“People Call You The Australian Taylor Steele”

“I’m trying to surf more,” says filmmaker Kai Neville. Ah, such pain surf filmmakers and photographers face while documenting the world’s best waves. But, when you’re job is to travel to beautiful locales, life’s not hard. Although, most filmmakers and photographers work strictly freelance, so paying rent can be… and it’s worth noting that there’s little money in surf. This is why the smart ones allow surfing to remain their passion while making coin in the weird world of fashion.

In 2009, Kai stamped a new genre on surf films with Modern Collective. Since then his style has been imitated. His influence pours through the majority of web clips we view today. Occy calls him the “Australian Taylor Steele”. But Kai’s his generation’s Taylor Steele; they’ve both changed the way surf films are made and viewed. And, Kai worked under Taylor for a few years before his big break. Since then we’ve been given such films as Lost Atlas, Dear Suburbia and Cluster to name a few. Here Occy welcomes Mr Neville to episode eight of the Occ-Cast where they talk inspiration, and why Kai never asks Occy to film.