The Return of the Independent Surf Film
If you took the data from every marketing algorithm pulsing through the surf industry right now, every single one would tell you that the full-length surf movie is dead. There is no ROI. It won’t go viral. It doesn’t sell shorts. Why waste your time? It would say that we all have the attention span of squirrels and if you buy more Facebook ads your bathing suits will fly off the shelves. But there were no marketing directors involved in the making of this movie. It is independent and it is the brainchild and hard work of Hunter Martinez and his group of friends in California — who over the past year have all become very legit contenders in the new crop of freesurfers we all wanna watch.
“We all just love traveling and surfing and filming so much that we made it happen,” Hunter told me yesterday. “I think we’re all hoping it leads to something, work or sponsors down the road, but the reality is we just made it for us because we love surfing and filming.”
I hung up the phone with Hunter yesterday and leaped for joy. I have been dying for a crew to figure out a way to make an indie vid — a place to watch a bunch of guys rip and travel around together, and these guys just did it. They literally did it for the pizza party at the end — which is actually happening. The vid will spend the next few weeks wandering around California coast premiering and screening at a variety of locations thanks to some brands who have taken notice of the work including Vissla, RVCA and Quiksilver. So make plans to turn up when this comes to town.
The movie stars California guys like Eithan Osborne, Shane Borland, Wil Reid, Micky Clarke and Gunner Day traveling through Panama, Portugal and Mexico with a healthy dose of California and some high powered cameos from Dane, Chris Ward, Mitch Coleborn, Colin Moran, Brendon Gibbens, Tom Curren and many more.
Watch the trailer below and do make your way out to see Lost in Thought over the next few weeks, have some pizza with these guys. They made a surf video for you, not for squirrels, even after everyone told them surf vids were dead. —Travis Ferré
