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Val Sweeting, Pat Simmons and their Alberta-based teams touch down in Japan for the latest stop on the curling tour, and welcome us vicariously into their world on and off the ice.

The curlers arrive to a culinary feast where they expand their palate enjoying a buffet of multicultural dishes and a special blend of sake. Between games Team Sweeting manage to escape the “Eat. Sleep. Curl.” grind to climb mountains with stunning scenery and visit historic temples (and where the skip learns through a fortune, “I’m dishonest?”). After competing against each other all day on the ice, the players gather together to bond and unwind as Team Simmons coach Earle Morris belts out sweet karaoke tunes.

These are just some of the candid, behind-the-scenes moments captured in the latest Far From Home episode “Karuizawa,” the site of an annual international event at the world-class facility where curling made its return to the Olympics as a full medal sport during the 1998 Nagano Winter Games. The legacy of those Olympics resonate to this day where “Curling Night in Karuizawa” during the tournament has the same passionate feeling as those cold wintery bonspiel nights at the old club in Moose Ridge, Sask.

It’s events like Karuizawa why Toronto-based filmmaker Jesse Wachter looks to expand his Far From Home documentary series from short web videos into fully produced, half-hour episodes, and launched a Kickstarter page this past Wednesday to help achieve his goal.

“The trip to Japan was such an amazing example of what I want this to be — stories about a place where most people don’t even realize curling exists, available for everyone to see,” Wachter said. “The people from Karuizawa have been so proud and honoured to see their community featured here in Canada. The kind of comments I have gotten from new friends and fans in Japan are the reason I don’t mind staying up all night and editing for hours on end. I want this to be something that curlers will feel proud of, and something they can relate to and use to teach everyone else about their sport with.”

Wachter has produced, filmed, and edited curling videos since 2011 with the help of the Pinty’s Grand Slam of Curling series and Gerry Geurts of CurlingZone. The debut episode of Far From Home focused on Team Niklas Edin during a GSOC event in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., as the future Olympic bronze medallists from Sweden fought fatigue from being on the road for weeks with an early morning trip to the gym and explained the difficulties of maintaining a healthy diet when they’re relying on hotel and restaurant food.

Getting complete access to the curlers on and off the ice was an eye-opening experience for Wachter.

“It was my first time seeing the sport in person and probably my first time meeting anyone who curls to be honest,” Wachter said. “I was pleasantly surprised with how relaxed the players and event were.”

“In other sports, the problem is always access — access to the field of play, access to venues, access to players. Curling is completely accessible,” he added. “In my first week working in curling, I got to sit down for drinks with Canadian champions, world champions and Olympic champions … and anyone can! This is such an accessible sport that it blew me away. The accessibility of it all is something so unique; it’s one of the reasons I think this sport will really blow up. NASCAR drivers would never have a drink with their fans after a race.”

Part of the appeal of curling to Wachter as a filmmaker is the down-to-earth nature of the athletes. Many of them maintain full-time jobs in order to make ends meet as they pursue their goals of winning national and world titles or Olympic medals; they’re just ordinary people who happen to live extraordinary lives.

“In one of my earliest interviews, Rachel Homan told me ‘curlers are generally good people’ and she was right. They work normal jobs, they go to school, they have families … they all have to manage a balance of obligations on and off the ice to compete at this level and somehow still have enough fun to want to keep doing it,” Wachter said. “They don’t make millions of dollars and being on the road as much as they are over the season is incredibly taxing for them and their families, but they do it because they love it and that passion is something that has always stood out to me as something worth capturing and documenting.

“After nearly five years I’ve gotten to know a lot of the curlers and a lot of them have gotten to know me. The more I learn about international curling and the more people I meet, the more I see an opportunity to help grow the sport by introducing these players and events to a whole new demographic of people. These aren’t unattractive, rude, talentless hacks; they are regular people doing remarkable things all over the world. I honestly believe that if the world got to see the relatable part of curling and its players, the fan base would grow exponentially. In my opinion, the real action takes place off the ice.”

That’s ultimately what Wachter hopes to achieve with the Far From Home series as he envisions it being accessible to not only curlers and fans of the sport but also potential fans as well.

“Everyone laughs at curling, because they think it is a silly game where people sweep paths for rocks that they are screaming at. But again, it’s not about curling, it’s about curlers and their culture; something so rich with emotion, tradition, camaraderie and challenges,” he said. “I really want a curler to be able to show a non-curler an episode of FFH and say, ‘See? This is why I curl.'”

Wachter has turned to the grassroots approach to help fund his dream by letting the community get involved and invested into the project with some unique perks.

Colin Hodgson was featured in one of the early Far From Home episodes when he was rising up the ranks with Team Schlender. Now the 2015 Manitoba provincial champion and lead for Team Carruthers is giving back to the series by offering donations such as hats, jerseys, and hoodies from his Dynasty Curling line that are available for those who pledge to the Kickstarter campaign. Other perks include a commemorative curling stone (for the appropriately named “granite sponsorship”), access to early cuts of episodes, or joining Team CurlingZone on the ice for the Hollywood Curling Summer Blockbuster Bonspiel this July in Valencia, Calif.

Wachter said he’s been preparing for two years to assemble the pieces in order to properly present his Kickstarter to achieve the right funding for his project.

“The post-production hours alone are in excess of 300 or 400 per half hour episode like this. Traveling around the world isn’t cheap, and that’s not even including the cost of equipment breaking down, extra crew mates, food and accommodation, etc. As much as I wish I could document and showcase the community for free, I just can’t,” he said. “However this is something for the community, and if the community truly wants it, everyone could honestly put in $2 and we’d be off to the races. It’s the cost of a double double these days. I figured a community-driven sport would probably rally behind a community initiative — I hope I’m not proven wrong!”

Wachter can also see curling teams turning to crowdfunding in the future to help achieve their goals too.

“A competitive curling team has to travel a lot over the year, and that’s at least four people, sometimes five or six. They need sponsors and they need funds to chase the dream,” he said. “Some teams have no problem getting big-ticket sponsors to drop thousands of dollars per season; others will never be able to compete with those teams unless they can get on the road and play. If people realize they can make dreams come true for the cost of a cup of coffee, they would.

“A huge reason I think this series gives back to curling is because it gives teams and their sponsors a little extra exposure. There is always a sponsorship angle, and teams are always trying to make sure their sponsors get as much value as possible. I’m trying to help them get that exposure, but at the same time even running this Kickstarter campaign for the series to evolve is something that I hope influences a few young teams in seasons to come.”