Monday, 1 September 2025

Riding the Peaks of Success: 100 Foot Wave

 interview and words for RED

The HBO Max multi-Emmy winning docuseries 100 Foot Wave combines the jaw-dropping skill of elite surfers riding the world’s most awesome liquid mountains with an insider’s view of the camaraderie and lifestyle of this sporting community.

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Directed by Chris Smith (Tiger King), the latest instalment focuses as before on legendary big wave surfer Garrett McNamara and features the series’ signature intimate interviews, vérité photography, and dramatic visuals. Stunning water footage showcases the death-defying beauty of big wave surfing as the athletes risk it all in a quest for the ultimate high.

Every single camera is RED, either V-RAPTOR or KOMODO, wielded by expert cinematographers including two-time Emmy winner for outstanding cinematography for a nonfiction program, Laurent Pujol.

“It’s far from being a studio or a set out there,” says Pujol with some understatement. “You can only control so much. Even when changing your battery, there’s a risk you will miss a moment. You have to be ready every second.”

Season one, released in 2021, was shot with multiple types of cameras, consumer, professional cine and high frame rate, offering varying capabilities and output. Pujol chose to shoot his work in the water with RED RAVEN, changing up to RED DRAGON 6K for the second season, and he believes this influenced the production’s decision to standardize on DSMC2 for S3.

“Everyone loved the look of the RED and they thought it would be a great idea if we shot RED across the board. The image quality is exceptional and consistent which makes it a lot easier for post-production to grade.”

By the end of filming on season two, he’d purchased a RED V-RAPTOR which is the camera he used to film all of this year’s episodes. “V-RAPTOR opened up a lot more horizons not to mention the sheer image quality. It’s a full sensor, you can crop into it, stabilize it. You’ve got 200 frames a second in 5K.”

Pujol is nominated for an Emmy again this year, along with fellow cinematographers Michael Darrigade, Vincent Kardasik, Alexandre Lesbats, Karl Sandrock and Chris Smith.

“The series is about 20 percent surfing, divided between the water shots, drone shots and panoramas from shore and the rest is vérité footage,” he explains. “We're trying to make that 15-20 percent of action all be incredible shots.”

While the first two seasons largely documented McNamara’s quest to conquer big waves in Nazaré, Portugal, the latest five-part series explores his professional setbacks and mental challenges as well as filming surfing contests in locales such as Cortes Bank in the Pacific Ocean; Safi, Morocco; Montaldo, Italy; and on O’ahu, Hawaii.

While vérité shooters focused on interviews and everything happening on shore Pujol leads the water unit, filming from the back of a jet ski. His team includes a driver and a spotter on the cliff with binoculars and a walkie-talkie giving the pair on the ocean information about when the big waves are coming.

“The most important to know is if the next wave is bigger than the one we're filming, because when we’re down there we don't know how big the wave is until one goes by or we're right above it. I'd rather shoot the five biggest waves of the day than fifty good ones.”

The camera has to be easy to pick up, quick to power up, and shoot with at a moment's notice. “I'm the only shooter out there for 100 ft waves, so I need to be mobile. I try to be everywhere although I'm only going to get 75 per cent of what's going on.”

“My V-RAPTOR is basically a 10kg package in a waterproof housing which I tend to hold from underneath and lock my arms to my side to get more stability. I like to put one hand on the handle and hold the housing by the bottom. That's how I feel I'm getting my more stable shots, but even as we’re pulling away to get out of the way of the waves so we don't get hit by it, I’ve still got to shoot because there's a lot going on and I don’t want to miss anything.”

Preparation before heading out onto the ocean is key. He carries several one and two Terabyte cards and three to four 150kW batteries. Returning to shore is not an option.

“That's going to take me 30-minutes and I could just easily miss the biggest, best wave of the session or of the year. So, I'm changing cards and batteries on the ski. Luckily, the housing I now have has just four clips where I can make a swap as quickly as possible. Obviously, with water flying everywhere, some water does get in there every time which is not the best thing for the camera for sure.”

A second RED body (DRAGON 6K) is ready to go just in case. “I love that camera. The quality on it is insane. It’s a perfect backup.”

He records RAW usually 6K at 160fps 17:9 for 2.35 extraction “to generate as much quality as possible for the editing team to work with.”

