Leo & Chester (Full film)
As hard as we work to unearth good stories to tell, sometimes we just stumble across the great ones. In the case of Leo & Chester, I had no idea the journey we’d set off on when I wrote “buffalo runs through snowy field” into our shot list for a Destination Canada project Origin was working on. This, in retrospect, is kind of ridiculous because where the heck was I supposed to find a buffalo running through a snowy field? Would one just show up, magically? Fearing the lack of alignment from the stars, we called a buffalo rancher in Golden to see if he would be open to us filming at his ranch on our way to Banff.
Luckily he said, “Sure, come on down!”. When we arrived, there wasn’t just one, there was a herd of buffalo running through a snowy field (they were actually chasing his Skidoo full of food) and the light was perfect. We shot the scene, and he introduced us to his herd favourite, Chester, then began telling us about his journey from LA rock musician to Canadian Rockies buffalo rancher. Right then, I knew there was something special about Leo and Chester. We gathered our gear, and moved on to our Banff shoot, but the fateful meeting with the two had stuck with both me and our cinematographer, Seth. As we were heading home from Banff and we neared the turnoff to Leo’s ranch, I asked Seth if he wanted to make a movie. Seth said, okay. The rest is below. Enjoy!
