LIVE NOW: FORMER’s ‘DEFECT’
After 20+ premieres, several broken bodies and several year’s worth of A+ footage, FORMER’s new team film drops its final cut.
FORMER is almost 70 in dog years.
Which feels like the correct time unit when you’ve just finished doing 20+ film premieres around the world — spanning both US coasts, Australia, Europe and Indonesia — you feel like you’re aging in them too.
DEFECT brings together the entire roster: Dane Reynolds, Craig Anderson, Shaun Manners, Timo Simmers, Dion Agius, Benny Howard, Jay Davies, Dillon Perillo, Gabe Morvil, Jake Kelley, James Kusitino, Kai MacKenzie, Matt Hoy and Kaito Ohashi.
“It’s basically a digital scrapbook,” says Hunter. “There wasn’t much of a storyline. It wasn’t like we were seeking out certain waves, and had a plan for every trip. It was more ingesting all these bits of footage, then trying to make sense of it on a timeline. What’s been awesome is everyone has always been a phone call away… Everyone has been super invested, and Dane obviously, has been super hands on in the editing process.”
Dane surmised the film prosaically, “It’s basically a group of friends who we respect and back their surfing. It’s grown into this eclectic and cool surfing family. This is basically a compilation of everyone’s surfing over the last year that they submitted to us. And I think it’s pretty insane.”
As mentioned previously, the film’s title is a nod to the slew of injuries the team sustained in the process of filming. Dane broke his foot in Indonesia. Craig Anderson injured his foot in Chile. Shaun Manners suffered a concussion in Ireland. Dion Agius punctured a lung while snowboarding in the Alps. Jay Davies has had recurring shoulder issues.
It’s a theme that playfully acknowledges the physical tax of banking film-worthy clips without ever slipping into woe-is-us territory.
“Dane’s really good at storytelling even when it seems like there’s not much of a story,” Martinez says. “I’ve learned a lot from him, whether it’s putting in a wipeout or a guy pulling back. It tells a story. With everyone’s footage in this film, I took some notes from Dane on how to tell the story of each trip and give each person a spotlight. For me personally it’s definitely up there with one of the projects I’m most proud to have worked on.”
FORMER has come a long way in the decade since its inception following a Team Average trip for Monster Children. What began with four friends who could not agree on a brand name thinking “we’ll make some cool tees, how could we possibly fail?” has now become its own little beast in surfing’s broader ecosystem.
There’s an authentic charm to its scrappy DIY ethos, which is the trade off they made when they took on limited outside investment. They still pack orders themselves, sleep on cardboard boxes on trips if they have to, shut the doors to the shop when they’ve got to meet a tight deadline.
Now they’re supporting the next generation of freesurfing talents, injecting a ton of energy back into surf cinema and continuing to make surfing feel like a subculture you want to take part in.
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