What do we do next? That’s the question we always ask ourselves after every film we’ve made and post-“Seasons” we were faced the same ‘ol dilemma. This time it came with a twist though, our producer (Jamie Houssian/The Collective) had confirmed rumblings throughout the film that he had plans to go back to school to pursue an MBA. Although we were stoked for Jamie, this made us scratch our heads and reflect on what we’ve achieved with the Collective and what we’d still like to do to progress our filmmaking. After many brainstorming sessions between Darren, Jonathan, CJ, Sterling and myself it became obvious that a new company was in the works. Starting fresh gave us the opportunity to build on what we created with The Collective with the freedom to reinvent ourselves and evolve our style. Anyone who has started a new company can appreciate the sheer volume of work that goes into this, not to mention wrapping peoples heads around the fact that we’re basically the same group of dudes… just slightly different, but still kinda the same, but different!
Professional advice was needed - enter long time riding buddy Ian Dunn who was Tourism Whistler’s Director of Marketing at the time. After picking his brain for months it occurred to me one night over beers that maybe he should quit his job and come work with us instead. This was one of those lobs that you toss out there half joking because you’re not sure how the other person will react. Well… I guess Ian didn’t know I was half joking because he quit his job the next day. With the final piece to the puzzle in place, Anthill was born.
Anthill is one of those names you have to explain to people. There’s a couple underlying meanings to it, but the one I like the best is that it actually reflects the design of our company pretty well. Everything we do is collaborative, we each have our roles but at the end of the day we pool our labor and creativity together for the greater good of the crew. It’s simple but it works. Here’s hoping everybody out there enjoys the fruits of our labour.
~ Darcy