Harry Bryant On Getting Locked Up In Indo, Metal In The Leg And Everything Ritual Vision
When Dion Agius was booking the venue for the world premiere of Ritual Vision’s first full-length film Ritualistic Tendencies at the Orpheum Theatre in Sydney, he was stressing they wouldn’t be able to fill the room.
Turns out the 750 capacity cinema had to be upgraded to the bigger one real fast, with every other location on the premiere tour following suit. If that’s not a sign the brand has already established a cult following in just a year, then I don’t know what is. It is no small feat to peel people away from their screens at home to do shit in real life anymore and yet if there was ever a team to do it, it has already proved to be the Ritual fellas. If you haven’t managed to secure tickets, I highly recommend learning how to break into a building, as each premiere film will be a little different in every location. Despite not yet seeing the film himself, I belled big Haz to check in before it all begins next week.
Hey Haz,
Sammy!
How’s the leg?
It's good. Still attached, but it's pretty out of action for the minute.
Good that it’s still there (laughs), how long is the recovery?
Got the stitches for two weeks, then maybe six weeks of rehab I reckon until I’m back surfing. It’s pretty mellow considering I had a fuckload of metal in my leg.
Yeah how was that?
Oh I was just constantly surfing in pain. It was brutal.
Is that just the standard when you have pins in or did they just not put them in properly?
Nah it’s just because it’s the hardware is just metal on bone. It would just make it super cold and my muscles would tighten up and it would be unbearable pain. Especially when I surf in cold water like in Ireland. It was just fucked.
That sounds brutal.
But all good now, got heaps of stuff to speed this recovery up. So just going to take the time to do it properly and get feeling good and back to regular programming.
At least now you’re around for the silly season, I suppose you don’t spend a whole lot of time at home in the summer usually hey.
Yeah it’s definitely a good time to cruise at home. I’ve hardly spent any time at home this year so really appreciating home life. Haven’t left the house in six days.
(Laughs) Core chilling. Still on South Coast?
Yeah got myself a place down here. Where are you at now?
I’m back on the Goldy. Loved the South Coast stint but it was time to come home.
Yeah you gotta be where you feel you need to be.
For sure. It’s so busy up here since I left but it’s kinda fun to be amongst it again.
Yeah I appreciate accessible the Goldy is. Super easy place to enter and escape.
100%. Anyway how is Ritual? A year in right?
Yeah since the start of November. It’s been a short turbulent little journey of a year. Pretty much all we’ve done is launch a website, make the sunnies available and just film for this surf movie all year. Wade and Dion have been going so hard on finishing the film off. It’s crazy to see both of those guys in the zone. Their work ethic is incredible, creating something from the start and pouring all their creative energy into it. Once that comes out I think we will have time to do photo shoots and ads and all the things that make a brand a brand.
A film a year in is pretty sick though. How long is it going to be?
I think it’s 45 minutes or so all up.
A proper film!
The full English breakky! It’s been crazy. Dion has had his handcam documenting everything from every trip. So much behind the scenes and then Wade obviously takes so much pride in his work and is a real critic.
Yeah Wadey is the gold standard.
Exactly and that why all of his previous stuff is help in such high regard. I think the combination of Wade and Dion together is really cool. You get the personality, behind the scenes stuff with Dion, a real look into people’s favourite surfers and then all the amazing shots that only Wade has an eye for. Boil that down and the film will be somewhere in the middle.
Where was most of it filmed?
Let me just track back in my head the last twelve months. The first trip was in Puerto Rico. We literally just had the stickers done in time. It was a real moment for all of us to have these fresh stickers on our boards. I was so keen to do trips with a crew I haven’t done a lot of trips with. Like with Mikey. We’ve obviously grown up doing comps and all that but haven’t done too many trips together. So it was really nice to connect with him and also Huey as well. From there it was Hawaii, that was a long one. I think we were there for four months. You were there too (laughs). Then Mex and Morocco and down to South Aus. We did a roadtrip down there and then went to Indo for a month. Then a section at home. Some pretty high impact waves.
Mental. Have you seen any of it yet?
I haven’t seen any of it yet. It got to a point where Dion and Wade were editing together and asked for some feedback and I was just like nah I have complete trust in you guys. I’m going to love it either way. Each trip I have such a great time and so I know it’ll turn out good.
Is there any highlight stupid shit you can remember happening?
On our Indo trip there were a couple of pretty gnarly moments. Both myself and Dave Fox almost wound up in a prison Jakarta. Two separate incidents. Also left his passport on the plane because he used it as a napkin and they put it in the bin which also had all his credit cards and everything.
Holy shit.
But no injuries or highjacking.
(Laughs) Thank god. And then what's the vision for Ritual? If you could do anything with it and it blows up and makes you guys heaps of cash, where would you want to take it?
We just want it to have a heart and soul. I don’t think we can talk too much about the future because I don’t think a brand gains its credibility until it is established in the industry and within culture. I think it usually takes ten years to get to that point. But right now, super hyped on the response from the kids. It really seems to be gaining traction because one it’s a accessible price point. No one wants to go out and spend $400 on a pair of sunnies to lose on the piss. So I think we’ve been able to offer something from that angle. People have been stoked to be able to go into their local surf shot and buy a pair of shades that their favourite surfers also wear and not get reamed in the ass for it. As a surfer it’s also been really nice to have something to be consistenly working on with video projects and travelling. To for that with a bunch of my mates and some of my favourite surfers too. It feels like a little rebirth away from the everything is fucked mentality in surfing. I feel like everything right now is in a good spot if you look at it optimistically.
Yeah I feel like the surfer owned brands are really coming out on top at the moment because that’s what people resonate with over the big corpos. Surfing seems to be turning.
Yeah absolutely. And everything is just moving so quickly that things are getting a bit lost. People are a bit confused because things are evolving and things are changing so quickly that it's hard to be like okay now this is the lane that we're fully in. Let’s work to create things in this lane. If you look for it there’s a lot of positive things happening in surfing.
Yeah I’m glad to hear there’s some positivity there from your perspective. On that how you feeling about the team recruits?
For the brand to only be a year old and have the crew we have already is really good. There’s a few crew that we have our eyes on. It’d be nice to tap into the skaters too.
I was actually going to ask if there would be a skate crossover at some point in the future?
Yeah we currently have Rowan Zorilla working on a signature frame and kind of put him as the skate team manager where he can build a bit of a team from.
That is so cool.
We also had Holly (Wawn) working on a signature frame, she was just down here with us hanging out. She’s pumped. It’s kind of like a mini headquarters team house down here. Dion’s always got his VCR playing. Posters on the wall. Everyone’s just surfing and hanging out, it’s a great team vibe.
Yeah you got a good team. And the prems are pretty much all sold out too. That must feel good. I was talking to D and he said pretty much every venue had at least a 500 person capacity and they all sold through so quick. I can’t even imagine how 500 people would fit in Balter.
Yeah definitely didn’t expect them to go as skits as they did. I’m just picturing a swarm of teenage kids. All with great pace and gusto, wearing the shades.
Yeah the kids know what’s good.
Prems are always such a fun time. Dion and Wade have been working on some photobooks too. I’m so keen to watch it for the first time on the big screen with everyone else.
Well see you for a beer soon Haz, thanks for chatting.
See you soon Sammy!
