In Bask, 19-year-old filmmaker, Isaac Haki Chadwick, captures the essence of life as a student and young surfer set among the raw and tumultuous whims of the southern ocean. It’s rawness is equaled by its honesty, offering a window into something few would otherwise get to see.
We caught up with Isaac to find out a bit more about him.
NZSJ: Where do you come from?
I live in Tauranga, but I study down in Dunedin, which is where I’m at most of the year. I’ve been shooting and filming surfing for nearly four years now.
NZSJ: How did you get into filmmaking?
I’ve always been very interested in filmmaking from a very young age, experimenting with the family’s communal camera and what not, but it wasn’t till we moved over to Tauranga that shooting surf really clicked for me. I’ve been super lucky to be able to tune my skills using some of the great talents in the Mount such as Kehu Butler and Luke Griffin.
NZSJ: How did this film come about?
I’d just moved down to Dunedin to begin studying and was looking for opportunities to shoot, luckily a local surfer from the mount, Eddie Johnston, hit me up asking if I wanted to come shoot him and his mates. We kinda just mulled around and I started taking a couple of clips here and there. After about a month we realised we actually had quite a bit of footage and decided we might as well try to make a film out of it. Covid-19 put a bit of a halt on things for a little while, but once we all got back to Dunners we just went ham for several months traveling to crazy locations and bagging some pretty nuts clips along the way.
NZSJ: What did you want to achieve with this film?
I wanted to make a surf film that would stand out and be unique from other surf films. For me personally, I really enjoy surf films that have a bit of story and character to them – ones that aren’t just straight surf clips with a semi-decent soundtrack in the background. For this film I really wanted it to have some sort of character. I wanted it to give the audience a peek into what it’s like to be a uni student living on Castle St, surfing and traveling to all of these crazy locations that the Southland region has to offer. The main goal we had with this film is for it to get our names out there. We’d like to gain a bit of credibility in the surfing scene so that next year we can come back bigger and better and make an even more nuts surf film than this one.
NZSJ: Sounds great, Isaac. Thanks for sharing it with us.
Thanks team.
