Black Sheep

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Black Sheep

I first met Sam traveling through the USA last year, but as it turned out we grew up less than 5km away from each other in Sydney. Since then, I have spent my time traveling the world for work and play, and staying primarily based out of London. My work as a director and cameraman has taken me to over 21 countries this year, and often means I am on the road, sleeping on floors, couches, or sometimes luckily even beds. Sam’s year has been not too dissimilar; living out of his van, surfing his way around Europe, ending up in far North Norway, before settling down on the coast of Morocco for three months following the breakdown of his (now abandoned) van.

He had come to Ireland to surf the infamous Winter slabs on the West coast following a whimsical thought and promising swell charts, and while on his way asked me to come along. I dropped everything and flew out two days later with grand intentions of filming a documentary following Sam hitting huge, barreling, freezing waves. However, as is the often the case when chasing waves, the forecasts were slightly off and resulted in unseasonably calm waters all the way down the coastline.

Geared with my cameras, inspiration and the joy of visiting a new country, I pushed on with a concept travel film documenting the few days we had chasing locals’ rumors of swell almost right down to Ireland’s most South-Western tip. I wanted to stray from the traditional travel video mediums, avoiding drones, high paced edits, upbeat dance music, slow motion and grossly over saturated visuals (all of which I have fallen into the traps of in the past).

I challenged myself by using (almost) no diegetic sound, shooting entirely in 25fps, no tripod and with little to no camera movement. I wanted to recreate the feeling of the journey in an almost entirely visual way, but keep it as personal as possible by using the camera as my point of view – never straying far from Sam’s eye line – in an attempt to bring the viewer as close as possible to our experience.

Both of our vagrant, vagabond lifestyles lend themselves to the metaphorical ‘Black Sheep’ title (stylized in Gaelic, “Caora Dhubh”), but also was an apt reference to one of our funnier and more in depth discussions on the road; where do black sheep really come from, and why are there so many in Ireland?

The music I have chosen is a Gustavo Santaolalla composition taken from the 21 Grams soundtrack. It is sparse enough to not interfere with the visuals, but also brings a perfect tone of open ended exploration and personal introspection.

Finally, I chose to lay down a recording of Robert Frost reciting one of his most well regarded poems, The Road Not Taken. I don’t feel like I need to describe the reason or meaning behind this choice in too much detail, however, it adds as a final punctuation to the piece which affirms the journey theme and the joys of travel; “I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”

Tim Seller
Robert Frost – The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.

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