I don't have notes of where all this footage is from... some or most of it is from a Bud contest at Lower Trestles, San Clemente. It looks like there's also some footage from at least one other contest. There's a lot of slow-motion footage here (which can be done with film, but wasn't possible with typical video equipment at this time). So you can see his style developing here. I've kept this video to raw footage this time, images only, no added music.
On the previous video I wrote about the genesis of me wanting to shoot a surf movie on 16mm motion picture film. Not just 16mm, but widescreen Super 16mm, and at 30 fps, a film format that had never been used to shoot surfing before. I knew I would eventually have the film transferred to video, and I used a format that would have the best possible result from the transfer.
At the time this film was shot, Kelly Slater was still a teenager living in Florida. He came out to the West Coast occasionally for contests and so on. Not many people knew who he was yet. This is before he became a World champion. But I'd seem him surfing in California a few times , and I thought he was the coolest dude in the world! I tried WAY too hard to be friends with him, and I'm pretty sure I really annoyed him in the process! Oh well, I hope enough time has gone by that he's not still annoyed with me too much :-)
15 мар 2024
