From atop a dusty gear room shelf, a box full of memories sends a curious writer down the rabbit hole to The Collective’s third and final film.
“Here, take a look at these,” says Darren as he hands me two flat computer hardware boxes. They feel heavier than I expected. “We should probably get this stuff back to Shandro, it’s been here for about 10 years.”
Darren McCullough is a cinematographer and the head of post-production here at Anthill Films, where I started my new job about six months ago. And while looking to new projects is the only way forward for a film studio like Anthill, I’ve found that looking back on their past work is one of my job’s most rewarding perks. Like opening this box…
I lift the lid to discover a pile of old mountain bike magazines, some that publish to this day, most that have long since been buried in the ever-growing cemetery of print publications. On top of the pile of magazines rests a plastic case with the words “1998 Winter X-Games. Andrew Shandro Clips” written in black sharpie. I open this case to find an oddly-shaped cassette. “Holy shit, it’s on Betamax,” I say to out loud to no one in particular, deflated that watching this footage may prove impossible without a relic analog player that lost the video format war to VHS more than 30 years ago.
Thumbing through the magazines, I find various articles from Andrew Shandro’s competitive (and later freeride) mountain biking heyday. It’s the first time I’ve read or seen many of these pages, but a couple of the images seem strangely familiar. Then I remembered. These images made a brief appearance in Shandro’s segment in
Seasons, the third and final film by The Collective. For those not familiar or don’t recall, The Collective was a coalition of filmmakers, athletes and photographer Sterling Lorence that produced three mountain bike movies distinct from other media houses at the time;
The Collective (2004),
Roam (2006) and finally
Seasons in 2008. When producer and co-founder Jamie Houssian decided to take his career in a different direction, it was the remaining members of The Collective, filmmakers Darcy Wittenburg, Darren McCullough and Colin Jones, that teamed up with executive producer Ian Dunn to form Anthill Films in 2009.
I crave more of these treasures, not wanting this nostalgic journey to end. Digging deeper I realize that that 2018 actually marks the 10 year anniversary of
Seasons, the final flagship title from The Collective (full disclosure: Though I hadn’t watched it in a few years,
Seasons holds a special place in my mountain bike heart and is still very much my favourite action sports movie of all time). So I’m curious to learn more, not just from the random artifacts I find lying around the office, but from the people who actually made the movie. What set it apart back in 2008? Can it still stand on its own two feet 10 years and a YouTube generation later? To get answers, I made a list of the crew and athletes who worked on
Seasons (plus a few I thought might have been influenced by it in their careers) and picked up the phone. Here’s what I found out:
| Even to this day, if someone doesn’t know anything about mountain biking, I figure Seasons is still the best thing to have them watch. You cross the whole gamut of disciplines, you’re telling a story and you can get through the whole 60 minutes of the film without too much of one thing.—Cam McCaul |
“We thought the ‘seasons’ angle was a cool theme to take the viewer through and that it would create some unique visual opportunities,” says Houssian, who heralds
Seasons as the proudest work of his film-making years. “I think what helped us do some innovative things back then was to look outside the action sports film world a little bit. At the time that world was pretty narrow, so we looked to a lot of other sources of inspiration outside of the action sports bubble, whether it was TV commercials, music videos, stuff like that.”
| “Seasons was a touchstone for me. It made me proud to be a mountain biker because there was a lot more story now being portrayed and it allowed me to see this different side of the sport. It wasn’t this YouTube society back then, we weren’t watching segments and mini-documentaries and being bombarded with them every day. When I did decide to get into film, Seasons was a reference point to what I would pursue later on—Darcy Hennessy Turenne |
| Back then (those shots) were what we called ‘manned cable cams.' It was basically me suspended in a hang gliding harness holding the camera.—Darcy Wittenburg, Director |
Thomas Vanderham, Steve Peat, Matt Hunter, Cam McCaul, Andrew Shandro, Darren Berrecloth and then-grom Stevie Smith. Rather than the usual laundry list of exotic locations and rad segments, The Collective followed these athletes throughout the winter, spring summer and fall of 2007. In their homes, on the competitive circuit and over months-long field projects. It gave a deeper insight into the lives of these riders; their stages of training, competing, celebrating (or in some cases, failing) and the simple act of riding for themselves. And while the action depicted a lot of that, it was the on-camera interviews where I felt more connected with these professional mountain bikers than ever before. Remember, this is years before you could follow them all on Instagram.
