Can Trilogy New Wave Live Up To Its $750K+ Price Tag?
Director Andrew Mackenzie explains how ‘For Whom The Atolls’ inspired the next volume of the 2006 surf film.
Editor’s note: this post was originally published in March 2023. Ahead of it landing on Stab Premium on Oct 10, we thought we’d give it another run. Always funny how these things work out in hindsight. You can read Paul Evans’ hilarious Trilogy cross-examination here.
Click here to watch Trilogy: New Wave, streaming exclusively on Stab Premium
Trilogy New Wave (TNW) has a lot going for it.
Taylor Steele, Evan Slater and Enich Harris as producers, Griffin Colapinto, Seth Moniz and Ethan Ewing as its stars. With a budget north of $750K it’s the biggest spend on a surf film since John Florence’s View From A Blue Moon’s (VFBM) $USD 2 million budget released in 2012. “I don’t think there’s been a proper feature length surf film since then,” says TNW’s director and CEO of Aether Films, Andrew Mackenzie – who’s spent the best part of two years pulling this thing together.
TNW’s currently being color-graded and licensing their final tracks before looking for distribution on a major streaming platform. “The film balances some actual real story with really high action surf montages. I think there’s a little bit more substance to it than some other films of the past,” says Andrew. “A lot of the narrative is centered around what it means to be a CT surfer today, but it also zeroes in on personal narratives. Ethan lost a parent. Griff dropped out of school at a young age. There’s all sorts of stuff there that makes it relatable, even to a non-surfing audience. Someone like my wife, who’s never touched a surfboard or lived within, until now, a hundred miles of the coast… She can watch it and she loves it. On the other side of that, we want to make sure that core appreciates it too, and that the level of surfing is there. What really keeps it interesting is the level of cinematography and a lot of the new things that we did to capture it. Most of the trips we had five or six angles at a time – it will be different from the way most surfing has been documented.”
To give you a sense of scale, Aether Films took a team of 15 to Lakey Peak in June 2022 including: “Two different types of drone teams, water cinematographers, a couple land angles. In Indo we also had a stabilized boat rig that we were working with, plus local filmers and all the support and assistance that go with that.” For reference, Quiksilver’s Saturn had a production team of two. Glad You Scored had three, four if you include Dane’s selfie skits. In other words, TNW went huge. “We spent some time at each of the guys’ homes too – because I think that’s what really builds the character arcs and builds a narrative. On top of that we visited Peru, South Africa, Tahiti and Indo, plus a secret trip that’s not in the film that we can’t tell you about.”
Interestingly, the inspiration behind TNW was Stab’s for Whom The Atolls trip to the Marshall Islands. “We’d just landed and it was pumping. Seth was like, ‘You better get out there. It’s so fun. We just surfed that Maybes wave right out the front of the airport.’ I was like, ‘I can’t wait till this edit comes out. I really wanted to see how good those kids were on this wave.’ After I watched it I was like, ‘Oh my God. This is a new Trilogy. I wonder if Billabong would be interested in this.'” After enough convincing, Bong (and others) bit.
On that note, I wondered if Griff leaving Bong complicated things given their rumored ~$200K investment. “It’s funny. I probably got that question a thousand times. The day it came out, I had 200 DMs about it. I’ll say, it hasn’t affected us a ton. We were done with filming when that move happened. Obviously, it’s a difficult thing for Bong but it really hasn’t affected us much. The film was already shot. We were really far along into the edit when that happened. If I’m looking for a silver lining in it, it’s like, I don’t know that you could get the Trilogy together again, at least in the same way.”
With budget belts tightening across the board, part of Aether’s model has been to produce commercial deliverables for brands that invested in the film on the side. “For Oakley, our approach was like, ‘Hey, what kind of commercial assets do you need? Do you need commercial assets of Ethan? Do you need commercial assets of Griff? Is there a way that we can kind of use some of the budget that might have been set aside for commercials, and we can produce those commercials for you as well on top of it, so that you can see where your dollars are going,’” explains Andrew.
If there’s one thing clear from my chat with Andrew is that he’s gone about this whole process the right way. ‘Seek forgiveness not permission’ is an adage that’ll help you produce a punchy product for an audience, but it’ll also threaten to burn your relationships with talent long-term. “I went to school for documentary filmmaking and one of the things that I learned was that you need to spend a good amount of time with subjects before you take out a camera and start filming them. I really made a point to go to Hawaii without a camera, and spend time with Griff around here without a camera, and do some Zooms with Ethan to get to know him better before I was like, “I’m going to shove this camera in your face and ask you a bunch of personal questions” Right?”
It also won’t be anything like Box-to-box’s Make or Break treatment in any way — who could be accused of applying the same lipstick to a different pig with Season 2. “There will be no over-dramatification of surfing to try and make you feel bad for these surfers who are traveling around the world to the best waves in the universe with fans cheering. To me, it doesn’t seem that bad. That sounds like a great life. Right?” asks Andrew.
Right.
As far as it leans into the OG Trilogy with Taj Burrow, Andy Irons and Joel Parkinson there’s a nod here and there. “I think we definitely are tugging on some of those nostalgic aspects with some of our soundtrack, and there’s some homages to the original with match cuts and stuff, doing similar things to introduce them. But we don’t have anything from the original Trilogy, and it’s not something where we want people to feel like they have to have seen the original to come into this one.”.
With luck, TNW will be out in the next couple months. We’ll keep you posted.
Post note: Aether Films started as an aerial production services company “before everyone had drones” before going into commercial production TV and broadcast commercials. Aether’s clients include Toyota, Adidas, Google, Aston Martin, Uber, Oakley and the Kelly Slater Wave Co among others. Andrew was responsible for the films that gave us the first glimpses of the Surf Ranch, when wavepools were a little more mesmerizing and a little less meh than they are now.
Click here to watch Trilogy: New Wave, streaming exclusively on Stab Premium
