Steve Wall
Well-known member
I just released my first longer form project, Undone. I wanted to share a little insight into the story, the tech side of the production and some of the challenges I faced working in this environment - hopefully it's of some value!
The story is based around professional surfer Laura Enever leaving behind the competition circuit in pursuit of big wave surfing. This is considered career suicide by most people, even more so as a female. We started the project thinking that conquering the most dangerous waves in the world was our goal and the metric of success, but in the end came to realise we've captured a truly authentic account of someone putting it all on the line to step outside the comfort zone and chase their dreams. Her vulnerability and journey through this is something special.
From a production standpoint, this was an interesting one. Typically in athlete / film partnerships, it's the filmmaker documenting a process or challenge which the athlete holds close. With this one, Laura had the fire and motivation to push herself into bigger waves, I had the experience in getting to these out of the way places and connecting with the right people. Anybody can get to Teahupoo or Hawaii or the big name spots these days with little insider knowledge, but when you're there you will compete with huge crowds, often the worlds best surfers. That wasn't the environment that was going to give Laura the opportunity to progress, but many of our secluded corners of Australia would. We spent the better part of 2 years between different parts of Australia, everything that could go wrong, went wrong. We all laugh now at the disaster reel those two years were..
Some of the notable challenges included,
- driving 5200km across Australia in 4 days, to surf the most dangerous wave in the world.. with 4 of us in a single Hyundai Santa Fe, towing a jetski and 600kg of extra gear. We got bogged twice, had two serious mechanical disasters hundreds of KM from anywhere, and basically lost our minds along the way. The shoot wrapped and everyone flew out 3 days later and I drove back home over a week without a single hiccup..
- shooting underwater sequences in the seal enclosure at the zoo in Sydney.. we managed to call in some favours and get access to this 10m deep pool for a few hours in the night. I wanted to create a scene which represented the deep, dark and scary unknown Laura was walking into with her journey, so we borrowed a couple of M18's, 2 40x40ft. blacks and turned the tank into our underwater studio. i'd just come off crutches a few months after breaking my leg badly, but the project hadn't got any support / funding at this point and I wanted to get the ball rolling before the 2019 winter of waves begun.
- swimming a pelican 1615 air up the rocks at 10-15ft Shipstern Bluff in Tasmania. One of our crew hurt their back and couldn't get the land camera and sticks 2 hours into location on foot, so we took it in with us on the boat and swum it ashore with 50K of gear inside and i luckily managed to scale the rocks with it, drop everything off and swim back out to get on the water camera. This ended up being the climax to the entire film so i'm glad we went the extra mile for that one.
For water sequences, I shot with my Gemini with either a Sigma 18-35, or an SLRMagic APO hyperprime 50 or 85, encased in my Salty Surf Housing. There was no other camera choice for the water, as we had to shoot 4-5K, ideally with minimal crop factor at 100fps for most action scenes. Occasionally we'd shoot 75-96fps in 5K or 1.7:1 when necessary too. The RED wasn't without it's challenges - the sheer weight of the thing with a decent lens, and a bigger V-mount (300wH) is hard work when swimming in serious waves, or doing tracking shots on a ski and trying to stay on. Ultimately, it gave us incredible images and didn't skip a beat the whole time. I love shooting backlit scenes, and in the water I don't think there is anything better for latitude and file flexibility.
Beyond the action shots, documentary coverage of the process of chasing these waves was the make or break for this film. The thing that separates Laura from a lot of athletes, and this film from most, is that the success in this was not in how big the waves got, or how many crazy moments happened in the ocean. She is an incredibly talented surfer, and was always going to be capable of nailing it - but her character is so different to what you would expect from the typical 'big wave surfer' or even many professional athletes. She defies expectations, and capturing that was never going to happen on a script.
It was clear we needed to have a separate camera system rigged for run and gun sound and shooting 24/7, which meant the RED could stay in it's waterhousing and save us half an hour setup every time we went in the water. Because of the long term nature of this one, we never had AC's and most shoots it was just me jumping between cameras and whatever needed to be done, which made things really tricky. I ended up using the C300 II as the doco cam, with a 24-70, 15.5-47, or 18-35 Sigma as a versatile setup rigged with a MKH416 shotgun on top. I'd keep this within reach pretty much at all times. You really can't beat these type of cameras for this type of shooting - we'd usually run between 100-200GB of data a day, shooting lots of small bursts of documentary in 4K MXF.
Aside from that, we used the following kit,
- Ready Rig w/ Pro Arms for running around with the full size Ronin and DSMC2
- Mavic 2 Pro as the always handy drone, Inspire 2 with X5 for a special day or two with Hayden Griffith our aerial wiz.
- Sound Devices MixPre-3 to handle twin lapels + boom if we had the crew power to stay on top of it.
- Miller Arrow X5, brilliant tripod for DSMC2 + medium size longer lenses.
- Blackmagic Pocket 6K + Ronin S. Brilliant, fast moving setup when the full size gimbal isn't practical (most of our shoots)
Ultimately, there are lots of aspects of the production that i'm not totally satisfied with from a selfish standpoint, but what became quickly apparent from our viewers is that the authenticity of this story shines through above whatever technical hangups you (me, us, camera people..) might have. What Laura achieved is truly remarkable, she has broken new ground for womens surfing. It's been amazing to see the tremendous response this has gotten, and hopefully this is just the beginning. I love nothing more than shooting in extreme environments, and can't wait for the next challenge.
