Shot entirely on film (16mm, super 16, and 35mm), "Circle One" chronicles high-performance surfing from around the world.
Twenty-five-year-old surf filmmaker Josh Williams (The Rising) from San Diego, CA, worked with his crew of 6 cinematographers to capture the Quiksilver surf team in their natural environment.
"I had two teams of 1-3 guys on location in different parts of the world the whole time," said Williams.
"We shot in the Caribbean, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Tahiti, Western Australia, the Gold Coast, and Hawaii. When we made "The Rising," it was all on video, and mostly young up-and-coming guys-this project was real filmmaking."
Williams' cinematographers went to the island of Tavarua in Fiji three times during the filming period.
"We wanted to make sure we had plenty of different looks, different water colors, and multiple variations."
Over the past three decades, Quiksilver surf film contributions have ranged from groundbreaking (Performers, Kelly Slater in Black and White) to hilarious (Mad Wax, Chicken Skin).
Today's average surf movie project usually contains a lot of video footage and basic filler. That is why "Circle One," the latest release from Quiksilver, stands apart from today's current offerings.
The athletes range from Quiksilver's veteran world champion Kelly Slater to newcomers Cheyne Magnusson and Danny Fuller.
"Working with the best surfer in the world (Slater) is amazing but necessarily easy. The shooting ratio is higher because every session he produces, but it is tough to keep him in frame sometimes because he surfs so fast. It's hard to keep him in composition," said Williams.
The soundtrack to "Circle One" is a combination of scored music and hand-selected tracks.
Artists like DJ Greyboy and Steven Stern contributed to scoring the bulk of the film, while Williams left enough room for a few very special tracks like "Orion" from the Metallica record Master of Puppets.