A DECADE IN THE FIELD
WILDERNESS COLLECTIVE
Ten years of expeditions I helped run — and the films, brand documentaries, and partnerships that came out of them.
DEATH VALLEY, CALIFORNIA
EXPEDITION MOTORCYCLE
SHOT ON FILM
CLIENT
Wilderness Collective
RELATIONSHIP
Ten years
SCOPE
Trip leader, director, cinematographer, editor
OUTPUT
20+ expedition films · 1 Can-Am documentary · 2 Sea-Doo documentaries
THE SITUATION
Wilderness Collective runs off-road, off-grid expeditions — motorcycles and UTVs through Yosemite, Death Valley, Baja, and the Grand Canyon, with private chefs, real guides, and no phones. The promise is that something happens to you out there. That's a difficult thing to put in a photograph.
I wasn't hired to document the trips. I led them. For ten years I was riding, guiding, and filming at the same time, which meant the camera was never a visitor. It was already in the group.
Two kinds of work came out of that. Expedition films that had to convince someone to leave their life for four days and pay real money to be uncomfortable. And brand documentaries — Can-Am, Sea-Doo — where a partner needed something true from genuinely remote places, and the access already existed because we were the ones going there.
THE APPROACH
Every interview, shot, and edit got built backward from one question: what does this film have to make someone do?
01
Ask what it's for, first
These films weren't selling a vehicle or a landscape. They were selling a decision — take four days, go somewhere with no signal, find out what happens. Every trip got shot with that in mind, which mostly meant pointing the camera at people rather than scenery.
02
Earn the room, then shoot it
I wasn't a stranger with a camera. I'd fixed their bike, eaten next to them, ridden the same trail in the same dust. By the third day nobody performed for me, because I wasn't an audience — I was on the trip.
03
Absorb the complexity
No power, no signal, hundreds of miles of dirt, and a group of guests whose experience mattered more than my footage. Filming always came second to the expedition running properly. That's exactly why it worked.
THE WORK
Expedition Films — across Yosemite, Death Valley, Baja, and the Grand Canyon
Sea-Doo: Catalina Crossing — director and editor
ONEIL x WILDERNESS: Death Valley, CA — director and editor
Sea-Doo: Florida — director and editor
Can-Am: Zion, Utah — director, cinematographer, editor
ONEIL x Wilderness: Zion, Utah — director and editor
"Miah spent ten years with Wilderness Collective — not as hired crew, but leading trips alongside the rest of us. That's why his footage looks the way it does. He was riding, guiding, and filming at the same time, and by day three our guests forgot he was working. The films he made sold the trips better than anything else we had."
Steve Dubbeldam
Founder/CEO
Wilderness Collective
OUTCOME
WHAT IT DID
10 years
leading, filming, and cutting for one organization
20+ films
expedition films and brand documentaries
3 brands
partnerships built out of the trips — Can-Am, Sea-Doo, and O'NEAL
WHY THIS TOOK MORE THAN A SHOOT DAY
You can't hire a film crew to ride Baja for four days. Or rather you can, and you'll get beautiful drone footage of motorcycles in a landscape — which is what most adventure brand films are, and why most of them are forgettable.
What you can't buy is the third evening, when someone who spent the first day being careful around the camera finally says the thing he came out here to figure out. I got that footage for ten years because I wasn't there to get footage. I was there because I was on the trip, and the camera happened to be with me.