With the December leg of Zag Shorts complete, our short film competition supported by GoPro is now in it’s eighth and final month. Leg 7 saw ten new entries all gunning for a shot at the epic grand prize, but there can only be one and once again the judges decision was unanimous. Congrats to Steve Michelsen for his winning entry, Silence of Eyes, featuring Salt Rock QS campaigner Shane Sykes.
Silence of Eyes, Steve Michelsen’s winning entry for the December leg of Zag Shorts.
Synopsis
Shane Sykes talks about the influence that his childhood role-model, Julian Wilson, has had on his surfing. The talented KZN north coast local also speaks about making it onto the CT, with the pot of gold being to become a world champion. His explosive power is very easy on the eyes.
Why we digged it
The pace, the soundtrack, Shane’s insight into his surfing and goals while top class cinematography features him absolutely shredding all over KZN. This is one of those films that you can watch over and over again. The structure and treatment of the film is unique in it’s style, matching that of Shane’s: relaxed but aggressively explosive when it comes to his surfing. In congruence to this style, the pace of the edit ramps in and out of super slow and mellow, to instant explosive speed. Synced perfectly to a good track and you’ve got a winning cocktail for a very decent surf clip. The drone footage isn’t a bad addition either.
Another highlight, other than Shane’s layback at 2:30 in, is the movement in the cutaways. Almost every single cutaway – be it the people in the township, washing hanging on a line, or a soaring gul – has some kind of travelling motion either in the camera or the subject, which seems to work well together. The amount of surf action and variety of locations means that this film took loads of time to put together, and the commitment taken to get the shot is exemplified at 2:50 in, where it looks like Shane’s turn ended on Steve’s head!
Also worth watching:
‘Pelagic Amphibians’ is Jerome Mosetic’s entry featuring some great surfing by weskus ripper, Jaco Steyn and others during a perfect run of swell in Indo this past August.
For his efforts, Steve joins Leg 1 winner Josh Rowe, Leg 2 winner Grant Hewitt, Leg 3 winner Tao Farren-Hefer, Leg 4 winner Grant Beck Leg 5 winner Marck Botha and Leg 6 winner Tamarac Searll in contention for the grand prize to be decided at the end of January 2016. Go to zagshorts.co.za to view all the entries and to vote for your favourites for the final leg, which is currently underway.
HOW THE VOTING WORKS:
Zigzag, GoPro and the public all have an equal say in determining the winner, with each contributing 33.3% of the final decision. For the seventh leg, Zigzag and GoPro voted for Silence of Eyes, making Steve Michelsen the unanimous winner.
