SteakTrade Sunday · No. 1
Before the Light
A short film for anyone who was up at four because something out there was hungry. Forty-six seconds. The words are ours, the voice is ours, the music is ours — and the sound is free for you to use over footage of your own place.
Every Sunday at midnight we put out a short film. No numbers in it, nothing to buy, nothing about us. This is the first one.
It exists because most of what gets made about ranching is made by people looking at it from the road. The hour before light is not photogenic and nobody is there to see it, which is exactly why it is the part worth saying something about.
The Text
Before the light, there is the sound of it. A gate. A bucket. Your own boots on frozen ground.
Nobody's watching. That's the point.
The cattle don't care what the market did yesterday. They're hungry, and you're the one who came.
There is a kind of man the land makes. Not louder. Quieter.
He learns the work doesn't end. It turns over. And that this is mercy, not sentence.
The sun comes up the way it always has, without asking whether you were ready.
You were ready. You have been ready since four.
The horse shifts. Steam comes off his back.
And you stand there a minute, because it is yours, and because it is beautiful, and because tomorrow you will do it again.
The Sound Is Yours
Written, read and scored by us, which is not a boast — it is the reason we can say the next part.
Take the audio. Put it over footage of your own place. You do not need to ask, and there is nothing to credit.
On Instagram the film posts as original audio, so the sound has its own page and anyone can lift it in two taps. If you use it, tag us so we can see your country. That is the whole of what we want out of this.
There is no ranch in the film and no brand in the words on purpose. A piece of music with a sales pitch buried in it is a piece of music nobody uses twice.
The engraving, the narration and the music were all made for this film and are original to it. Nothing in it is quoted from another writer, and no part of it is licensed from anyone. A new one goes out every Sunday at midnight, Central time.