Storm Surfers 3-D
Storm Surfers 3-D drops in on Australia’s biggest waves
• Doco shot on new GoPro 3-D cams: 1500 hours of footage
• Released as a national tour of one-night-only screenings, book at http://www.stormsurfers.com.au
• Documentary narrated by actress Toni Collette
BLENDING big waves, best mates and incredible 3-D vision, a new Australian surf documentary is an amazing ride with huge cross-over appeal.
A paean to eternal youth and its key protagonists’ never-ending search for the ultimate wave, Storm Surfers 3-D is a cinematic triumph that any lover of Australia’s oceans must catch.
Ostensibly a film about two middle aged surf legends in search of the ultimate wave, it carries an inspirational message for all audiences: that the child within us searching for wonder should never be ignored.
Starring two-time Australian surf world champion Tom Carroll and his best mate of 25 years Ross Clarke Jones, the film journeys around the wildest coasts of Australia in search of the biggest waves on the continent.
The evergreen pair have been on thousands of surf trips, developing an almost telepathic understanding when they are together in the face of monster waves.
Filmed last winter around Australia, Carroll and Clarke-Jones’s search for the ultimate rush is guided by pioneering meteorologist Ben Matson, whose website Swellnet employs cutting edge forecasting to ensure the team are always in the right place at the right time.
During questions at the end of a packed media screening in Sydney last week, one veteran audience member was moved to call the film “one of the best buddy movies of all time”.
Charting Carroll and Clarke-Jones’s love affair with the ocean and manly affection for each other, the film stretches its audiences sense of what is possible.
Ultimately it’s message is that you are young as the waves you ride, and that anyone can do anything if they put their mind to it and never give up.
Jetting round Australia to put themselves at the business end of massive storm systems sending pounding waves across the Southern and Pacific Oceans, the film breaks new technological ground showing the surfers in 3-D as they tow themselves into the barrel of giant waves on Jet Skis.
The adventurous pair exhibit what Tom Carroll describes as the “Shackleton Mentality” - an almost unthinking braveness in tackling waves that would turn almost anyone else back for shore.
Rather than ponder the madness of what they are doing when up close with big waves, they think “let’s get out there and ride it” and drop in searching for the wave that might be the ride of their lives.
In the course of an unforgettable four months captured over 90 minutes of screen time, Carroll and Clarke-Jones ride waves off Shipstern’s Bluff on the very south coast of Tasmania, Cape Solander at the mouth of Botany Bay and the famous Cow Bombie off Grace Town in Western Australia.
At every stage the documentary’s in-your-face 3-D cinematography breaks new boundaries.
Employing a specially designed series of Go Pro cameras aboard jetskis and surfboards, the film’s directors capture the fear and exhilaration of these brave, slightly crazy big wave surfers.
The movie climaxes with an unprecedented mission to a never before surfed spot 70 kilometres off the Western Australian coast near Geraldton, featuring perhaps the biggest waves on the planet.