Scott Bell
Intro
Scott Bell wholeheartedly invests himself into projects with incredible execution, examples of which extend far beyond just his stunning filmmaking. This is all done with the unselfish drive of inspiring others to make our world a better place. His quest to push people to create a better world comes from a deep love of nature and a history in organic farming. Pun intended, we could all take a leaf out of Scott’s book.
Words by Dave Flawse.
Photos by Jarrett Lindal.
Camera in hand, Scott Bell crouches trailside. Towering above him is a massive double over a 15-foot-tall stump. Professional Mountain Biker Mark Matthews takes one last look before pushing his bike uphill to hit it for the first time. Bell does his best not to show his apprehension, not wanting to disrupt the athlete’s focus.
“Okay!” Matthews yells through the rainforest a short time later. Bell hits record.
The forest is silent except for tires rolling off the jump’s lip. “Whoa!” yells Matthews in midair. He hurls his bike to the side. Bell watches him overshoot and land in a heap. All Bell wants to do is run over and see if he’s okay, but he has to tell himself to keep rolling, that a few seconds won’t change the situation.
Matthews launched 20ft in the air to flat, but thankfully isn’t injured. Bell lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.
*
One year later, Bell’s tall frame is tucked into a picnic table bench at a café patio downtown Courtenay, BC. He wears a flat cap and recalls Matthews’s reaction to the crash, a slight smile and head shake betraying a recognition how badly it could have gone. “It’s one of the rawest moments I’ve ever shot on camera,” says Bell.
Bell likes to position himself at a jump’s landing on first hits because, success or failure, candid moments are what matter to him; he strives to tell a good story and get people thinking.
He never imagined he’d be here four years ago while pulling weeds in a field. He has a degree in Agroecology from the University of British Columbia and farmed for over a decade, eventually becoming the manager of an established organic farm on Vancouver Island, BC.
Evidence of his early interest in botany could be found thriving in his childhood closet where he nurtured a substantial plant collection while his parents nurtured in Scott another trait—a desire to make the world a better place.
They led by example with kindnesses like initiating a community recycling program in the Michigan town where he grew up. “At the time it was a very progressive thing to be doing,” says Bell.
His outdoorsy parents showed him a love for nature too. They lived in the country, and Bell roamed around the bush searching for snakes and hammering nails into forts. “I recognize the value being in nature brings to somebody’s life,” he says.
In farming, he found a way to combine his love for plants and helping people by providing sustainable, healthy food. After a time however, he recognized the limitation of his influence. “I could only affect maybe 100 people,” he says. “Whereas in filmmaking my reach could be much broader.”
Looking for that perfect shot for Changing seasons.
Much like a plant under his care, Bell’s filmmaking career started as a seed with a hobbyist’s interest in videography before exploding three short years later into shooting films for professional mountain bikers and an audience in the 100k range.
His break-through gig was a shoot for the Cumberland Community Forest—335-hectares of lush mountainside in Cumberland, BC—where he captured water dripping off moss and fern spores floating in shafts of sunlight.
“The community really loved seeing the beauty of the forest that surrounded them,” he says, “and it got heavily shared online which got my name in front of a lot of people.”
An opportunity to film action sports came to Bell when Matthews needed a videographer. “We hit it off right away,” says Bell.
Bell and Matthews review the footage.
Matthews rides at high speeds and with acute precision. To match, Bell strives for accuracy and calls himself a “systems guy” whose organizational skills border on the obsessive.
“He knows what he wants and knows how to get it,” says Jarrett Lindal, a photographer who worked with Bell and Mathews on Changing Seasons. During that project, he says Bell spent an entire day just to get one cable-cam shot perfect and adds, “it’s cool to see someone so organized but also so creative.”
Bell uses these skills to bring story telling into mountain biking whenever he can. “I see room for more documentary style mountain bike films,” says Bell. “I want to create something with more longevity. Content that will create bigger conversations.”
When discussing shreddits (a filming term combining shred and edit where riding is the main focus) Bell says it’s cool to show athleticism and must-watch moments, “but you’re not going to change the way people think with a shreddit. To communicate a message, you’re going to have to add some amount of story to it. I think that’s what has pushed me in that direction.”
His film, Blueprint, a short documentary about trail building, puts storytelling at the forefront. “I wanted to show how creative trail builders are,” says Bell. “To show people that building trails is like artwork. The shovel is like the paintbrush.”
However, shreddits seem to garner more views—an important metric when views equate to feeding yourself—and they’re simpler to film. Bell’s, Changing Seasons, a film he describes as a shreddit, doubled Blueprint’s views.
“Changing Seasons took 10 days to shoot,” says Bell. “While Blueprint took a year.”
Bell capturing Gavin Mclean in his film 'The Local's Classic.
Bell is optimistic about Blueprint’s longevity though, and the film’s recent selection for the Banff Centre Mountain Film Festival is affirmation—good story telling makes a difference.
The space Bell has chosen to make change, not surprisingly, is the outdoors. While mountain bike films are a piece of that, he endeavours to continue branching out. “I want to change the way we exist in this world for the better,” he says.
Bell catches the corner shot.
He’s especially interested in outdoor stories that hit social and environmental beats and “move the needle forward.” His films have helped raise funds for the Comox Valley Land Trust and other conservation organizations, supporting tangible change in his community.
On the horizon, he says he’d like to bring awareness towards inclusivity in outdoor recreation by amplifying organizations like Colour the Trails, a collective of BIPoC and LGBTQ2S+ adventure seekers.
“We need to protect natural ecosystems and encourage people to be in those spaces and we need everybody to feel like they belong in those spaces,” says Bell.
*
Back at the massive double over the stump, he watches Mathews wipe the dirt off his legs and push his bike up to hit it again. After deciding on a new angle, Bell is ready to capture whatever happens. Whether it’s a success or failure, you can be certain he will keep rolling.
Matthews gapping the stump.
