Waves, Sea Lions, and VHS Footage

Photographs and Video by Isaac Chadwick

New Zealand videographer Isaac Chadwick shares ‘Euphoria’, a sneak peek of a full-length surf film coming at the end of 2020.

Dunedin, New Zealand

What is this video about? What are you capturing? Where did you shoot?

The video is basically a little sneak peek at some of the footage me and my mates have been collecting over the past few months in Dunedin, it consists mainly of some surf clips and random VHS footage from around Dunners. It was shot at several different surf breaks around the Otago Peninsula.

Who was involved in the video? Who are shooting, who edited, who shot,

So all of the surfers are my mates from University, Ollie, Eddie, Jackson, Gracie, and Connor. All of the shooting, editing, colour grading was done by myself!

What was the inspiration? What was the process like?

Well, the plan is, that hopefully at the end of the year we're gonna be able to put together and release a full-length surf film from a year worth of footage. We're hoping to really put out some quality content in there, epic surf trips, showing what student life is like in Dunedin. Think of a mix of the Rage and Snapt surf film series.

Some of the locations we've been shooting/filming at are crazy beautiful but also quite challenging to get to and set up. One of the locations has a seal colony living there so as the filmer, I've gotta make sure I'm not getting in their way otherwise it could go south pretty quickly. The same goes for the boys out in the water; there was this one time when Ollie just finished a wave and this massive sea lion just lept out of the wave in front of him sent him boosting it back to the beach.

I was able to put together this little edit with all the 'free' time i have due to us being in Lockdown. Not sure I'd have the time otherwise. I guess one of the good things about this is that its really made us appreciate how awesome it is down there, once we're all aloud back down we're just gonna go absolutely mental with filming, we're just frothing to get back into the water.