The REDirect competition was an amazing opportunity for me to showcase my competence as a director, cinematographer, and editor. But beyond that, I also wanted to bring in sound designer Nashe Howe and colorist Octave Zangs to help to create a piece that looked like a big production company produced it. The Wild represents a lot of different things, but I wanted to build and tell a story around Noah in order to show where he is in surfing despite being only 14 years old.
I believe the rawness of being young, going on adventures, challenging yourself, and wanting to conquer the world was portrayed quite well in the film. The filming, however, was actually pretty difficult. We never really scored waves, although it looked like we did. We had a few small windows where we had one to two hours of good waves, and we really capitalized on those moments. We put in hundreds of hours to get those few moments. My favorite part of the project was sitting on a jet ski and following Noah as he got barreled. Being in the action as much as possible makes creating it that much more fun. A huge thanks to everyone who voted and made this wonderful project possible.
THE WILD from LIEBER FILMS on Vimeo.
