Morgan Massen; A Decade Of Surf Film Making

Morgan Massen started making over films ten years ago, at the age of 13, using his family’s “old Canon ZR80, a ghetto sony PC and a painfully buggy version of Windows Movie Maker”. However he says he soon set about hustling the neighbourhood, taking any jobs he could, from dog walking, to computer-fixing to raise money to upgrade his kit.

Throughout his teenage years Morgan made short films of his friends surfing which he released on the social media of the day; myspace and youtube, as well as making DVD’s which he sold in local surf shops.

We’ll let him pick up the story from there:

“After I left high-school and held a steady job, I worked my way through a costly Super-8 phase, and my first high definition camera, the stunning Canon XH-A1. I continued making films for the web, but almost grew away from my passion as I fell into a sudden and unexpected photography career.

After a year hiatus from filmmaking to explore my newfound interest and career in photography, the Canon 7D was announced. I immediately purchased one, and started making films of a technical and artistic quality I had been longing for endlessly. Come 2011, my photography career took off and my schedule exploded, and the 7D was back on the shelf. but in early 2012, Nikon announced the D4 with video, which gave me video capability in the still cameras I was using on all my shoots.

Again I was hooked, so hooked in fact I treated myself to a Red Epic..! My logic for this investment was that if nothing else, my technological curiosity wanted to take it apart and reassemble it to better understand the circuitry and complexity of its small package and beautiful form factor.

Fortunately, 2013 saw Quiksilver supporting me in investing a lot of time and energy into making films with Stephanie Gilmore and Kelly Slater, and pursuing passions commercially for other surf industry clients and artistically for myself. A Red Epic, Red Dragon, and now Red Weapon later, I spend at least 50% of my time and energy making movies, mostly outside of the surfing realm now, but i will forever love and cherish my time filming surfing, and pointing my camera at my first and favourite passion… and continue to do so, in new and exciting ways.”