ShAFF 2021: Young Adventurers 1

24 Leeches 10 minutes

24 Leeches is a camping story told by my son Josiah when he was 8 years old. The film takes place during a 10-day canoeing and camping trip to the Slate Islands of Ontario, Canada on Lake Superior. It was scripted from campfire conversations that we shared during this and other trips. In August 2019 I lost my sweet boy to a fungal brain infection contracted during treatment for leukemia. He was 10 years old. This project has now become a memorial to my best friend and adventure buddy, a very special kid that is missed dearly. I ache to know what he would have become.

A Mile With May 11 minutes

May and I head off on a slow, tooled-up, distracted lap of the block- which happens to be a perfect mile. Seated within the wide, book and plum filled bucket of a wheelbarrow, May and I check on the trees from A Mile an Hour, do a few nice things for the neighbours (it’s Christmas!), whack weeds, pick up rubbish, pick up sticks, eat plums and generally have a good time. What you might think to be an episode of Beau teaching May is in fact very much a process of May teaching Beau- looking at the world closely, distracted, with immediacy- which is fast becoming his key ingredients of Backyard adventuring.

A very short guide to Union Glacier Camp 5 minutes

Union Glacier camp is a seasonal, remote field camp in West Antarctica. It is one of my favourite places in the world, due largely to the wonderful people that run and pass through the camp. I have been lucky enough to work there several times, and this film is a very short guide to the camp and some of the people who work there.

Charge 2 4 minutes

We took five top freeskiers and a World Champion drone pilot to Mustang Powder Cat Skiing in BC for one week. Their instructions: charge as hard as you can. Featuring Stan Rey Leah Evans Alexi Godbout Josh Daiek Drew Petersen

Climb Your Dreams 2 minutes

A climber falls asleep on the subway and awakes in the rugged paradise of his own daydream.

Freedom Of The Moors 7 minutes

Produced by Lancashire based Northern Heart Films in collaboration with theatre group Beggars Belief Collective the entire cast was made up of local young actors from Runshaw College. The film was also directed by Scott Bradley from Blackburn and produced by Natasha Hawthornthwaite from Darwen, so the film is a truly home made production. The film was funded locally and specifically created to be included in the The National Lottery Heritage Fund bid to restore the magnificent tower to it’s former glory. The bid was initially rejected but emulating the stubborn determination of Darwen’s forbearers the funding was eventually secured, ensuring the tower will be around for many generations to come.

From The Ash 4 minutes

When shooting action sports I always try to inject a broader theme, something that connects deeper then what the athlete is doing on the surface. For me the core of this project revolves around the idea of pushing forward when the world seemingly crumbles around you. That even when the road ahead may look bleak, to push on, to put one foot in front of the other. Charles Bukowski has this quote I like, “what matters most is how well you walk through the fire”. 2020 was one of those years that has shown that a lot of hardships in life are often events that are totally out of our control, that the only real control we have is how to decide to pick up the pieces, how we carry on through hardship. In a weird sense of irony, the struggles of making From The Ash, made me truly practice what I am preaching. We had multiple struggles with weather forcing expensive reshoots and as we went into post production the pandemic hit. This caused a major sponsor to dropout as their factory had to close due to COVID and left me to personally finance a large part of the project while also under the financial distress of not working due to COVID. There were so many times the completion of this project literally hung on by a thread and often I wondered if it was really worth it to push past the obstacles and complete it. Ultimately the answer is “yes it was worth it”. The struggle of making this film has made me grow in ways that in the end has helped me become better at my craft. Many years ago I was filming in a forest that had recently been scorched by a wildfire. As we were filming, a low fog rolled in and enveloped the forest. It was one of the most haunting and striking scenes I had ever seen. There was something so graphic about seeing these blackened trees silhouetted against this cold monochromatic backdrop. It stuck with me, for a lack of a better word I was haunted by it and always wanted to recreate the feeling it gave me, 15 years later I was in New Mexico to film From the Ash. Even though the underlying theme of this project is about perseverance, at the forefront is the destructive power of wildfires. In May of 2018 the Ute Park wildfire burnt 36,740 acres; a large swath of it was on the Philmont Scout Ranch. Thank you to the Boy Scouts of America for allowing us to film on location at Philmont. Everything was shot in a controlled setting on private land during the winter in a recently scorched wildfire area. The crew was under the supervision of forestry professionals to ensure everything was executed safely. There wasn’t a single live tree touched throughout our entire production. Thank you to the men and women who put their lives at risk fighting real wildfires around the world. Please be responsible this wildfire season.

Kayaking at 100kmh On Snow! 5 minutes

Watch in awe as Spanish kayaker Aniol Serrasolses descends more than 25 kilometers by kayak from Chile's snowy Volcano summit in the Araucanía region, through a forest culminating into a lake where he also manages to pull off the world’s first world’s first double kickflip on a kayak!

Lonely Backside Wheel 2 minutes

What is this thing???

It's a triathlon themed zoetrope powered by a psychotic cyclist..... I shall name it...

THE CYCOTROPE

Skywalking 2 minutes

Who has never dreamed of sky walking...