Watch: A Leisurely Day With Fingal’s-Most-Wanted Foamball Wrangler

Made in partnership with GoPro.

Three weeks ago, just a few km from his lifelong home, Lungi Slabb rode an incomprehensible wave.

The subtropical funnel, ridden to impossible perfection, offered an opportunity for us to encapsulate the Queensland swell event through the perspective of the Aboriginal teenager. 

Between that story, a profile Jed Smith did on him, and our junk food focused Quiksilver marathon Fresh + Fried, we’ve developed a genuine admiration for Lungi. 

Above, filmmaker Beren Hall brings us on a smiling tour of Lungi’s hometown — Fingal Head.

As Jed puts it, “The road into Fingal is a trip back in time to an Australia made famous by postcards and pub rock film clips. It’s lined by cane fields, sub-tropical foliage and deteriorating fibro homes threatening to come apart in the monsoonal conditions.

“Lungi is related to most of the people in the street and there are not many fences between the homes, creating a giant backyard for the mob of kids to play in. Lungi’s house, like most of the original houses in Fingal, straddles the line between rustic and rundown. He shares the home with his parents, some of his brothers, his grandparents, and his auntie, who is visiting from Western Australia.”

The entire film above is (surprisingly) shot on GoPro — a tast which Beren Hall undertook to test the capabilities of their new Hero12. 

“I couldn’t believe how good the footage looked when you put the sharpness on low, colors natural, and then you do linear mode, which is the non-fish eye look,” says Beren. “Once I got it into a color grading software and put a bit of grain on it or whatever, I was like, ‘Holy shit, this camera’s actually insane.’”

For the film aficionados, what are the actual specs to bring Hero12 files to life?

“I think the sharpness is probably the biggest one. I feel like in your head you want it to look sharp, so you put it onto medium or high. But the way their lenses are, it just looks crazy pixelated and almost too digital. I shoot linear, low sharpness, and I think 120 frames a second. You also have to lock your exposure, so it doesn’t change when the light changes. I’ve shot stuff with it where you could probably trick people into thinking it’s shot on a really good camera and I don’t think anyone would notice.

“You really would never expect that from those cameras. Normally, for some of the shots you’d be like, ‘oh, I’ll get my proper camera out, a Red or whatever.’ But in certain situations, this just makes it so much easier to get those shots. Really high quality.’

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