Water cinematographer Rick Rifici (Otherlife, Drift, Adore) has spent a lot of his career capturing surf for TVCs and commerical clients, where the brief typically involves capturing the waves and athletes in sunny conditions and bright blue water.
However, when Simon Baker asked Rifici to come on board to shoot the surf and the underwater scenes in his debut feature Breath, an adaptation of the Tim Winton novel of the same name, the director had a vision that avoided surfing tropes.
“He wanted to capture what we see as surfers,” Rifici tells IF. “It gave me a really good chance to get creative and shoot a lot of things that you don’t normally get to when you’re shooting for the mainstream surfing media.”
Rifici had the opportunity to shoot out of the box, take underwater shots from abstract perspectives, and to capture a moody, atmospheric aesthetic. “[Baker] didn’t want anything to be bright, sunny and fluffy.”
Breath was shot around Denmark, Western Australia back in 2016. Rifici was on the set for around four weeks, shooting any scenes on, underneath or in the water. He used a RED Dragon in water housing with Cooke S4 lenses. A wireless link sent footage back to the director nearby on a boat or on the mainland. There was also a follow focus system in the water housing, which enabled Rifici to sit at a shallow depth of field, and to be able to throw focus between actors as they delivered dialogue and then to somebody surfing.
The crew were often working in testing conditions, but Rifici says his job was made easier by Baker. The director is a surfer himself, he’s knowledgeable about lenses from his time on sets as an actor, and he cast two professional surfers, Ben Spence and Samson Coulter, as his young leads, rather than using surfing doubles – authenticity was key in what they were trying to capture.
“Having two young surfers in the actors, I was able to get really close and was also able to do dialogue, where they could turn and swing, catch a wave and slip off a wave and deliver their lines.”
Rifici says he enjoys shooting in the water because it of the inherent challenge it entails. He can read a script and plan how he’ll capture a scene in his head, but when he gets out into the conditions, he may need to throw it all out and adapt – heading back to shore to change lenses or filters could wipe out almost an hour from schedule.
“Nothing is easy about it,” he says. “When dealing with mother nature, especially in the water and the ocean, you need to have everything as prepared as you possibly can as far as lenses and ND filters, to be able to predict what is going to happen to a certain extent.”
The variable nature of the surf also means there can often be only one chance to get a take.
Rifici notes a key scene in Breath involves one of the actors catching a big wave and coming down near a boat anchored nearby. They had mapped out a half a day’s schedule to shoot it, but he was nervous – there were a lot of elements that would need to come together for it to work, and he thought they’d definitely need to reshoot.
However, within five minutes of the boat being anchored and the actors being dropped off, there was a 15-20 metre swell.
“I was hoping the focus puller – who was on a boat a couple of hundred metres back – had a picture up and was ready to go, because one the young guys, the lead, he paddled for a wave and actually caught it and delivered his lines as he flicked off near the boat.
“Then the next wave that came through sank the boat. So we had one take at it. It was just perfect, we couldn’t have planned it any better.”
Rick Rifici and Simon Baker participate in a panel tonight at the Gold Coast Film Festival, as part of an ACS & ADG event. ‘Breath’ will receive a national theatrical release May 3 via Roadshow Films.
April 20, 2018 2:39 pm in Entertainment by Carla Tooma
Hundreds of people packed into Event Cinemas at Pacific Fair last night to catch a glimpse of Hollywood star Simon Baker on the red carpet.
The Aussie actor, most famous for his leading role as Patrick Jane in the Mentalist, was attending the Queensland Premiere of his new movie, Breath, as part of the Gold Coast Film Festival.
Not only does Baker star in the film, it is also the first time he has directed a full length feature. “It’s a fantastic opportunity that I never imagined I would have ever had,” he told myGC. Two young surfers, Samson Coulter and Ben Spence, were plucked from obscurity to star alongside Baker in the film.
While the film features the boys riding solid waves, they say the scenes shot on shore were more terrifying. “The waves weren’t the problem, it was just learning how to act,” Bed said. Samson added, “The surf was the relaxing bit. We were just rubbing out hands together when we got to stop acting and go surf.”
They also revealed to myGC that prior to meeting Baker, they didn’t really know who he was. “My mum had heard of him,” Samson said. “And I think I saw him in that ad where he pushes the screen and it lights up.”
