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Words by Kevin Landry & Taylor Loughran
Photos by Dave Hord & Dave Mackie
123 Archibald Way, Whistler, British Columbia, Canada.
The location of the art barn, and the beginning of the middle of this story, which would be like skipping to Temple of Doom or Back to the Future 2. However Our Raiders of the Lost Ark, or Back To The Future 1, is way to convoluted of a story for this article, so here are the Cole’s Notes:
The crew, at that time consisted of, Taylor Lougran (filmer), Pat Henry (filmer), Kevin Landry (rider), Ross Mcmaster (rider), Jordie Lepage (bmx rider and photographer), Jon Fry (bmx/mtb rider), Kyle Stratichuk (bmx/mtb rider, Mark Woodward and Chris Rasman (both young budding pro snowboarders). We had all met and become good friends in various places throughout the last few years and found ourselves living together in Whistler.
The art barn itself, the actual physical structure was a house which we essentially inherited from a group of infamous whistler snowboard shredders and film makers. These guys had lived hard, rode hard and partied hard in the place for several years and during that time made several standout snowboard films under the Gnarcore moniker. Springtime in the mountains is the end of fresh snow and cold temperatures, and beginning of the thaw, Whistler’s human population is no different and most dedicated snowboarders and skiers follow the snow down south, or get to work saving for the next winter season. The snowboarders which inhabited the art barn did a combination of things, with the end result being an empty house in Whistler, close to a lake, with ample bike storage and plenty of space for dirt bag mountain bikers.
That summer our goal while living together was to create a mountain bike movie out of our experience, this quickly lead to the realization that to produce a mountain bike film you need a free summer and a large amount of funding. The former never comes without the ladder, and we all ended up getting full time jobs, which took up the majority of our free time. We still had a great summer, riding and filming almost every day, with as many different friends or couch dwellers as we could. We started building really creative lines and learned so much about filming, editing and the entire creative process. By September we had produced a teaser, a production timeline and a plot summary for the movie and headed to Interbike. We distributed over 100 DVDs of the teaser, with the goal of soliciting sponsors to help us fund the next stage of production slated for next summer. Standing, almost awestruck in the busy tradeshow in Las Vegas, we realized we knew very little about the business side of filmmaking, and while everyone loved our teaser we couldn’t get any sponsors to pull the proverbial trigger.
Fall was quickly becoming a big winter with lots of early snowfall that was accumulating in the high alpine. Mountain bikers, like their snowboard counterpart scatter when the snow falls, chasing an endless summer south to New Zealand or Australia or working and saving for the next summer. Pat headed to Vancouver to start film school, while Ross moved into a place with his then girlfriend, now wife. Kevin headed to the interior, then to work in Northern Alberta with a final destination of New Zealand to catch the last bit of summer. Taylor headed to Squamish to work for Alterna Action films as their principal cinematographer. Chris and Mark were only interested in the winter from the beginning and salivating at the mere thought of pow slashes. Jordie, Kyle and Fry also stayed in the Art Barn to ride snow that winter, and are still living there today.
It was around this time that high quality, self produced mountain bike movies, distributed through online magazines and internet forums were becoming almost as powerful as DVDs. Internet movies allowed you to reach as many people as a traditional DVD would but at a fraction of the price to produce. The added bonus was that your movie was viewed worldwide by your peers; only really core riders would be keen enough to search out mountain bike videos online. Aunty Selma was not buying these films for her nephew in Flordia that liked to ride scooters.
We had the technology and started filming, producing and distributing web videos. This led to another eventful summer, from a new home base in Squamish B.C. Taylor was still in Squamish, and had a spare room so Kevin ended up there after coming home from Queenstown. Ross and Laura moved down into a bus they were renovating into a home. Pat had finished film school, stayed in Vancouver and was working in the cities’ film industry. New riders joined the crew, with Paul Stevens coming down from Whistler to ride and film. Squamish residents Chad Hendren, Jeremey Norris and Craig Bullin begin filming, building and working on web edits as well. Craig’s film brought him and Taylor back to his hometown of Graves End, in the U.K. and over to France for the Masters world Championship. Derek Chambers of Nelson B.C. stayed in Squamish filming with us for a month and produced a great edit. Harley Hensgin of Portland also stayed with us and put out several web edits in that time. Kevin and Ross were both filming web edits with Taylor as well as building and filming for the Collective alongside Richie Schley. They also found some work building lines for Freeride Entertainment and sculpting Whistler’s slopestyle course.
