When this whole incident about Travis Haley vs. Panteao Productions, and the “Did he or did he not ND?” drama began late last week, I started working on a post about it all, but I wanted to see if more facts emerged.
I watched the meme’s come out, the edited videos, the responses both from Haley Strategic as well as Panteao Productions.

Some other client work took priority over the weekend, and I thought I would finish the article today.

And then I saw that Soldier Systems Daily published a lengthy recap of the situation on their site (Great job by the way!)…and I decided to focus on some other key points instead.

Here’s my take. I don’t give a damn about the ND. I don’t care about who is right. What I care about is the bullshit spin and the unprofessionalism on both sides. (Man oh man, this is going to get me in hot water)

“Granted, this whole situation would have been avoided had the video not made its way into the wild” – was one of the quotes by SSD. I could not possibly agree more.

The absolute biggest mistake that was made in this ENTIRE mess was the fact that Panteao PUBLISHED this video to a SOCIAL NETWORK in the first place. They did not keep it internal to their team as they claimed. They posted it on arguably the largest social video sharing site on the planet. And left it unguarded.

“The video in question was not posted by Panteao for public consumption, and more importantly, was never intended to be seen externally. It was unlisted on our YouTube Channel, and was designated for in-house training purposes,” was the quote that Panteao used in the “official response.”

Using the “unpublished link” function of YouTube and hoping videos do not get seen is the same as running a meth-production house, but hope that no tweaker ever shares your address. Eventually you will be discovered. Unlisted does not mean guarded. Using the PRIVATE function of YouTube protects the content and only people that YOU DESIGNATE via email address can access the video. And even that is a shitty security solution.

The best thing Panteao could have done was to NEVER post this on the internet in the first place.

There are many readily available tools to be able to store the footage and use it for training purposes “internally”. But even then, why not just archive the footage? Why not realize that this could potentially harm a client and just bury it? How about just having a meeting with your employees saying “Hey, here’s what we learned from this incident, and here are our policies going forward.” Publishing to YouTube is just begging for this type of scenario to occur.

If there was a prior falling out between the two companies, and videos were removed from Panteao’s site, why would they not also remove all of the HSP material from YouTube?

If you are a video maker, your clients deserve professionalism at every turn even if they are no longer your client. I have a lot of material from a lot of clients and if I flag something as potentially or even remotely harmful, I work with the clients to determine if it’s something they want published or not. If not, BOOM, it’s gone. Most of the time it winds up archived, never to see the light of day.

Some may read this and think that I have it out for Panteao Productions, since we play in the same space. I do not. There is plenty of room for folks to make training videos in this business. They are not on my radar.

I asked a few other film makers that are outside of the firearms industry about this situation (I gave them the quick facts)…they all came to the same conclusion: either A) It was intentionally leaked to harm HSP or B) it should never have been on YouTube in the first place. Some even said, “If that happened with some of my clients, I would never work again.”

I am not going to debate the antics that occurred afterward, with response after response coming out on social media. To me, both sides are behaving poorly. There is no need to carry out conversations on social media that should be handled face to face, regardless of how well written your canned response appears to be. It gets neither side closer to resolution and it just becomes fuel for articles like this.

The OTHER thing I noticed was just how quickly many channels jumped into the fray and escalated the situation.

I saw edited videos, mashing up Panteao’s copyrighted content with other copyrighted content from other artists. That’s just a whole ‘nother level of litigation waiting to happen.
How about NOT going for the quick joke? How about NOT using video (or music) that you do not have the rights to? How about understanding professionalism? How about spending that energy trying to lift the industry UP instead of kicking it down?

Once again, we are fostering divisiveness within this business, feeding on the still-warm bodies of former partners, and creating hate-filled troll groups that incessantly attack each other for the simple pleasure of watching others wallow in disgrace.

Matt Jacques says something that I repeat as often as I can: “There is a reason this is called an industry and not a community.”
My disgust with this whole business has reached an all time high.