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Simon Baker's Directorial Debut Feature film "Breath" screened on the Gold Coast for its Gala Premiere at Events Cinema Myer Centre for GC Film Festival and Hush Hush Biz Entertainment News had the Red Carpet covered and we spoke to Simon and young actors surfers. Filmed & Produced by Jean-Pierre Addinall & Seth LeBrese April 19, 2018
Happy to see the posters out for Simon Baker’s new feature film ‘Breath’, along with our typographic titling and identity. Based on the Tim Winton novel, the film is really worth a look.
Breath Travis Johnson Year: 2018 Rating: M Director: Simon Baker Cast: Samson Coulter, Ben Spence, Simon Baker, Elizabeth Debicki, Richard Roxburgh, Rachael Blake Distributor: Roadshow Released: May 3, 2018 Running Time: 115 minutes
" an excellent, thematically complex, emotionally truthful coming of age story, and a truly impressive directorial debut "
In a small country town in the South West of Western Australia in the 1970s, two best mates navigate the choppy waters of adolescence. Thoughtful and introspective Bruce “Pikelet” Pike (Samson Coulter) and reckless, larrikin Ivan “Loonie” Loon (Ben Spence) might seem to have little in common, but they are united by a shared obsession with increasingly dangerous risk-taking, and a growing fascination with surfing. Those two drives are combined and exacerbated when they come into the orbit of Sando (Simon Baker), a reclusive former world champion surfer who urges them to join him in riding bigger waves and riskier breaks.
For his elegiac, closely observed first feature film as director, Simon Baker adapts Western Australian author Tim Winton’s 2008 novel of the same name to excellent effect. Baker’s film evokes both Winton’s unparalleled grasp of place and his astute sense of the rites and habits of Australian masculinity. In other words, when it comes to capturing the joys and traumas associated with coming of age in that particular time and place, Breath absolutely nails it.
Perhaps we can chalk that up partly to Winton’s own hand in the screenplay, which is also credited to Baker and Gerard Lee (Top of the Lake, Sweetie), but the directorial choices are all Baker’s own, and he draws excellent performances from his young cast. As our point of view character and narrator (Winton himself provides the adult Pikelet’s voice), Coulter does most of the dramatic heavy lifting, giving a truly impressive performance.
Admirably, Breath avoids the common pitfalls of literary adaptations by never over-explaining itself. Voice over is deployed when necessary to fill in narrative gaps or to comment poetically on the action, but the film definitely shows rather than tells, trusting the audience to read the emotional transactions being carried out. Coulter is given the challenging task of growing older before our eyes, and his path from reactive boy to proactive, self-determining man (or at least youth – Breath‘s temporal span is short, though its emotional journey is epic) is wholly convincing.
By contrast, Ben Spence’s Loonie is a more archetypal character who doesn’t grow so much as become who he was always going to be: aggressive, rebellious, wounded and, though he would never admit it, broken on a fundamental and secret level. There’s a Loonie or six in every country town: products of violent homes willing to risk life and limb for even the slightest sliver of affection because they have nothing else to offer, fiercely loyal and almost certainly doomed. Spence will remind you of every one you’ve ever met.
Baker is solid in support as a character who could have been unbearable in less dexterous hands. There’s a touch of the guru to Sando (the obvious cinematic reference point would be Patrick Swayze’s Bodhi in Point Break) and he clearly delights in being mentor to the boys, dispensing advice and coveted wetsuits alike, but there’s a sad and wounded quality that grounds him. Indeed, his wound is externalised in the form of his American wife, Ava (Elizabeth Debicki), sullen and withdrawn after her ski-jumping career was ended by a catastrophic knee injury and, it is hinted, the reason he has withdrawn from public life.
If Sando is mysterious, Ava is all but unknowable, but in the way that mature, complex women are unknowable to adolescent boys – it’s worth keeping in mind whose point of view we’re seeing these events from. When Sando and Loonie take off on a surfing safari and Ava becomes the focus of Pikelet’s awakening sexuality, the film moves into murky and uncomfortable territory that contrasts with the potentially dangerous but jocular adventures of its first half. Drowning is always a possibility, and a broken arm might be the price of admission into the ranks of manhood, but sex, infidelity, secrecy and betrayal are much harder things to deal with than the possibility that you might break your damn neck in the course of some foolhardy stunt.
For her part, Debicki is tasked with the difficult job of giving a distant character a sense of inner life, but not letting us see exactly what that life is. For much of the film, Ava is either an obstacle or an enigma – a wan figure that limps around Sando’s rustic bush hut, drawing the boys’ gaze and rebuffing their attentions with icy disdain. The character could have been a misstep. Ava is not the focus here, for all that she is an object of fascination and obsession for several characters, but Debicki is able to elevate the character into something more than just a plot point or trophy, imbuing her with a weird alchemy of pain, wisdom, and self-destructiveness that both makes her a whole character and all the more alluring to young Pikelet.
