Reef to RidgeReef to Ridge is making its world premiere at TIFF. What does bringing this story to a major film festival and a new audience beyond YouTube mean to you personally?
Mark Vins: This really feels like a full-circle moment for our team and for me personally. Some of my earliest inspirations to pursue filmmaking came from seeing independent films at festivals in college. Growing up in rural Ohio, watching those films from the early 2000’s made having a career in entertainment somehow feel possible.
Even in the earliest days of launching Brave Wilderness on YouTube, we had big dreams of eventually making feature-length films. At the time, we saw YouTube was our proving ground, and as fate would have it, that road has led us to here where we are about to premiere at TIFF! It’s surreal, but has truthfully always been part of our plan.
Over the years, YouTube has been so many things to me and the team at Brave Wilderness. It’s been a creative home, our community, a place where I learned how to become an entrepreneur and lead a global brand, but more than anything, it’s been a giant creative sandbox.
YouTube’s open format gave us the opportunity to make our videos consistently, learn quickly and gain immediate feedback from millions of people. That kind of repetition is incredibly powerful for a filmmaker. So, to now take everything we learned through that journey and bring it to our first feature feels incredibly special and fulfilling.
Your work often combines adventure, wildlife and storytelling. What happened during the making of Reef to Ridge that changed the way you personally think about our relationship with the natural world?
Mark Vins: For most of the shoot, the challenges felt mostly familiar to me. We were filming wildlife, pushing ourselves in difficult environments, trying to capture these incredible moments with many unpredictable conditions. That’s a world I know pretty well making wildlife videos for over 15 years.
That all changed when we reached the final act of the film and climbed Wolf Volcano, the tallest volcano in the Galápagos. Standing at that summit was one of those moments that completely stops you in your tracks. The view was so profound that I still have a hard time believing I was actually up there. It is, without question, one of the most incredible things I’ve ever seen anywhere on Earth.
That moment instantly crystallized the responsibility I felt making this film. If you’re a nature filmmaker, getting the opportunity to tell a story about the Galápagos is about as big as it gets because the film itself becomes part of the history of the islands. Their importance to science is beyond measure and that feeling of responsibility is a huge part of why we spent nearly four years in post-production, taking a ten-day expedition and carefully sculpting it into the film it is today. We wanted to make sure we gave the islands, the wildlife and the story absolutely everything we had.
Mark VinsAudiences are increasingly discovering documentaries and long-form storytelling through creators rather than traditional studios. How do you think YouTube is changing what it means to be a filmmaker today?
Mark Vins: I think creators on YouTube are and have always been filmmakers since the beginning. It’s just that our films tend to be shorter and we don’t often get the chance to make feature length projects. That’s all changing now and it’s coming at the perfect time because the traditional Hollywood studios that have become increasingly reluctant to take risks on new stories have given us an open door to reach audiences who still appreciate cinema or watching movies at home.
Great art, great stories and great performances aren’t formulas. Of course filmmaking is a business, but to me it’s also a craft built on moments of imperfection. You have to try things and you have to fail to learn. It can take a lot of attempts sometimes before you really understand what connects with an audience and in defense of Hollywood studios it is much easier to do on small budgets like a YouTube creator.
That’s one of the greatest advantages we have on YouTube: we get a lot of at-bats. Our strikeouts matter just as much as the home runs because we learn something from every single upload. We’re constantly iterating and evolving our craft out in the open.
I believe the freedom to experiment is one of the reasons creator-led entertainment has become so powerful. We are all forged through trial, error and ultimate the triumphs. Then, when the opportunity comes to do something bigger, we’re ready. One thing I’ve learned for certain is that audiences are hungry for new stories, they want something that feels fresh, human and surprising. What they don’t want is another sequel to something they’ve already seen before.
When people watch Reef to Ridge, what is the one conversation or action you hope it inspires after they leave the screening?
Mark Vins: More than anything, I hope people leave feeling closer to the Galápagos. A lot of people know the name and understand that it’s an incredibly unique place, but I hope the film helps them really understand what it’s like to be there and what’s at stake.
It’s home to animals that exist almost nowhere else on Earth, and many of them are living right on the edge of extinction. Sharks, migratory birds, pink iguanas — these species already survive in an incredibly challenging environment, and human impact has made that survival even harder.
The important part, though, is that these are problems we can actually do something about. If we reduce that pressure, these ecosystems are incredibly resilient and can recover. Our film demonstrates this specifically through the work we do with ReWild.org.
TIFF brings together filmmakers, creators and audiences from around the world. Who would be your dream person to meet or collaborate with while you’re in Toronto?
Mark Vins: Jimmy Chin would definitely be at the top of my list.
I love telling stories that push me outside my comfort zone, and I don’t think there are many filmmakers pushing farther into extreme environments than Jimmy. What I really admire, though, is that the stakes he presents never overwhelm his storytelling. His films can be incredibly intense, but they’re also beautiful and deeply human.
He has this ability to put you inside an environment that feels almost impossible to reach and somehow make you feel like you’re standing right there with the characters. That combination of adventure, emotion and incredible cinematography is something I really connect with. It would be amazing to someday find the right story where our worlds could come together.
