant, then bitter.
“He sends me a textual content about he put me on, I didn’t know what I used to be doing, my enterprise was going to flop,” he recalled. “I used to be fairly down within the dumps from it.”
Then got here the decision from Zweibel.
Then got here one other name, this one from Mpu Dinani, probably the most revered photographers on the AVP Tour, a world Frito had rejoined as a shooter for the McKibbin Brothers in 2021. Would he wish to shoot for Conor McGregor on a three-city tour?
“Are you all the way down to go for it?” Mpu requested.
“When?”
“Just about now.”
OK.
Nearly in a single day, Frito flipped from “down within the dumps” to capturing for a major-market NBA group that might end 47-25 that yr, touring with one of many biggest combined martial artists to ever dwell, and immersing himself again into the seashore volleyball scene.
“Principally,” he stated, “it’s been connections and being a very good individual.”
The work he does with the digicam and later in post-production helps. Frito has developed a fame amongst seashore volleyball gamers as one of many quickest to show round movies that additionally brim with high quality. All these reels you see all through the summer time? Tri Bourne’s insane jump-set, and his controversial collision with Miles Partain beneath the web on the AVP Huntington Seaside Professional Collection? That’s Frito. A lot of Zana Muno’s viral content material? Frito. It’s why he was the person for the job after we wanted somebody to movie on the World Championships, the most important occasion on the seashore volleyball calendar. He rotated 5 movies in two weeks together with two-dozen reels. It wasn’t even near how a lot he may have completed.
“I feel that’s virtually my bread and butter,” he stated of the pace with which he works. “That’s when it will get enjoyable. It’s virtually like being an athlete, it’s crunch time, after which making an attempt to go to mattress after that? It’s crunch time. How do I flip it off? Particularly now with Clipper video games. I simply take all my finest clips and put them into one video, and once I drive dwelling, do I simply fall asleep? It’s kinda exhausting. I’m all the time eager about how I could make issues a bit totally different.”
His schedule now’s as seasonal because the climate. Summers are for seashore volleyball, fall and winter for the LA Clippers, spring for the LA Galaxy. Sometimes, Frito and Mpu will group up — it’s Mpu who normally lands the gig, and Frito the one he requires help — for one more one-off, like capturing defensive finish Aiden Hutchinson within the lead-up to the 2022 NFL Draft, the place he was taken with the second decide by the Detroit Lions.
“When one factor ends,” he stated, “the subsequent begins.”
That is each the sweetness and the curse of being a full-time freelancing content material creator. There are occasions — and this goes for nearly each freelancer — the place he craves the clear-cut schedule of a 9-5. When 5 o’clock rolls round, work is over, e-mail is off, the telephone calls cease. Now?
“It’s 24-7,” he stated. “There’s no construction to my world of labor. It’s fairly powerful. Even when I get sick, I don’t have anybody else who can take over for me. It’s not like I can name in sick.”
Not like he ever does. Enterprise is booming, and he has an toddler son to look after now. There are video games and matches and commercials to be shot, movies to be edited, reels to go viral. There are connections to be made, latent alternatives to be found. There may be enjoyable available. So he packed up his issues after recording a podcast in Hermosa Seaside, cracked a couple of jokes concerning the amateurish set-up, grabbed his digicam, and set off.
He had a Clippers sport to cowl.
