Sign up for TPR Today, Texas Public Radio's newsletter that brings our top stories to your inbox each morning.
From the Rio Grande to the East Texas forests and the West Texas wilds, filmmaker Ben Masters has spent more than a decade documenting the state’s landscapes and wildlife.
And in the course of making dozens of films, he’s documented a lot of Texas that’s rarely captured on film.
One of Masters’ films opens with a voice most Texans will recognize — Matthew McConaughey.
The actor narrates Masters’ film Deep in the Heart.
Like McConaughey, Masters is also from Texas.
“I was born and raised in Amarillo, Texas, and went to high school in San Angelo,” Masters said.
His father taught him about life in nature through experiencing it.
“He'd take me out to the ranch and feed cows and run up and down creeks and fish and hunt. And I just grew up in the outdoors, pretty much 24/7,” he said.
When it came time for college, he went to Texas A&M, where he learned to link what he saw in nature with what he saw in class.
“I studied wildlife biology at Texas A&M University, and then I spent a lot of years down in South Texas,” Masters said.
Since finishing college, he’s taken that perspective with him as he’s traveled the state with video cameras through ranches, lakes, streams and parks.
“I've kind of gotten to travel all over the state and started making wildlife movies 14 years ago,” he said.
He named his production company Fin and Fur Films and began making shorts and features, and whatever he decided needed a spotlight.
“Fin and Fur Films is a group of about 10 or so people that frequently work together to make movies,” Masters said. We have a studio in South Austin where we converted a bunch of rental house rooms into edit bays and edit and produce movies.”
He made his 2018 documentary The River and the Wall to achieve a very specific purpose.
“The purpose of that film was to document the border before a wall was built, and to show people what that country looks like,” he said.
The way he and his documentarians made that journey gave the film an epic feel.
“We traveled by horseback, canoe, and bikes from El Paso all the way to the Gulf,” he said.
Masters learned a lot about the Rio Grande, and one specific point emerged from the experience.
“The (border) wall in West Texas right now isn't being built for a border security reason. It's to generate votes in Iowa,” Masters said. “It's designed by people who've never been there to get votes from people who have never been there.”
More recently, he produced Deep in the Heart, narrated by McConaughey. It focuses on Texas wildlife.
“That movie turned out great. It did really well in theaters. Texans loved it." And then it ended up inspiring Deep in the Heart 2 which is narrated by another voice you might know — another native Texan and actor, Ethan Hawke.
Deep in the Heart 2: Texas Rivers opened in theaters last Friday, including several in the San Antonio area.
Deep in the Heart 1 is available here.
Masters notes that Texans have more in common with one another than you might guess.
“I think it's important to recognize though that Texas is divided on many things, but one thing Texans are very united on is a love for our home. Texans love Texas,” he said.
While it’s hard to imagine political figures coming together in agreement, it’s not so hard to imagine sentiments like Masters.
“We love our rivers. We love our landscapes,” he said. They are so integral to who we are, and across the board, everybody wants wildlife. We want healthy rivers.”
