Watch NOW: ‘Defect’: A Full-Length Surf Film By Former
DEFECT, a full-length surf film by FORMER, featuring Dane Reynolds, Craig Anderson, Kaito Ohashi, Ben Howard, Jake Kelley, Shaun Manners, Jay Davies, Gabe Morvil, James Kusitino, Timo Simmers, Dion Agius, Dillon Perillo, Matt Hoy, and Kai McKenzie, is linked above for your viewing pleasure.
For a few years - more years than an independent surf company like FORMER can truly be expected - the boys have been on a mission.
USA, Australia, Portugal, Fiji, Indonesia, Tahiti, Mexico - upon the bounds of the buoyant world, they’ve sent their team to conquer extremely hazardous in search of creating something that won’t be crumbled like a cookie into five-second barrel clips and vertical fodder for Meta’s algorithmic profit.
The boys have soldiered out there into the depths and left their flesh on the reef in order to make something that is not in the least bit disposable or scrollable; something reminiscent of a time when waves were caught on film and magnetic strip in far away lands, and held precious in the finicky tape machines of their youths. A full-length in a time of short-form. A 50-minute film in the time of clips. It’s almost Quixotic.
Remarkable too is the sheer boldness of backing a team harder than the global economic world might advise them. When Berle got onto the FORMER skate team, Austyn remarked to me how it moved quickly, though discussion lingered not on whether Berle could deliver, but whether FORMER could appropriately deliver for Berle; could FORMER provide support in platform as well as finance? Could FORMER not only pay their team riders, but their filmers? And send them on trips?
‘Ask not what you could do for your sponsor, but what your sponsor could do for you,’ feels like an attitude long lost in a crumbling surf economy, but here FORMER is, proving that to be the means through which art can truly be made, and so that there is no misunderstanding, DEFECT is an art piece.
Granted, the purpose of a company making a skate or surf video - or having a team at all, really - is the purpose of marketing material. You can’t send James Kusitino to Portugal without selling a great deal of pants. And, you know, fair enough. However, I would endeavor to say that the two - art and marketing - can take the form of one.
The FORMER team has just concluded a DEFECT world tour, putting on and attending screenings of the film. Interestingly, at each of those screenings, attendees likely saw a different version of the film than they will watch today. After each screening, Dane - the co-owner of FORMER as well as film co-director and editor - found something that he wanted to change about it.
A tweak here, a snip there - an alteration of a visual painting not yet executed in the way that he saw fit. Edits were done on the road and in the time between tour and online premiere. DEFECT has been shaped and chiseled and form(er)ed into the film which we are all getting to see now - and remarkably, for free - in its final form, not for the purposes of what will likely sell the most shirts, or gain the most Instagram followers, but for the purposes of representing most accurately the style, feelings, and efforts of Dane and the team.
It is an incredibly scrupulous, incredibly unpatronizing mode to work in.
As Dane described about the making of the film: ‘Out of control but pulling it together at the same time; constantly improvising every moment riding waves than can truly damage you, which is a unique way of riding them.’ Like surfer like film.