| The script and layout was always a loose boundary. They let cool things happen naturally. You didn’t have to act and pretend to be someone else or another character that’d fit into their film’s structure. They honestly documented what was real, if something funny or unfortunate happened, it made it into the film. I have a tonne of respect for that, especially now having worked with so many different crews.—Cam McCaul |
| I think in all three Collective films, there is a gradual evolution to being more documentarian without giving up the need for elements of pure shred stoke. Documentary films always have the power to engage people more when done well and they create more of a timestamp. There are so many cool and interesting moments happen in the filming process that don't make it into a project. The life of all this was worth expressing and I think that was the motivator to show more of a ‘year in the life’ approach.—Sterling Lorence |
“Part of my goal (during filming for Seasons) was to explore my own limits in terms of the size of jumps I was attempting,” recalls Vanderham. “Of all the jumps I hit in that segment, that one (where I ran out of gears) was the first. I remember cranking through all my gears and then taking one more pedal on the way in and there was nothing there. I cleared it, but at that point I went home and threw on a couple extra teeth on the front chainring.”
For the record, the shot that made the film clocked him at 78 kilometers per hour on the run-in.
| I rung my jaw off my handlebar so hard that my face swelled up like Jay Leno’s huge chin. I probably should have spent more time recovering from hitting my head, but in those days I don’t think that was such a big thing. I went back a couple months later and stomped it clean.—Matt Hunter |
Reminiscing about the golden days of lycra and flat cross-country tracks of the ‘90s always puts a smile on my face, but it was the segment shot at Shandro’s local North Shore trails that brought home the reason why so many of us ride mountain bikes in the first place. He exemplified this in one of the most powerful quotes in the film: "If I can find a time in the day to get out for a ride, even if it’s for an hour, then that turns into a pretty good day."
| The storytelling and lifestyle parts of a mountain bike movie are so critical. It brings you in as a viewer. Yeah, you’ll remember some action and some amazing tricks, but sometimes the most memorable parts are not the riding.—Andrew Shandro |
There is, of course, a gaping hole in this article - the hole left by Stevie Smith. We lost Canada’s most successful downhill mountain biker in 2016 to an off-road motorcycle accident, and if he was still here today I’m sure he would have so much to say about his first feature film appearance and the gratitude he felt towards his mom helping him achieve his dream of “one day having a Canadian stand on the podium next to Sam Hill and Steve Peat.”
| Vanderham’s scrub segment in Nicola Valley was amazing, it made me want to learn how to do that. But Stevie’s segment was also really inspiring for me, he was only a year or so older than me at the time. Seeing him be in a movie… If he was a just another local kid who could make it, I thought I could do it, too.—Casey Brown |
Seeing these riders - hailing from a gamut of disciplines - shred through the berms on Karate Monkey (and the yet-to-open-trail Ninja Cougar) made me want to do nothing other than ride the Whistler Bike Park with my friends. The A-Line train made me want to learn how to whip. And still to this day I’ll attempt (unsuccessfully) to boost the bridge like Vanderham. The Cat Empire’s song “Two Shoes” will forever be burned into my brain as the soundtrack to misty Garbanzo laps in late September.
| “When I saw the finished film I was like damn, that’s exactly what it was like to be there in Whistler. They captured and delivered it perfectly, it was so much fun to ride with all those guys I look up to. I always think about Stevie on that trip and getting to shred with that little grom (at the time). It’s one of the reasons I reflect on that trip so fondly.—Matt Hunter |
“(The Whistler segment) showed the essence of what we all hope to achieve on our mountain bikes," says Hennessey Turenne. "You’re with your friends, nothing else matters, it’s complete bliss. It was the climax of the film. An audience can only take so much emotionally powerful storytelling, so in turn, you often have to release them with levity. (The Collective) timed that levity so well, they created the tension within the film then released it with that segment. The audience was ready to smile.”
| Ten years later, and we're still smiling. Not only for what Seasons represented then, but the legacy that influenced action sports filmmakers to this very day. As Anthill dives into a busy summer filming schedule for their upcoming film Return to Earth, The Collective's final work still resonates a decade on.—Darcy Wittenburg, Director |
Happy anniversary,
Seasons.
Seeing Stevie shred hard will live in the memory, R.I.P!
Jokes aside, The Collective marked a new beginning in the way films were made. They began to have a structure, while still maintaining that freshness in depicting its characters Cam talks about. The Whistler segment still puts a smile in my face every time I watch it, and led me to discover The Cat Empire. That's just the cherry on top.
As for favourite segments, Sam Hill and Stevie dust-roosting while rocking out to Pennywise's peaceful day was just awesome.
Whenever a new mtb movie comes out, those three movies are what I compare it to.
Reading this article I realize I never actually watched SEASONS in one complete session so that's what I'll do tonight :-)
Now I'll go watch this amazing movie again, this time with my kids