This film is a celebration of what was left behind for us to pay attention to. An observation of the oral histories we make collectively as a culture and the importance of finding solace in the simplicity of these acts of joy. Surfing and skateboarding is about staying connected to the roots of where we came from, focusing on who or what we were exposed to and giving back as much as possible. That is the recipe, and all of the flavor is in the subtleties of our own experiences. 

- Dana Shaw

A conversation with Director Dana Shaw 

How did the idea for Circles first come about?

“Circles, An Ode to Shredding” started in 2017, when I reconnected with a group of friends I grew up surfing and skateboarding with. I was at a point in my life where I was creatively drained and searching for something to reignite my ability to make work again. At first, I decided to bring a 35mm still camera with me on skate sessions and point it at the same people I learned to shoot with. After about 6 months of doing that on every session, I started to see that it was all adding up. There were these little scenes of textures and memories that looked like little windows of time, so I decided to assemble a photo book out of the images.

After a year’s worth of shooting stills and photo book edits, I started to have a series of dreams where I would see fluttering gestalt images that felt familiar. It was like I was watching abstract memories of mine that I hadn’t lived yet. Glimpses of these memories were being shown to me very quickly, and then would disappear in a flash. After about a month of those dreams, I was shooting in the ocean and my buddy paddled into a wave, high lined by me and kicked out smiling. I had this crazy feeling of dejavu, like I had been there before. The hair on the back of my neck stood up and I realized that it was from one of those abstract dreams. That kept happening to me but in a variety of settings and with a handful of new friends I was meeting at surf and skate spots. It started to become a major theme when the waves turned on or if somebody got a clip they were stoked on.

Not long after that I was given a Bolex 16mm camera kit by an old friend and when he placed it in my hands everything started to make sense to me. The photo book I started was actually the beginning stages of a new film idea, and the abstracted images being shown to me were bursted shots from a reel of 16mm film on an edit sequence. Paying attention to those signals spun me into a 5 year obsession to create a feature length 16mm film, and that film was meant to be about the friends I was inspired by from those experiences. Circles became a way for me to communicate what I appreciate the most about the simple nuances of riding waves, skateboarding, their poetry and the stories they tell.

"Something like 'Circles' was so intimate to what developed me as a filmmaker... These worlds, these people, these stories, this folklore. All that stuff is so buried inside of me. "

 

Why was this film so important for you to make?

Something like Circles was so intimate to what developed me as a filmmaker or, as like a creative or even as a human. These worlds, these people, these stories, this folklore. All that stuff is so buried inside of me. I was so tired of seeing the same thing being repeated over and over and over and this obsession of progression, like moving that forward versus drawing it back a little bit and being like, in 1996 this happened and this person approached this like that. I wanna learn more about that and be a little bit more simple with my approach to things.

There's poetics and there's you know, iconography and things that I'm pulling from different places that an audience might not understand. I recorded conversations with my friends and people that I admired and found a way to build a narrative visually around that to communicate those textures and ideas.

 Talk about your start as an editor, was that formative for you as a filmmaker?

When you're in film school or when you're fresh in the scene, like editing docs and assembling films, you're still so young. But it just fed me, man. There was no other feeling. It was like, this is what I'm supposed to be doing and these are the things that make me really passionate. And that's where the spark was. 

I used to get stuck as a younger filmmaker when I was cutting projects, and now that doesn't happen as much anymore. And I think that's because I don't put as much pressure on myself to deliver something or I'm more confident in who I am as a filmmaker, as a craftsman or as a storyteller. It just freed me up and it gave me something to do so that I could be excited about living my life versus living the life that we get kind of get in the pattern of living. As a freelancer or as a filmmaker or as a surfer or as a skateboarder, you’re only seeing what people are making or what people are doing. And until you make your own thing or start putting your own energy into something, you don't really know who you are.

What does progression mean to you?

I wanted to learn more about the things that I had done forever. 'Cause you can't stop learning. Once you stop learning, then there's no progression within yourself as an artist or as a skateboarder or as a surfer or as a human. That's when you stop. But, all the guys and women that have been doing it forever, you notice at a certain point as they get older, they start to spin off into some other place that was core to their memory. And they relive that through observations or intersection points and then they spin something else into it, you know? And that's interesting to me. Progression is only authentic to who you are and what you've seen and what you experience and what you think is interesting. You know, it's subjective.

"The sense of pulling something out of yourself that is original to you that you can only understand by the waves you surf and the concrete you choose to skate."

