Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

The Recollective

Looking back and ahead with mountain bike filmmaker Jamie Houssian
j-houssian

By Shelley Arnusch

With its lyric flow and gorgeous 16 mm cinematography, mountain bike film The Collective has won acclaim and fans all over the world since its release last summer.

More than mere eye candy, more than the incessant and ultimately unsatisfying huckflicks known to aficionados of the genre as “bike porn,” The Collective made use of an impressive budget and seasoned crew to tap into the soulful aspect of freeriding, the majority of which was filmed in B.C., including segments in Whistler.

On the eve of the film’s outdoor screening at Lost Lake Park as part of this year’s Crankworx festival, Pique’s Shelley Arnusch caught up with Jamie Houssian, the film’s producer and a founding member of the production house that now flies under the name The Collective in Vancouver for a ‘recollective’ session on his influential work.

 

PIQUE: The Collective has a definite surf-inspired look and feel to it. Considering many in the action sports industry consider the surf industry to be the leader, and that you studied film in California, was this an influence?

Jamie Houssian: “We tried to get inspiration from a lot of the action sports movies out there. Definitely the surf films that have a more mellow vibe to them, that dive into the characters and the places and the environment. The environment was a big part of what we wanted to do. Some of the more soulful surf films pay homage to the environment that they’re in — the beauty of the ocean and the waves. Likewise, when we’d go on our shoots, we’d get into some pretty amazing locations and we wanted to make that one of the characters in the movie as well.”

 

PIQUE: What other sports influenced the film?

JH: “A couple skateboard films out there that have some really cool cinematography. Skateboard and snowboard films — those would be the two main sports.”

 

PIQUE: The Collective seems to be your stand against the mainstream construct of ‘X-treme’ sports. Was that something you were trying to put forward?

JH: “I’d say that stems from the fact that we were trying to represent mountain biking for what we see the sport as. Everybody involved in making the film, (co-producer/director) Darcy (Wittenburg) and I, as well as (senior photographer/creative advisor) Sterling Lorence and a big part of our crew, we’ve all been mountain biking for our whole lives pretty much. We see some of the stuff out there in the action sports film world as not really reflecting the reality of the core feeling you get when you go out for a ride with your buddies. For us, getting away from what you might call the industry norm wasn’t a conscious decision to do it differently, it was a conscious decision to reflect what the sport meant to us.”

 

PIQUE: Here in Whistler it seems like freeride mountain biking is an incredibly prolific activity but outside places like Whistler it’s still pretty obscure. What kind of response did the film get outside the mountain biking community?

JH: “We were definitely impressed with the geographical scope the film achieved. With the power of websites and trailers online and selling the DVD off of our website we get e-mails from people from all over the place… Some that come to mind are Peru, Russia, Poland, Korea, places where we don’t have the distribution model to make an impact. I can’t say we sell a ton of movies there, but it’s kind of cool that people track it down on the web.

“As far as looking (back) a year at where the film’s been, one of the most interesting things for us was the involvement in different festivals — something we didn’t know would happen from the start but has really taken off.”

 

PIQUE: You were part of the Banff International Mountain Film Festival in 2004.

JH: “Yeah, Banff was cool. As a festival it’s off in its own right, but we had a short version of the film that played in the Banff Festival world tour. So that was a cool thing for us to be a part of because it puts the film in front of an audience that might not otherwise hear about the film or have a chance to see the film. I think it had over 100 screenings all over the world. It’s one of those things you can’t really know about in advance since we didn’t know if we were going to get in or if we would be included in the tour. The different people that organized each local venue seemed to like it because each venue is given a choice from a pool of films and it got some good airtime.

“We also got invited to X-Dance in Utah, (an independent film festival that runs during the Sundance Film Festival). So that was a good time. I got to go down there, got some skiing in, went to introduce ( The Collective ) and checked out some Sundance films, which was unbelievable.”

 

PIQUE: Are you drawn to filming core activities that have a touch of obscurity to them?

JH: “I think it would be fair to say for both Darcy and I — he makes snowboard films and I made an Ultimate film ( I Bleed Black ) — to make the kind of films we make obviously the passion for the actual subject needs to be there. I just like to make films about what I like to do.”

 

PIQUE: What’s your favourite segment of The Collective ?

