Modern Collective, the latest offering from the Poor Specimen production team, has had all the online hype, hoopla and hysteria not seen since.. well, um, yeah.. never. The idea, for Modern Collective is that of Taylor Steele's protege and editing wizz kid, Kai Neville. For the film, Neville has chosen six of the better high performance surfers in the world at this moment, and taken them to the places that offer the opportunities to do the style of surfing they are famous for. Rather than the standard surf trip that hunts perfect barrels, The Collective has hunted and slaughtered some of the biggest ramps on the globe. This, paired with a little twist on the normal style of editing, has seen Neville produce a format that I myself see as the future of high performance surf films. With session based sections rather than the standard individual surfer section, it gives the viewer a refreshing take on the hi-fi style of surfing that is being produced by all six surfers at once. The Collective is made up of a mixture of professionally competitive and professionally paid free surfers, including Dane Reynolds, Dusty Payne, Dion Agius, Mitch Coleborne, Yadin Nicol and Jordy Smith. All six surfers in the Collective put on a display of ridiculously radical individual manoeuvres. However, it is only Dane Reynolds and Jordy Smith that can consistently string together whole waves with amazing combination's of power and above the lip, futuristic surfing. The Modern Collective will receive criticism from many people, myself included, but the the main thing i can see putting people off this film is the soundtrack. Watchers may not expect such an obscure/dance orientated track list from a surfing movie, but I myself can appreciate it. Plus it was cool to hear Split Endz on a surf film! Now, here's mine. I'm a fan of art.. and i really enjoyed the whole artistic structure of The Modern Collective, however at the same time, it took over three minutes of blokes in the smoke touching an ice cube before we had the pleasure of seeing Dane Reynolds taking off on that first wave of the movie.. and that made me a little edgy. Lucky we found the remote! Another slight negative of The Modern Collective is that because Kai Neville has done such a good job with the selection of his surfers and locations, the amount of amazing manoeuvres almost becomes monotonous, you almost, just almost become desensitized, amazingly? Overall, I believe The Modern Collective is one of the best performance based surfing movies ever made. Best on ground goes to Jordy Smith, he puts on the most consistent display of progressive surfing I have seen. He has blown my mind.. Watch it, you'll understand. Go and buy it at Island, tell them Eli sent you.x
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