The Company
Out Yonder Productions was started in 1998 by Monty Bassett for the initial purpose of making wildlife documentaries. The founding principle of the company is to provide high quality television documentaries that go beyond the genre’s norm, and offer not only thoughtful storylines and dramatic cinematography, but to also present fresh, cutting- edge science films that inform, entertain, and add to our knowledge of the complexities of our planet.
The first film that Out Yonder undertook, “Life On the Vertical” was about a unique type of mountain goat that lives beneath the earth’s surface on the vertical walls of Canada’s Grand Canyon, the Stikine. While it was Bassett’s first film, and photographer, Cas Sowa first experience with motion pictures, the film won a number of Canadian and International awards, and placed Out Yonder Productions as one of Canada’s top production companies.
In the 15 years since, Out Yonder Productions has had crews filming in such diverse locations as the control room of the ill-fated Number Four nuclear reactor at Chernobyl, and to the inner- cone of a semi-active volcano that has a history of exploding under glacial ice. And while Nature continues to be the main focus of the company, it has also covered stories as far afield as satellites monitoring the planet’s health, to volatile social issues like the "behind the barricades drama" of BC's Tahltan Native Elders' fight against Royal Dutch Shell International.
The company finished the film “Land of the Chartreuse Moose” — a biographical documentary on Canada’s "Gauguin" artist Ted Harrison. Out Yonder Production has begun the first two Nature films of a four part series on wildlife — the film series is under the banner “Exotics” for Oasis Channel HD and Knowledge Channel.
More recently, Out Yonder Productions has finished four natural history documentaries about how exotic habitats influence the development of exotic inhabitants. Specifically we explore though original science, how the obsidian of Mount Edziza permanently changed the habits of the hunter-gather (“Life from Ash and Ice”). Also, using cutting edge technology, our second film in the sequence looks at how geology can affect genetics as demonstrated in the Stone Sheep of Northwestern Canada, (“Written In Stone”).
The third film focuses on how a vertical habitat beneath the earth’s surface can alter the behavioral habits of even mountain goats, (“Cliff Hangers”). The final documentary examines how the abundance of the Sacred Headwaters region of northwestern British Columbia, determines both the size and fertility of mountain grizzly bears, (“Sacred Grizzly”).
