August 14, 2012
| 95 minutes
Directed by: Justin McMillan, Christopher Nelius
| Written by: Ellenor Cox
"Storm Surfers" follows two best friends on their quest to hunt down and ride the biggest and most dangerous waves in Australia. Aussie tow-surfing legend Ross Clarke-Jones and two-time world champion Tom Carroll enlist the help of surf forecaster Ben Matson and together they track and chase giant storms across the Great Southern Ocean. Over one big-wave winter season in 2011 the team experience the brutal force of Mother Nature, score the waves of a lifetime and come close to death, before embarking on an expedition to surf a mythical wave that has never before been ridden. Seventy-five kilometres from land lies a secret reef known as Turtle Dove Shoal – and so begins a mission far beyond anything they have ever attempted in their lives.
Production Notes
Storm Surfers 3D takes it’s audience along for the ride, transporting the viewer under, over and through waves in spectacular 3D cinematography. An experience never-before-seen in cinemas, this is the closest thing to riding a big wave without actually getting wet. Painstakingly crafted and created specifically for this project, tiny 3D cameras (the size of your hand) combine with huge landscape cameras to immerse the audience in an all-encompassing documentary experience never before presented in cinemas. Making the concept of a ‘3D adventure-documentary set in the world of big wave surfing’ a reality was an extraordinary challenge. For one thing the technology required to shoot a surf film in 3D did not yet exist, so the Storm Surfers 3D team created it. After six months of meticulous design and development by Stereographer, Robert Morton, Director of Photography Dave Maguire, Assistant Camera Operator Richard Kickbush and Director of Underwater Photography, Dean Cropp, they merged the various 3D cameras into six different camera systems to capture the fast moving live action in salt water, strong winds and driving rain.
“We were shooting a feature film, so we needed the highest quality pictures we could get for theatrical release but with camera technology that was going to get us inside the wave,” explained co-director Justin McMillan. Storm Surfers 3D breaks new ground in 3D filmmaking with cutting edge 3D graphics portraying powerful storms tracking across oceans and the gigantic swells they produce. The audience is taken on a journey over and under the waves to survey the reefs usually hidden from view that cause these giants of the ocean to break. Storm Surfers 3D is a unique, all-encompassing cinema experience carrying audiences on each wave with RCJ and TC. Holding a 3D Go Pro camera, RCJ rides 20ft waves like a human camera crane, hurtling down waves at over 60 kilometres per hour sharing this extraordinary experience with every viewer in the house.
