The three-four minute clip has become the staple diet for consumers of surfing footage, but that’s not to say it can’t be done with a certain fine-dining flair.
Award winning film-maker Spencer Frost has a knack for finding the sublime combination of ingredients with his surf vignettes – the engaging action footage is typically complemented by the right amount of contextual imagery and married with an original sounding audio track that draws you in. Importantly we also get to know a little bit about the subject through some neatly edited dialogue.
Of course it helps to produce a compelling clip when that subject is Russell Bierke. The understated, heavy-wave zealot was recently announced as a welcome addition to the WSL’s big wave tour. In this sojourn, his first since the announcement, Russ returns to Cloud Break, where he broke his foot three years ago. Fortunately there is nothing to suggest Russ has any lingering psychological hang-ups, as he knifes a couple of impossibly late drops at a wave that has more shift and kink than many assume.