Ryan Gourley is a 2022 graduate from SAIT where he took the Film and Video Production Program and prior to that, he graduated from Cochrane High School in 2020.  

Gourley is a local filmmaker who heads Chance Productions and is about to launch a romance film today (Friday, August 4) at 6 p.m. According to Gourley, “The film is called "Customers". I wrote it, I want to say, two months ago. It’s a small little indie romance film about a man that’s stuck in a monotonous routine in his life, meets a woman that’s kind of driven by indecisiveness, and they have a little "cute meet" (that's film lingo) at a Superstore and it kicks off from there.” 

The movie was filmed almost entirely in Cochrane and Gourley says, “The most memorable scene, I’d say, takes place in Coffee Traders. We got permission to shoot there for a few hours and that was a really great location for shooting.” 

As for the equipment, although Gourley owns some pretty good camera gear including a 4K camera and a small little cinema rig they decided to go retro and used a small pocket camera from 2012. He explains why, “We really wanted to show that although yeah, technology is so good now, you can make good stuff on a small budget, you can even make it on a smaller budget. It kind of fits the indie vibe too. Because it takes good video, but it’s not super high quality. It looks kind of like film in a way.” 

Sam Coyles is one of the actors in Customers and he moved to Cochrane in 2020 from Okotoks but is originally from the UK.  Sam and Ryan became good friends attending the film program at SAIT and they, as Sam puts it, “Just clicked really well and I kind of understand, how as a director he wants to make things and he’s very excitable and has a lot of ideas and wants to just make, make, make. And when he came to me with this, I was very intrigued because you know it's shot on something that isn't conventional and kind of just proves that idea that yeah, you can just grab a couple of friends and make a film out of really anything.” Sam, who has acted for a long time, thought he would help his friend out by putting his skill set to use out front. Sam's love interest in the film and co-star is Yana Maico. 

Chance Productions has a website where you can view a teaser of the film Customers and then get your popcorn ready for 6 p.m. tonight (Friday, August 5) when it will premiere simultaneously on YouTube and on the website.  

Ryan Gourley has plans with thoughts of a feature film on his mind saying, “I have a couple of scripts written for features and I have some ideas ruminating, so I think that’s the next thing to tackle.” 

Ryan Gourley and Sam CoylesRyan Gourley (right) Sam Coyles (left)