It was through this switch to web videos that we learned two essential elements of our production style, the first being to ‘Do it yourself’. If it needed to be built, we built it, if we had to camp in the alpine for several days, we got out the bivy bags, if we had to come back to the same spot six times until the elements matched up perfectly, we did. We wanted to utilize cable cam shots so we bought the gear and through trial and error figured out how to do a variety of cable shots. One technical cable cam in Cat Lake took over a week to rig up, dial in, shoot, what for weather, shoot, rig down. For the aspects we could not master, we met likeminded people along the way who had mastered those skills and brought them in house. This is how we met Justin Hannewyk who was behind Precip Productions, a Whistler based web Media Company. Justin had the skills to take our web videos into a new realm of production quality, the computer savvy to distribute them more effectively and the work ethic to do so. He also was proficient with a camera and dolly rig and was an excellent producer. The web video made by Kevin, Taylor and Justin has won Best Cinematography at the WAFF International Adventure Film Festival and website PinkBike.com selected it as web video of the year. It was through this collaboration with Justin and Precip Productions we discovered the other essential aspect of our production philosophy which was to involve as many talented people as possible. This allows us to have many different perspectives on the story being told in each film, which in our opinion creates a richer more developed film.
Our new project is Titled ‘You Like This’ {please format from facebook, including thumbs up symbol} and is a collaboration with many of the people mentioned and several eager new faces. It is a full web film, essentially accomplishing our goal of creating a full length movie while utilizing our current perspective. It will be done when it is done, and the storyline will develop from its actual production, rather then adhering to a pre-written, contrived plot. We can say however that everyone has been busy; Taylor, Jeremy, Paul and Chad have been building hard in a spectacular zone. Kevin, Andrew Tiet, Triple Pat, Taylor and Chad have been developing new big mountain lines in an area once seen in Ride to the Hills (if Ride to the Hills was on DVD you could check out the spot). Paul has also been busy filming a web segment in Squamish as well as building some very creative lines in Whistler. Plans are in motion to film on some big alpine trail rides as soon as the snow melts and to get high in the mountains with our downhill bikes. Todd Hellinga has found a way to capture the essence of two wheeled adventure, most likely due to many miles in the saddle, and many photos taken. He has been exploring and scouting several new zones and will be working with us as a photographer and rider. Whistler residents Seb Kemp and the infamous Len Hornridge have been keen to shoot, so expect some slaying from them. We will be filming in more locations then just boring old Squamish, including Garibaldi Highlands with Miranda Miller, Valleycliffe and Pair of Dice mines.
Doc Brown once said ‘Where we are going, we don’t need roads’ which really has nothing to do with the production of our film, but is a great quote. Stay tuned to Freehub media, PinkBike.com, the Banshee Bikes blog, ArtBarnFilm blog and the Raceface riders blog for photos updates and stories from filming.
There have been so many people who have been seen through the lenses of Art Barn Film, if only for a few frames. Ether fellow rider, filmmaker or character have helped shaped the perspective of Art Barn Film and these people, in no particular order are: Matt Juhasz, Stu Baxter, Mike Metzger, Mason Mashon, Grant Brashers, Harley Hensign, Ginger Si, Seb Kemp, Dylan Wolsky, Todd Hellinga, Katrina Strand, Jon Hadfield, Cheekeye the Dog, Dave Hord, Brain Starkey, Matt Beardmore, Keith Martin, Dave Roulou, Timberr, Brandon Watts, Brad Bethune, Evan Schwartz, Chris Winter, John Scarth, Jeremy Schabb, Darcy Whittenburg, Colin Jones, Brett Tippie
