When Christopher Scott Avery and his brothers come home to shoot Feel Good Lost in Cowichan Bay next month, their new labour of love will be worlds away from their last small-scale project.
“With that series, it was the audience that dictated what we were putting out,” said Avery, recalling the astonishing success of Convos With My 2-Year-Old, the amusingly absurd online video they produced in which actor Matthew Clarke re-enacts silly conversations with Coco, his two-year-old daughter portrayed with bizarrely comic results by a grown man (David Milchard) wearing underwear.
The video went viral, garnering 10.5 million views on YouTube at last count, spawned a web series and thrust Warmland Films, their Vancouver-based collective of artists, musicians and filmmakers, into the global limelight when it was featured on CNN, Gawker, Time, The New York Daily News and more.
“That was almost scary because suddenly we weren’t creating for ourselves, but now we’re doing something for ourselves again,” recalled Avery, 29, who formed Warmland Films eight years ago with brother Sean, 31, and younger brother David, 24. They were inspired by the achievements their father, Cameron Avery, the former Kaleidoscope Theatre technical director who ran Cruz Studios here in the 1990s.
The Avery brothers and Darshan Rickhi, their Warmland Films partner who directed Convos, were in Cowichan over the weekend for production meetings, location scouting and casting of local talent for the short film about a young man who returns to his small coastal hometown from the big city to pick up the deed to the sailboat his just-deceased father has left him.
“He embarks on a journey of self-discovery,” Avery explains. “It forces him to face the demons of his past, and in doing so he falls in love with the place where he grew up.”
The film’s premise hits close to home to some degree for the Vancouver Island-raised siblings, says Avery who, like his father who motivated him to create the short, is an avid sailor.
“My dad said: ‘You know, we should do this project on a sailboat,’” recalls Avery. “I started writing that night and within 36 hours I had my first draft.”
The partners, whose mission is to “create experiences that enlighten lives” through productions including music and corporate videos and documentaries, is also using Feel Good Lost to generate interest in a feature film they hope to shoot here next year.
“It’s a way for us to return to our roots, to explore our own backyard,” says Avery, who is working with groups such as the Vancouver Island Film and Entertainment Co-op.
“We’re getting involved with the community to make it happen. We’ve started to make connections working over here and we’re looking to build relationships in Cowichan.”
As the Warmland Films team builds local partnerships on production aspects such as accommodation and crafts services and seeks assistance with financing and sponsorships for their 20-minute film with a cast and crew of 20, they’ve realized how many in the close-knit seaside community have had similar experiences.
“The more we spoke to people in Cowichan Bay, the more we realized how real our story was,” he said. “Someone said: ‘Hey, that’s Jim’s story down the way.’ It’s been all too perfect.”
Their other objective is to use the film to promote Vancouver Island by highlighting its characters and natural assets.
“We’re shooting the Island as the Island,” Avery said. “We’re not trying to masquerade it as California or Lake Placid.”
Online: warmlandfilms.com