JH: “I’ll diplomatically skirt around that question! Honestly, one of my favourite things about the film is hearing the responses of different people. Not even favourite segments, but people actually giving us feedback on different shots. That was something I totally didn’t expect. I expected to hear people saying they liked that trip to Utah, or that segment from the Chilcotins, but I never imagined people would be like: ‘that one shot where this guy is doing this.’ That’s really cool to know people are interested and stoked enough on the film to say things like that. Honestly, I don’t know that I have a favourite. It’s really mood dependent. If I’m kickin’ back and chill, I might want to watch a guy riding some singletrack. If I’m about to go out for a ride, I might want to watch the (B.C.) Interior section with Matt Hunter and Steve Romaniuk and get all fired up.”

 

PIQUE: Filmmaking is a lot more accessible now with digital video and affordable computer editing software and people are pumping out bike porn and huck films in all the action sports. Is the market saturated?

JH: “It’s not ideal for us. There’s a lot of people out there doing it. Some people are out there taking it seriously and trying to have a legitimate crack at it, but they’re ultimately doing it just for fun and kind of testing the waters, whereas we’re trying to operate a business around making mountain bike films. I don’t think the market is saturated though. There are a lot of films, but I think because with the majority of the films people aren’t necessarily counting on those films to put food on their table, from a business perspective it doesn’t necessarily hurt us. And from the sport’s perspective it’s good because it’s challenging us to make sure we’re staying on top of it.”

 

PIQUE: “Does it bother you if people check out bike porn and automatically give your film the same consideration?”

JH: “There’s a pro and a con to that. The con being that having less well-produced films out there, films that don’t have the budget and the resources and the professionalism and all the time and energy put into them, certain people will say, ‘I’m not going to that premiere, or I’m not going to spend my $30 on that DVD because I’ve seen one, I’ve seen them all.’ That’s the biggest downfall. On the positive side, people who do see our film seem to think that it stands out from the crowd.”

 

PIQUE: What advice would you give to filmmakers who are inspired by The Collective but don’t have the same budget or resources?

JH: “I would say if you really want to get into (filmmaking) you need to realize a lot goes into it behind the scenes that you don’t initially see. You have to pay attention to the details and you have to really challenge yourself to be different. Put little things into the film that are things that haven’t been done before. That really pays off from the viewer’s perspective. The viewers appreciate things they haven’t seen before. The fact is, every year there’s 10 new films that come up so you’ve got to do something that hasn’t been done before.”

 

PIQUE: What new projects do you have on the go?

JH: “We’re in full production phase right now (Houssian, Wittenburg and the riders and crew that work under the banner name The Collective) on a new mountain bike film called Roam . It started shooting in April and it’s going to be released in the spring next year.”

 

PIQUE: Is it going to be similar to The Collective ? A radical departure?

JH: “That’s a question we’re working on right now. It’s a constant battle between trying to do something different but not abandoning what made our first film successful. We definitely want to maintain elements of our style but it’s going to be a different film.”

 

PIQUE: With the 2010 Olympic Games approaching there’s new attention paid to arts legacies in this area and using the arts, such as film, to tell Whistler’s stories for the international audience. Since The Collective has a huge Whistler component, would you consider the film a Whistler legacy in that regard?

JH: “I wouldn’t call it a legacy; I don’t want to give myself that much credit. I think moreso what we’re doing is we’re telling the story of the athletes here in B.C. and obviously Whistler plays a big role. For The Collective pretty much every athlete is from B.C. I’d like to think we captured one slice of what makes B.C. special. The timing’s been good for us because the mountain bike industry is realizing that Whistler is at the forefront of a lot of things. With our first film we were able to capture some of the people and the places right when they were really starting to go off.”

 

PIQUE: What do you hope people are saying about The Collective in 20 years?

JH: “Some people have told us they’ve seen things in a second viewing or third viewing they didn’t see the first time, so I guess from that perspective I hope people continue to get entertained by it. It’s hard in the action sports film world because sports change and style changes and fashions change, so it’s hard for a film to maintain longevity. So I hope that people who have the DVD on their shelf continue to be entertained watching it.”

 

PIQUE: What do you hope people are saying about Jamie Houssian in 20 years?

JH: “Hopefully they’re not still talking about The Collective because that would mean I hadn’t done much in the next 20 years.”

 

The Collective screens tonight (Thursday, Aug. 4) under the stars at Lost Lake Park as a special Crankworx edition of the weekly Lunafliks film series presented by LUNA— an organization that provides nighttime activities for young adults as an alternative to the bar and club scene. Also screening is Rampage 4 — Freeride Entertainment’s brand new hi-definition film about the 2004 Red Bull Rampage invitational in Utah. Admission is $5 with a discount for LUNA members. A WAVE shuttle between the Whistler Gondola Exchange and Lost Lake Park will run for 50 cents each way. The film screens at dusk (10 p.m.). For information go to www.lunawhistler.com.