“My sweet spot is 6K 160 frames a second,” he explains. “Sometimes I'll go down to 5K 200 fps. I’ll rarely do 8K 120 because it gets a little shaky out there. The higher the frame rate the more the image stabilizes.”

On season two and three, he mostly shot with a Canon 50mm lens at f/1.2. “One reason I use the same lens is to have less confusion as far my distance is concerned. If myself and my driver know the distance between my lens and the subject it is such an advantage. Experience tells me not to get too close because you can miss the top or the bottom of the wave. You really need the whole wave in the frame to do it justice, so it's almost better to be a little bit away to capture that.”

With production running multiple cameras virtually non-stop every day, the amount of media runs into hundreds of terabytes.

“The more they have, the happier they are! The first season, I would just press record as soon as the guy took off and as soon as he finished the wave I stopped. The edit team came back to me saying ‘Man, you gotta keep the camera rolling. We need to get more of this stuff. We want the pickups. We want the guys stressing out. We want the guy stoked.’

“At first, I didn’t quite understand because I was getting all this killer action, but once I started to see the series in full, I understood how important for the storytelling that material is. It’s more important than the action. In the end, if you've captured somebody who caught the wave of his life and he's out there with tears in his eyes - that's the shot. If the guy gets a big wipeout with blood pulling down his face, as happened to Garrett in season three, I need to be there getting that.

“Sometimes it feels a little intrusive, sticking my camera in their face when he's crying with emotion or a fight breaks out, but it’s part of the vérité of it all.”

Indeed, Pujol’s favorite shot of this season is not awe-inspiring action or a monumental wave (although there are plenty of those). “It’s just a guy sitting on his board in the evening pretty much all by himself with these red sunset colors. I’m getting my driver to go back and forth so there’s some movement. It just felt right for a moment of reflection about Márcio.”

Tragically, Brazilian big wave surfer Márcio Freire lost his life at in Nazaré in 2023. It was the first death linked to surfing there and the event is recounted in ‘Chapter II: Undertow.’

“There was a lot of discussion about what we should include but I think the episode was a great homage to him and to everything he's done for big wave surfing.”

That Chapter also includes the aftermath of Garrett’s own wipeout which left him seriously injured, while brother-in-law, CJ Macias, gets back on a board after recovering from his own significant accident. The dangers are real, something that Pujol knows all about.

“For all the spotters you've got, and knowledge of wave period [the time it takes for two successive crests in a swell to pass a specified point] you never really know whether your subject is going to catch the wave or what's going to happen,” he says.

Pujol’s drivers are critical partners in the endeavor. He has been working with Joao Guedes and Antonio Cardoso for ten years.

“They know exactly what I want. I can just focus on my composition and keeping my camera straight and I don't have to give any instructions anymore. They just allows me to do my thing.”

With so much unpredictability, Pujol relies on instinct, skill and teamwork to capture the action in a split second – all while making sure he and his driver are safe. He calls it “provoking luck.”

“Sometimes, I'll be in the perfect spot in a position where I can lock my elbows and because of the way the skis are moving I become a human gimbal. When the ski goes right or left, so do I, while trying to keep the camera as straight as possible. Most of the time I'm not even looking at my monitor. I’m holding the camera above my head as we're driving away from a wave trying to get that last second shot.

“It’s a case of constant adapting to the situation and it's never the same situation. That’s what makes it exciting. Sometimes what you didn’t think was a good wave, ends up being an incredible shot when you check the rushes later. Other times the wave you thought would look amazing doesn't look that big when you play it back. Sometimes, it's just luck as to where we are on the wave that can gives you that optical illusion of power and performance with perfect framing. It’s luck, but you earn it through experience and perseverance.”

He says he is proud of his work on the show over the last six years and in particular that it has helped audiences to truly understand the motivation of elite surfers willing to test themselves against the power of nature.

“The movie Point Break was a crazy kind of made-up thing which for me never hit home. On 100 Foot Wave we are telling real stories of real surfers and it’s a big deal for us that the public appreciate it.

“Just being out there in the mix, travelling and hanging out with the guys, is something I love. I don't surf the big waves as I used to so I'm kind of living through them now. I’d miss it so much otherwise. It's a part of me.”

Special thanks to DP Laurant Pujul for giving the RED community a closer look at his work on the Emmy-nominated 100 Foot Wave.

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