Dane Reynolds Talks Cluster

Story by Theo Lewitt

With Cluster readily available for the public eye, what comes next? Praise? Critique? Without a doubt, the zealous will spent hours breaking down each air, turn and tube into smaller and smaller pieces, each served with a side of opinion. We’ll shamelessly do it, ourselves. It’s a job of sorts, to analyze the actions of our idols and try and find a glimmer of hope for our own aquatic pursuits, although rarely, if ever, above the lip. Before jumping into this routine, however, lets allow the kingpin of cool (he’ll hate that title), Dane Reynolds, to offer some guidance. We rang Mr. Reynolds, freshly jet-lagged off a flight home from Aus, sporting a nice Snapper souvenir in the form of a bump and cut on his forehead, to find out which parts of Kai Neville’s latest excite him the most.

Stab: So, have you watched Cluster over and over?

Dane: Shit, I actually just downloaded it. It’s sick to watch it on the laptop as opposed to in the theater, though.

Anyone impress you most? I was pretty impressed with quite a few of the sections, to be honest. I liked Brendon Gibbens’ surfing, and I really liked Craig’s stuff. Craig traveled and worked so hard on that, and I think it really shows. Lots of good barrels in his part.

Did he get the most barreled in the movie? Yeah, f’sure. And cinematically, too. His part just has some really good, unique, long barrels shots from the water on gnarly waves. Shit, it’s pretty sick.

Specific air that caught your attention? There’s lots of gnarly air reverses. I’d say, for some gnarly tech style airs, Chippa’s part was really gnarly. He’s got some pretty sick rotations that look really unique. The frontside shove-it that noah does is really sick, too. And he’s got those shifty-tweaky frontside airs, which are really cool to watch.

Best song? Craig’s song (“The Him” by New Order) is really sick. My song (“Can This Be” by The Wipers). Brendon Gibbens’ song, too (“Favour” by The Wake). It’s a really good soundtrack over all, I think.

Whose part would you throw on to get psyched for a surf? Shit, I don’t know. Probably Brendon’s or Noa’s. I like watching regular foots to get psyched, just because I can kinda watch and recognize the movements more than with goofy footers. Some of the air reverses that Brendon and Noa were doing had pretty unique rotations. I’d watch one of those guys’ sections, for sure.

Enough power-surfing in the film? Conner was surfing really well. I kinda thought it was a little bit of a diss that they cut to Taj half-way through his section, but then I guess he didn’t film as much as some of the guys, so that happens. He definitely has some sic carving maneuvers.

Noa with a Fletcher-inspired bomb-drop.

Most unique moment? Noa’s Fletcher-esque bomb-drop is one of the sickest things, for sure. It’s so hard to do. A couple times I’ve tried it off of way smaller stuff, and it’s so hard to match the speed of the wave. Novelty stuff is sick.

How many trips did you do for your section? Well, I did a couple trips that I wasn’t even planning on being for the movie at all, but ended up using clips from. I went to Panama. I was just kinda planning on putting out a web clip or something. Didn’t even get that great of stuff, but ended up kinda having to use everything that I had. For the first bit, when they started filming for the movie, I was working on Loaded. Then I was injured for like six-months last year with a torn MCL, so I just started stressing out trying to slap together shit by the end of it all. Went to Morocco last minute with Dillon Perillo and Yadin, and got some pretty cool stuff for the movie there. Quite a bit of stuff from CA around home, and I went to Hawaii for one day for the surfer poll awards, and ended up getting a couple clips from there.

Pretty last minute, huh? Yea, Kai literally didn’t have any clips of me except a couple low-res things I had emailed him until just a couple days before the premier. I drove the clips down to him and we pretty much just sat there for two hours and put together my part right there. It was kinda unfortunate that I didn’t get to go on unite a few trips in the beginning of the year where a lot of the other guys got their footage from, but yeah, I had a torn MCL, so…

How’d you tear it? Trying a shove-it on a one-foot wave in Ventura last April. It just took forever to heal. It was a 50 percent tear, but the MCL is basically the best thing you can tear in the knee because it recieved lots of blood on it’s own, so you don’t need surgery. It just takes a long time. Even once you’re back surfing, it takes another couple months to be even close to surfing 100 percent. You always get hurt in small, shitty waves.

Max height and minimum rotation with Mr. Dane.

It’s rumored that going into filming your part, you made it a goal not to include any air reverses. True? Well, like I said, I was out of the water for a while. Noa was at my house, and Kai sent him a kinda sneaky, early, rough edit, so I saw some of Creed and Chippa’s early edits, and there were so may air reverses that I just wanted to have straight airs and power surfing, basically. That’s what my goal was when I hadn’t filmed anything yet. But, the first couple times I filmed with Cluster in mind, every single wave I was trying air reverses, just because the waves kinda dictated what I was doing. It seems like every section is good for an air reverse. It’s way more rare to get a section that’s good for a straight air. You can also kinda do a layback on any closeout.

So you ditched that goal? It’s just pretty impossible to go into filming a section with a concept. It just fucks you up. Once you’re conscientiously surfing a certain way on a wave, you fighting yourself and your own reactions. Once I started filming a lot, that initial goal kinda dissolved. When it came to selecting clips though, I definitely wasn’t gonna put in any air reserves in that weren’t at least slightly different than how I normally do them. I know I’m not at the forefront when it comes to tech air reserves, and I’m aware of that, so I didn’t want to smother the section with average air reserves or anything (laughs).

Think doing so many parts and web clips has helped you understand how to personally stand out in a video? Shit, it actually probably fucks with you because you’re conscious of not putting out the same section every time, so you try to surf differently. Once you’re doing that, you going against your own intuition and how you normally surf. Messes with you, for sure.

Anything missing from the film? I though it served it’s purpose really well. I would watch all of the sections again and get psyched on surfing.