An Airdrie filmmaker and second-year student in the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology’s (SAIT) film and video production program recently recreated the popular reality series Big Brother featuring local cast members from Airdrie and the surrounding area.
Bryan Flannigan, 19-year-old St. Martin de Porres alumnus, first got into filmmaking in Grade 8, when he discovered his passion for the art in a film studies class.
“I found through that [class,] I really enjoyed filmmaking, and in Grade 10, I entered the Airdrie Film Festival, which is sadly no longer around, and I won,” Flannigan said of his start in the industry.
Flannigan took home the Audience Choice Award at the now-defunct Airdrie Film Festival (AFF) in 2020 at just 17-years-old, following AFF’s only in-person screening that year at Bert Church LIVE Theatre. His short film Homework Escape garnered 65 per cent of the audience vote.
Prior to that, the young teen filmmaker earned AFF’s Youth Award in 2018. After the big win, Flannigan said he began to take filmmaking more seriously and considered a career in the field of film and video production.
“When I started to take film a little more seriously in Grade 9 and 10, I was like, ‘Well, I’ve got a whole bunch of friends here and why don’t we get together, have some fun?’” he said.
He added those discussions are what led to the idea for a Big Brother project. According to Flannigan, he has loved the reality show all his life and watched it with his parents as a kid. He said he had ambitions of using his filmmaking skills to recreate it.
Big Brother is a reality show competition that originated in the United Kingdom, though now has American and Canadian versions. Stylized after Survivor, Big Brother contestants complete a series of challenges, form alliances, and vote to see which member has to leave the Big Brother house at the end of each episode – all while under the ever-watchful eye of the house's vast surveillance network.
When Flannigan was in high school, he put together five seasons with 10 to 14 of his fellow classmates and even some of his teachers. Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 pandemic Flannigan’s creative pursuits were stifled.
“I tried to make it as close to the show as possible, whether that was how it looked or not,” he said, adding he filmed the show on his iPhone with no budget. "But everyone involved loved it and it got quite some views around the school.”
After the success of the first season, he completed four more seasons of the show during his high-school years.
“[In Grade 11], I had two going at a time. I had a student one and a teacher one going that filmed right up to the last week before we got shut down for COVID,” Flannigan said. “There was no ending to that season – it felt so weird.
“There wasn’t even a goodbye or anything, it just was left up in the air.”
Ever since then, Flannigan said he has wanted to try filming another season of his own Big Brother, together with new skills garnered during his time at SAIT. For his birthday in September, he invited 13 friends to come together to film a whole season in one day.
“It turned out great and the viewership and the support was amazing,” he said, of the series’ reprisal. “After seeing this, I knew I had to make another but different.”
According to Flannigan, the recent series of the show featured cast members who did not know one another (aside from one or two cast members) to make it reminiscent of its namesake. The cast and crew got together on Nov. 27 for the one-hour series that was filmed for approximately eight and a half hours.
“We came together and did season one of Big Brother in an Hour – that went really well, and people seem to love it online,” he said of the audience's response to the new series, which was released on social media on Dec. 2.
“By the end of the game, people had trouble voting people who they had just met out, which I thought was amazing and that made me feel really special,” he said.
He added he had support from his girlfriend Ashley, who helped create the competitions and assisted with filming.
“She made it a lot easier this time around because I did all the stuff on my own for th previous six seasons,” he stated. “She was fantastic.”
According to Flannigan, the original seasons brought the community together at St. Martin de Porres and he hopes this new version will bring the Airdrie community together.
“Aside from one or two people, every [cast member] is from the Airdrie community,” he said.
“People who didn’t know each other, were coming into this, ready to win a $50 cash prize … they were willing to give up the prize because they’d rather see themselves voted out than someone they started to really like.”
Following the series’ success, Flannigan said he wants to continue the new iteration of the show and include more people in the Airdrie community as cast members.
“I think that it’s not only for the [cast] but for people watching as well,” he said. “This show is special because of its elements of everything. I think as human beings, we love to interact with each other and how we do that is super cool.
“To play a game that is based off social interaction and how people perceive you is very cool, in my opinion.”
Though Flannigan does not yet have a website, the series can be accessed via his social media channels on Instagram (@b_flanny_), Facebook (@BryanFlannigan), and YouTube (b.j.films).
