Meet the Emmy-winning filmmaker behind Barons’ authentic surf scenes

One of the most striking things about the new Australian drama Barons, set in the rapidly changing surf culture of the 1970s and 1980s, is the way the images capture Australia’s incredible coastal waters. More Tracks than Tarantino, they were the work of an American surf filmmaker with a very deeply Australian DNA.

Steele is surfing’s D.W. Griffith, the filmmaker who wrote the book on editing and narrative technique. Steele’s films, particularly the early, gold standard-setting Momentum, created a new path for modern surf cinematography. And while he now lives back in San Diego, his adopted home town of Byron Bay is still in his DNA.

Taylor Steele (right), on the set of Barons.Credit: ABC TV

The 49-year-old Emmy-winning filmmaker first came to Australia in his late teens. “When I was a kid I had started watching surf films and Australia was always the highlighted part, so I saved up enough money, worked all summer and went to Australia for two months, bought a Valiant and drove around the country with three friends,” he says.

“It was a crucial stage in my life where it formed my rest of my life, and it gave me the sense of adventure, the travel bug, and made me fall in love with Australia,” Steele says. “I felt like when I came back from that trip, it was like a coming of age, it was part of how I transitioned from child to adult.”

Steele was invited to return by long-time collaborators Michael Lawrence and Nicholas Cook. The pair’s credits include Bra Boys and Fighting Fear; Steele worked with them on a number of surf films and surfing content for National Geographic.

“When they started talking about Barons, to me the 1970s has always been a romantic stage in the history of surfing and like sort of the peak of innocence meets rebellion,” Steele says. “I have always loved that era. And that space has always been somehow magical and inspiring to me.”

Taylor Steele (right), on the set of Barons.Credit: ABC TV

In a sense, the innocence of that era in the surfing world is that it was a sort of commercial turning point, where surfing began a transformation from rebellious counter-culture to a mainstream, billion-dollar industry.

“It’s a magic time because part of what’s going on, with everybody challenging society and trying not to be told what to think,” Steele says. “Surfing allowed that because you’re in nature, you’re in this rhythm of the ocean, and you’re feeling it and connecting with it. And when you leave that experience, there’s nothing tangible you have. It’s just a feeling. Chasing that feeling was what people wanted to continue doing.”

In those days, Steele says, surfers were not in surfing to make money. “There was no roadmap to make money on surfing; surfing was something you spent your money to do,” he says. “With the 1980s in general, there is a natural progression of feeling and chasing it in other ways, maybe more material ways. And surfing has that, compounded by brands becoming bigger and bigger.”

Many film and television productions have a main and second unit; the second unit typically chases less important shots. In the case of Barons, the main unit was directed, depending on the episode, by Shawn Seet or Fadia Abboud. Taylor’s job was a first for an Australian TV series, to direct a dedicated “surf” unit that would shoot the on-water scenes, whether they were surfing images or scenes in the water with dialogue.

The cast of Barons.Credit: ABC TV

“I had a delicate dance because I was an executive producer working on some scripts and storylines, making sure it felt authentic to surfing, so I was the filter of the surf conscience to it in a way,” Steele says. “And then I am under the director in knowing my place and trying to get out of his way. But also, I was conscious of not going out and shooting stuff that would not fit.”

Initially, Taylor says, “we were just talking and figuring out what is needed in those spaces. And what I felt was needed... wasn’t man versus nature, like a lot of storylines are. It was enjoyable. It was fun. And many times it carried over the emotion of the scene previous into that, or leading the next scene. Plus, it has the emotion [of the surf], whether the ocean was raw and angry or beautiful, and calm and serene.”

The surf also teaches a powerful lesson in patience, Taylor says. The sport, generally, but more acutely when it intersects with filmmaking. “You can’t force it, you can’t make the waves show up,” he says. “The waves can look really good, you can paddle out and not get any. It teaches you just to not force things, but just to try. As a filmmaker, you just work really hard to prep, and you give it the best chance.”

As a lifelong surfer himself, Steele understands the nature of the ocean in a very specific way. Perhaps more than most sports, which deal with static environments, surfing is done in a constantly changing environment. “When I’m surfing I am feeling rhythm with the ocean, and if I don’t surf for a couple of weeks, I don’t feel in rhythm with the ocean. When I do, it’s an energy that’s connected to the earth as a whole.”

Trotter (Sean Keenan) and Dani (Sophia Forrest) in Barons.Credit: ABC TV

Surfing is also a mixture of rhythms and energies, Steele says. “You paddle out, and you are waiting for waves, so you need to almost have a meditative state. And then when the waves come, you need a sort of fast tempo. And when you’re done, you don’t remember much of it but what is stuck with you is the energy from the wave. When you come back to the beach, you carry that energy with you.”

Surfing is a complicated world of historically male tribalism, which has become, over time, increasingly equally gendered. It is also an age indiscriminate sport, at least at the amateur level. Those qualities make it a very specific environment, Steele says. “There are not many places that a 12-year-old will be hanging out with a 60-year-old and be equals,” Steele says. “In the surfing environment that happens all the time. You look out for each other, and you encourage and learn from each other.”

For Steele, what is still with him is the sport’s strong sense of family, and enduring friendships such as those he has with surfers Rob Machado and Kelly Slater. “When I was 17, I met a group of friends chasing the same passion and dream. And they became my second family. We’re still really close, we talk every day. We support each other. Surfing quickly gives you experiences to bond you and then over time, and travels, that bond becomes stronger.”

Steele’s own surfing filmography is the industry’s gold standard. His 1992 film Momentum – time-stamped by the anachronistic footnote that it was a direct-to-VHS-format video release – is considered a seminal work, from a time when surfing movies were sold in surf shops and not in traditional retail stores.

Perhaps the most misunderstood thing about surf cinematography is its relationship to music. Unlike many sports on film, where commentary fills the soundscape, surfing is not a naturally narrated activity. Into that void stepped music and, in the infancy of modern surf films, in particular punk rock.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s there was no internet, and few ways to find new music, Steele says. “We had MTV but that played very mainstream tracks. And so those VHS copies of skate videos and surf videos were where you found new bands that sort of resonated with your peers.”

“I would say 50 per cent of surf films are based on music, and the music to me is the motion of the scene and what I used to be feeling,” Steele adds. “Back in the 1990s, I was 17 or 18, and I just wanted energy. And then as my films sort of go through this 30-year journey, the music becomes more emotive and melancholy, and more about trying to capture the feeling of a memory.”

Barons airs on the ABC on April 24.

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