Chris Bryan’s Super Slow-Mo 2016 Highlights

When you take the talent of a cinematographer like award winning cinematographer Chris Bryan, combine it with the best film equipment money can buy and put them both in perfect waves with some of the best surfers in the world, you know the result is going to be mind blowing.

Bryan has just dropped a brand new clip featuring his 2016 highlights and it is every bit as amazing as you’d imagine.

The kit in question is the Phantom Flex 4k, which shoots at 1500 frames per second. The technology was first developed in low res for car crash tests, testing crumple zones and the like, however it has now been developed to work with a 4k sensor. Bryan uses the camera in a water housing that he has developed and built himself and swears by the tech to get the job done. However he is always keen to point out that equipment isn’t everything:  ‘The operator’s experience and subject, along with the positions he or she is willing to put the camera in, will every time be far above and beyond what kind of camera they are using.’ he said in a recent interview.

Bryan says what he loves about the slow mo format is that it shows not only the waves as they’ve never been seen before, but also highlights the tiny details and technicalities of each surfers approach. Indeed it is these two things combined that make this edit in particular so incredible with highlights including the motion in the lip as it lands on dry rocks at Cyclops, Mick Fanning’s perfectly adjusted hand drag in the barrel,  Matt Meola and JJF’s gravity defying rotations, and the way they spot their landings and of course the closing shot featuring Dan Ryan in possibly the clearest and most visceral vision we’ve ever seem of someone going over the falls.