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Our Story

Flightless Bird Creative’s origins as a production company can be attributed to two things: A group of high schoolers with a dream of becoming filmmakers, and a fake ornithology club.

Once upon a time, at a small private high school in the suburbs of Chicago, there was a group of students who had the aspiration of starting an ornithology club. These students weren’t biologists, they weren’t nature lovers, they were kids who wanted to start a club and thought it’d be pretty hilarious if it was a bird club. So, given the educational nature of the club’s topic, the ornithology club was born; offering everything from bird walks, to a weekly “Bird of the Week” PowerPoint presentation by one of the club’s leaders. The club even sold t-shirts in the style of the famous “I (heart) New York” shirts, instead showing “I (binoculars) Birds”. Needless to say, they were an instant hit. The club’s popularity became so widespread that eventually, it gave a fellow student a premonition that would change the course of three young lives.

One day before lunch, a student and aspiring filmmaker named Kevin Conway approached the then-current president and vice-president of the Ornithology Club, AJ Roskam and Stephen Kipp. He told them that he had a vision of a comedic mockumentary-style web series that would follow the ornithology club and its weekly procedures. With the loyal fan base gained over a year of club activity, a web series would be a certain hit. AJ and Stephen gave the obvious answer.

The “Ornithology Club” series quickly gained a cult following among the students. Episodes were highly anticipated, gaining thousands of views upon each release, (low thousands, but pretty good for some high schoolers). Meeting attendance numbers increased as a result, packing our little classroom each Thursday morning before school with eager students ready for comedic relief, and a handful of confused students who thought this was actually a club about birds.

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