That’s indicative of the messiness in Breath that is both refreshing and discomfiting. This is a literary adaptation that retains the sometimes woolly plotting of literature, rather than eliding away the rough edges and tightening up the loose reveries. Not every loose end is tied up, not every sin is paid for and forgiven, nor is every rift mended. A happy ending is impossible not because the film is pessimistic, but because it acknowledges that things don’t really end the way stories say they do – we just learn what lessons we can and keep on keeping on. That’s a bitter pill to swallow at any age, and a difficult theme to communicate effectively; that Breath does so is a testament to Baker’s directorial skill.
Still, the other key theme borrowed from Winton’s novel – the importance and addictive nature of risk-taking – is somewhat muted here. The film’s deliberate pacing and somewhat painterly visual style don’t communicate the adrenal thrill of danger that is inherent in the lifestyle depicted here. In focusing on the more cerebral and philosophical elements in play, Baker has pulled a little too far back from the visceral, and you’ve got to wonder what a more concerted attempt to marry the two might have delivered (Rick Rifici’s surf photography, however, is absolutely stunning).
That’s a minor negative, though, in the face of what has been achieved here. In Breath, we can hear two voices – Winton the writer’s and Baker the director’s – working in concert to a rare degree. This is an excellent, thematically complex, emotionally truthful coming of age story, and a truly impressive directorial debut.
DESPITE living all my life in coastal towns in South America and Australia, I have never been a lover of the ocean; I never needed to get chest deep in the water in the middle of winter or travel around deserted beaches lookingfor the perfect wave to surf.
Over the years I've watched many surf movies, but none of them explained this 'ocean love' to me - until Breath.
Admittedly, Breath is way more than just a surf movie. A quintessential Australian story, it's a coming-of-age tale that is framed by the life aquatic - a cornerstone of the Aussie lifestyle.
Based on Tim Winton's book of the same title, Breath follows Sando, a former pro surfer in the mid-1970s who decides to go out of his way to mentor two teens who are obsessed with surfing.
Living in the ‘70s — Samson Coulter, Simon Baker and Ben Spence star in Breath. Picture: David Dare Parker/Supplied.
The book was first published in 2008, and won the Miles Franklin Literary Award in 2009.
Sando is played by Ballina actor and The Mentalist star Simon Baker, with Australian Elizabeth Debicki as his wife Eva. Two newcomers with zero acting experience, young surfers Samson Coulter and Ben Spence, were cast as the iconic young men.
It was a bet that really paid off.
The film works on many levels but the first one is how true it is to the book, thanks to Winton's involvement in the project from its inception.
It was an American producer, not an Australian, who got the project going in the first place. Veteran Hollywood producer Mark Johnson (Rain Man, The Notebook, the Narnia trilogy) secured the rights to the book from Winton, and then engaged Baker and Australian producer Jamie Hilton to be part of the project.
Young actors Spence and Coulter are both so good. They're possibly playing themselves, but they offer insights of comedy, drama and emotion that out-stage Baker as the driving force of the film. As Loonie, Spence is a natural comedic force that could sparkle into a bright future for the young surfer. As Pikelet, Coulter is dignified, clear and elegant but at the same time awkward and unsure - as a regular teenager should be.
Baker is great as Sando in an understated performance.
Simon Baker in director mode. Photo: David Dare Parker
But the star's real shine this time is not on screen, but behind the camera. Although he has directed episodes of The Mentalist and The Guardian, this is Baker's first directing job in a feature film. He had to wait for the right time and for The Mentalist to end, but it was a wise choice.
The surfing sequences are brilliant, the film's rhythm works and the story is told with nuance and elegance. Breath made me understand why people are so attached to the sea, why they really need to be near it, and in it, often.
The coming-of-age story, the unfolding of drama and emotional upheavals are often only explained in dialogue-free scenes. Furtive glances and long silences, in true Aussie male communication style, mark this film. It works, and it will work not only for Australian audiences but for movie lovers (and surfers) internationally, because the emotions are clearly visible, and the story flows well.
Simon Baker, Samson Coulter and Ben Spence in a scene from the movie Breath. Supplied by Screen Australia.
Breath is an instant Australian classic done brilliantly by Baker, the reluctant Hollywood star turned successful director. The bet was high but the payout should be exponential.
Simon Baker will offer two advance screenings and Q&A at Ballina fair cinemas tomorrow Tuesday (both sold out). Breath opens in cinemas May 3.
