Anthill Films

Goodbye Collective?

Words by Cam McRae.
Date: 2008-11-21

After three very successful films the team we've come to know as The Collective won't be putting a film in your player in the near future.  Jamie Houssian - the co-founder of The Collective with Darcy Wittenburg - has gone back to University and he's taking the name with him.  That left the rest of the crew to start a new company and continue where Seasons left off.  Their first mountain bike release is scheduled for release in April 2010 - but I'm sure it'll be worth the wait.

Here's a portion of an interview I did with Darcy about the birth of Anthill.

"We all knew Jamie had plans to go back to school after Seasons so we saw this as a great opportunity to start something new and take a fresh approach to everything we do. We are all proud of everything we’ve done with The Collective but having a new company gives us a certain creative freedom to evolve our style. From the beginning Jamie and I always talked about not doing a long line of films numbered 1 through whatever. Our feeling is anytime you have a series of productions under the same title with numbers 1,2,3,4,5, etc you develop a type cast for that company the same way an actor would every time they play the same character. Our goal is not to step completely away from the style we created with the collective but rather to develop it and take it to another level. To capitalize on what we have achieved in the past and add new dimensions. We want Anthill to be around for a long time and be versatile. So this first film will take 2 years, maybe the next one will as well or maybe we’ll do a team video or a short 4 month thing on one rider or a trip. We want to keep our viewers guessing so they don’t ever get locked into a routine."

Head over to AnthillFilms.com to have a look at the crew bios and the sweet demo reel they've put together.