 

Progression started for me as a way to be exposed to these worlds, these things and these people. We were so focused on pushing it forward that at some point I felt like I had lost what it was to begin with. So later in my life when I started really focusing on skateboarding again, it wasn't the act of performance that I was interested in, it was the act of feeling. I'm so inspired by the simplicity of doing nothing on a surfboard. The sense of pulling something out of yourself that is original to you that you can only understand by the waves you surf and the concrete you choose to skate. So that dictated what I was making with this film. Circles is a response to those feelings.

 

I've been wanting to make a 16 mil film ever since I was a kid watching early surf films from the 70s and 80s or the Transworld skateboard videos from the early 2000s. I've always looked up to the people that made those films, and their work has informed everything I do behind the camera. The 16 mil montages were the parts of the films that I liked the most. They were the most artful. They just felt good. I wanted to make something that felt like an artifact. Something that didn't feel modern, something that had a texture that was a little bit outside of what we're used to seeing now. I mean, clearly there's tons of Super8 and 16 being shot these days, but to make a hundred percent 16mm film, that was always the goal.

When you shoot not only 16 but when you shoot on a Bolex, it's all hand cranked, so that became another challenge. But I liked the fact that there were no batteries, 'cause in my entire childhood and early career, I was always worrying about batteries charging and all this other technical stuff before sessions that would kind of take over a little bit. With the Bolex, it was like, oh I can just throw it in my bag and go shoot. And you know, those cameras are made for war documentation, which kind of makes sense 'cause they're rugged and can be beaten up and dust can get thrown on 'em and they're just like tanks.

How did you approach each scene or environment?

With skateboarding, there's so many levels of tricks that people can do. That's never a factor when you're shooting digitally, because you can just keep shooting cards but this was a challenge because it was like, how can I develop a rhythm in the cut that makes sense, but also that gives you something.

So I would just go to a spot with someone with no plans and pull the camera out after a couple passes at whatever they were skating... pools, curbs, ditches, things that were ephemeral. And I would start just by saying , what do you want to try that we can get on a roll? So we started honing in on the things that were more style forward or a little bit more simple. But then I would try to switch up the angles and focal lengths so that in the cut I could motivate energy for that trick to feel good, building a visual narrative

"Hand cranked Bolex hundred foot loads on a point break is super hard."

 

And when filming surf?

Hand cranked Bolex hundred foot loads on a point break is super hard. You have to choose the part of the wave you find interesting, you're not in control. The time of day you shoot and the person that you're taking out is heavily affecting how much footage you get that's usable. Beach breaks were probably my best friend during this whole thing because it's such a short wave and you can get so much more out of a roll or two compared to what a point break would give you. Inevitably you're gonna miss some things, but the things that you get if you pay attention are pretty awesome when you get 'em. So it makes it that much more exciting.

That’s part of the beauty of film!

For some scenes, when we would get things more at random, it felt like I been there before. And that was kinda like from the dreams I had that inspired the film. So it was like I was living in deja vu, moving forward just collecting pieces of ephemera that I didn't know what they were until they happened. But once they happened, it was like I was very vividly reliving it, which was kind of cool. So that told me I was in the right spot at the right time.

What are you feeling as you get ready to release this film?

It's kind of like bittersweet to be honest. Part of me is pretty scared to not have a project to work on for a while. Because that's what feeds me. Another part of it is like, I'm so torched, I've been working on this thing in an incubation station, just showing a select group of friends and mentors what I've been working on. And it's finally ready.

When I watched the whole thing for the first time after I locked picture, I just cried. I was like, that was so much energy and so many things are happening there. I was so scared of it not working… but it’s working. I’m curious how will people interpret it. I don’t think it's a film for everyone. I think it's a film for people who can appreciate those little nods to the past, or have an attachment to that era that I grew up in. Or watch films from before our eras.

I'm just stoked to share the film with people and let them have a conversation around it. Not even just about progression, but about sensory and about history. Hopefully I can inspire someone to think a little differently, you know, moving forward. That'd be cool.

Do you feel the film captured the feeling that you were searching for?

I was down in LA shooting the last couple of scenes a few months ago and was having dinner with my friend Justin Misch that scans film at Origins Archival. He is my producer and one of my best friends. He was like, I'm so proud of you for doing this. And I was like, dude, I'm scared. And I'm also excited at the same time.. but did I make what I could as best I could do? He is like, honestly man, like Alby [Falzon] always said, “There's no finishing a project. It's abandoning it.” Because there's something else coming. And you need space for what that is. And I was like, dude, that made me feel so good. 

But that concept, of abandonment, is so cool because it’s true. You have to notice when it's done 'cause you can just keep going. I kind of had to just be like, I'm calling it. It’s done. It feels the way I originally saw it and I'm proud of it. Time for the next one.

@dana_shaw |  @circlesfilm

circlesthefilm.com

 

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