Building a Better Conservation Storytelling Workflow with Verbatim

One of the greatest challenges I face as a conservation storyteller is figuring out how to tell stories in a way that matters, and then finding a way to tell enough of them. New Zealand Conservation Stories has always had a pretty ambitious vision. We want to build a library of stories that showcases New Zealand’s wildlife, wild places and conservation work to the world, while reaching people who might never otherwise seek out conservation content.

But doing that at scale comes with some very real limitations. In 2025, we produced around 75 stories. In 2026, that number will be more than 200 pieces of original content, and that’s only the major content we produce. Our wider schedule now involves posting three times a day on TikTok, twice a day on Facebook and once a day on Instagram. At the same time, we’re developing our YouTube channel and YouTube Shorts strategy, writing articles, responding to conservation stories as they emerge and travelling around New Zealand filming new ones.

We do all of that with no paid staff and a budget that is largely made possible by the brands willing to support what we do. In a sense, our vision is to reach people who would never otherwise learn about conservation and draw them in to learn about it in unique and creative ways. But trying to achieve that vision at this scale comes with some pretty massive challenges.

For the first five years of New Zealand Conservation Stories, we didn’t even own a single external hard drive. Somehow, we made it work. But earlier this year, we hit a wall. The amount of footage we were capturing and the volume of content we wanted to produce had simply outgrown our post production workflow. We could film the stories, but getting everything transferred, backed up, organised, edited and published was becoming one of the biggest bottlenecks in the entire project.

So we approached Verbatim and explained what we were trying to build. We asked whether they would come on board and help us put together a serious storage and post production workflow that would allow us to continue producing content at this scale and achieve our vision within the very real constraints of what we could do.

They did, and the difference was immediate.

Taking our Workflow to the South Island

Verbatim provided us with a serious collection of equipment to help build that workflow, including a 2TB SnapBack SSD, two 1TB TurboMetal USB 4.0 SSDs, two 256GB Pro+ 4K SDXC cards, an All in One Card Reader, a CMH 08 USB C Multiport Hub and a 100W GaN USB Charger.

We took the setup with us on our recent Otago and Fiordland filming trip, and for the first time, storage became part of our field workflow rather than something we worried about once we got home.

We were filming across multiple cameras as well as a DJI setup, often in remote locations and sometimes producing huge amounts of footage in a single day. The two 1TB TurboMetal SSDs were particularly useful because having multiple drives meant we could quickly move footage between members of the team, transfer files between devices and start organising everything while we were still travelling. The card reader and USB C Multiport Hub also made it much easier to connect the different cameras, cards, drives and devices we were travelling with.

That might sound like a small change, but for us, it was enormous.

Historically, it has often taken us six to eight weeks after returning from a major filming trip to work our way through the footage and begin getting the full range of stories out. This time, within two weeks of finishing the trip, we'd already produced around 10 pieces of content. That completely changes what we're capable of doing.

It means we can meet our commitments to the brands that make these trips possible faster, while also ensuring our editing backlog doesn't become overwhelming. Most importantly, it means we can shine a light on important conservation stories while those experiences are still fresh.

Five minutes after filming wild takahē

Perhaps the piece of equipment that demonstrated this better than anything else was the SnapBack SSD. During our time in the Rees Valley, we had an experience I never expected to have: we filmed two takahē in the wild. There are only around 500 takahē in existence, with roughly half of those living in the wild, so standing in the Rees Valley watching two of them was extraordinary.

The experience cannot be understated. In the last two centuries average everyday New Zealanders have never been able to see this birds in accessible locations. Prior to a few years ago less than a few thousand New Zealanders would ever have seen a wild Takahe. 

But what happened next demonstrated just how much our workflow had changed. Within around five minutes, we were able to transfer and share the footage between each other.  Instead of getting home weeks later, finding the right drive, transferring hundreds of gigabytes of footage and eventually getting around to editing it, the footage was already where it needed to be. I edited my first Reel less than three hours after filming it. 

We could finish filming for the day and start working with it almost immediately. For a project trying to produce conservation stories at the scale we are, that is an absolute game changer.

300GB and some Peace of Mind

Across the Otago and Fiordland trip, we shot somewhere in the region of 200 to 300GB of footage. One of the things I worry about constantly when travelling is losing it. You can spend days reaching a location, wait hours for wildlife to appear and sometimes capture an interaction that you may genuinely never see again. All it takes is losing or damaging a drive or memory card and that story can disappear.

Being able to bring my laptop with us, transfer footage using the equipment Verbatim provided and create backups throughout the trip gave me an enormous amount of peace of mind. Having the 100W GaN charger and USB C Multiport Hub in the kit also made it easier to keep our different devices connected and powered while we were moving between filming locations.

Instead of carrying around one copy of an irreplaceable encounter and hoping nothing happened to it, we could back footage up and begin moving it into our editing workflow while we were still travelling. It removed another bottleneck before we even got home.

The SD cards might prove just as important

Verbatim also provided us with two 256GB Pro+ 4K SDXC cards that we're going to be using across our trail cameras and Wildlife Acoustics Echo Meter Touch 5s, something I'm particularly excited about testing over summer.

 We're planning to take trail cameras and acoustic equipment into remote parts of the South Island, including locations where there have historically been reports of South Island kōkako. Projects like that can involve leaving equipment recording for long periods of time, which means having enough storage becomes incredibly important.

We've learned that lesson the hard way. During our Stewart Island expedition, one of our team members ran short of SD cards and accidentally recorded over some incredibly important footage we'd captured relating to a kākāpō track and bowl system. It was one of those mistakes you don't forget, and since then I've always worried about running out of storage while filming and being forced to choose between deleting something, overwriting something or simply stopping recording.

Having a serious supply of SD cards removes that problem. We can rotate cards, preserve the original data and keep equipment running without constantly worrying about whether we're about to overwrite something irreplaceable.

More than just storage

Perhaps the thing I've appreciated most about working with Verbatim, though, has been their enthusiasm for what we're trying to build. Growing a conservation storytelling organisation at this scale can be a strange challenge. We're constantly trying to work out how to tell more stories, reach more people and improve the quality of what we're producing without suddenly acquiring the resources of a major production company. Having a storage partner genuinely interested in helping us solve that problem has been incredibly exciting.

On our Otago and Fiordland trip, we were able to capture an enormous amount of content. More importantly, we've come home actually equipped to deal with it. I can confidently say this is probably the first major filming trip I've returned from where I haven't been dreading the post production process. For the first time, it feels achievable.

Tasks that previously delayed our production process by days or weeks are increasingly happening in the field. Footage is being transferred sooner, backups are being created sooner, editors can access content sooner and stories can be published sooner. Storage isn't necessarily the glamorous part of conservation storytelling, but when you're trying to tell hundreds of stories every year, it can be the difference between capturing a story and actually getting that story in front of people.

Verbatim has helped us close that gap, and we're incredibly proud of the stories we've already been able to produce as a result.