You can view the film now through iTunes, or Vimeo on Demand and check out the trailer below.
The story is based around professional surfer Laura Enever leaving behind the competition circuit in pursuit of big wave surfing. This is considered career suicide by most people, even more so as a female. We started the project thinking that conquering the most dangerous waves in the world was our goal and the metric of success, but in the end came to realise we've captured a truly authentic account of someone putting it all on the line to step outside the comfort zone and chase their dreams. Her vulnerability and journey through this is something special.
From a production standpoint, this was an interesting one. Typically in athlete / film partnerships, it's the filmmaker documenting a process or challenge which the athlete holds close. With this one, Laura had the fire and motivation to push herself into bigger waves, I had the experience in getting to these out of the way places and connecting with the right people. Anybody can get to Teahupoo or Hawaii or the big name spots these days with little insider knowledge, but when you're there you will compete with huge crowds, often the worlds best surfers. That wasn't the environment that was going to give Laura the opportunity to progress, but many of our secluded corners of Australia would. We spent the better part of 2 years between different parts of Australia, everything that could go wrong, went wrong. We all laugh now at the disaster reel those two years were..
Some of the notable challenges included,
- driving 5200km across Australia in 4 days, to surf the most dangerous wave in the world.. with 4 of us in a single Hyundai Santa Fe, towing a jetski and 600kg of extra gear. We got bogged twice, had two serious mechanical disasters hundreds of KM from anywhere, and basically lost our minds along the way. The shoot wrapped and everyone flew out 3 days later and I drove back home over a week without a single hiccup..
- shooting underwater sequences in the seal enclosure at the zoo in Sydney.. we managed to call in some favours and get access to this 10m deep pool for a few hours in the night. I wanted to create a scene which represented the deep, dark and scary unknown Laura was walking into with her journey, so we borrowed a couple of M18's, 2 40x40ft. blacks and turned the tank into our underwater studio. i'd just come off crutches a few months after breaking my leg badly, but the project hadn't got any support / funding at this point and I wanted to get the ball rolling before the 2019 winter of waves begun.
- swimming a pelican 1615 air up the rocks at 10-15ft Shipstern Bluff in Tasmania. One of our crew hurt their back and couldn't get the land camera and sticks 2 hours into location on foot, so we took it in with us on the boat and swum it ashore with 50K of gear inside and i luckily managed to scale the rocks with it, drop everything off and swim back out to get on the water camera. This ended up being the climax to the entire film so i'm glad we went the extra mile for that one.
For water sequences, I shot with my Gemini with either a Sigma 18-35, or an SLRMagic APO hyperprime 50 or 85, encased in my Salty Surf Housing. There was no other camera choice for the water, as we had to shoot 4-5K, ideally with minimal crop factor at 100fps for most action scenes. Occasionally we'd shoot 75-96fps in 5K or 1.7:1 when necessary too. The RED wasn't without it's challenges - the sheer weight of the thing with a decent lens, and a bigger V-mount (300wH) is hard work when swimming in serious waves, or doing tracking shots on a ski and trying to stay on. Ultimately, it gave us incredible images and didn't skip a beat the whole time. I love shooting backlit scenes, and in the water I don't think there is anything better for latitude and file flexibility.
Beyond the action shots, documentary coverage of the process of chasing these waves was the make or break for this film. The thing that separates Laura from a lot of athletes, and this film from most, is that the success in this was not in how big the waves got, or how many crazy moments happened in the ocean. She is an incredibly talented surfer, and was always going to be capable of nailing it - but her character is so different to what you would expect from the typical 'big wave surfer' or even many professional athletes. She defies expectations, and capturing that was never going to happen on a script.
It was clear we needed to have a separate camera system rigged for run and gun sound and shooting 24/7, which meant the RED could stay in it's waterhousing and save us half an hour setup every time we went in the water. Because of the long term nature of this one, we never had AC's and most shoots it was just me jumping between cameras and whatever needed to be done, which made things really tricky. I ended up using the C300 II as the doco cam, with a 24-70, 15.5-47, or 18-35 Sigma as a versatile setup rigged with a MKH416 shotgun on top. I'd keep this within reach pretty much at all times. You really can't beat these type of cameras for this type of shooting - we'd usually run between 100-200GB of data a day, shooting lots of small bursts of documentary in 4K MXF.
Aside from that, we used the following kit,
- Ready Rig w/ Pro Arms for running around with the full size Ronin and DSMC2
- Mavic 2 Pro as the always handy drone, Inspire 2 with X5 for a special day or two with Hayden Griffith our aerial wiz.
- Sound Devices MixPre-3 to handle twin lapels + boom if we had the crew power to stay on top of it.
- Miller Arrow X5, brilliant tripod for DSMC2 + medium size longer lenses.
- Blackmagic Pocket 6K + Ronin S. Brilliant, fast moving setup when the full size gimbal isn't practical (most of our shoots)
Ultimately, there are lots of aspects of the production that i'm not totally satisfied with from a selfish standpoint, but what became quickly apparent from our viewers is that the authenticity of this story shines through above whatever technical hangups you (me, us, camera people..) might have. What Laura achieved is truly remarkable, she has broken new ground for womens surfing. It's been amazing to see the tremendous response this has gotten, and hopefully this is just the beginning. I love nothing more than shooting in extreme environments, and can't wait for the next challenge.
You can view the film now through iTunes, or Vimeo on Demand and check out the trailer below.
