The mini private lagoon in Taiba not only saw the bangers Coco put down this year. The polish crew left a mark as well and those who were there are testimonies of what went down. In particular, our guy Marek Rowinski was there working on something more than just a freestyle part. Something we don't see an abundance of this day in age and creates a special kind of excitement. The kind of excitement we like to share and therefore we present "The Hitchhiker".
“Is everybody in? Is everybody in? Is everybody in?
The ceremony is about to begin”
The Hitchhiker
I’ve had the idea for a kite movie based on the album “An American Prayer” for quite some time. The music itself was the main inspiration and I thought about how to make an edit which will be a good freestyle part but will also be built around the soundtrack to emphasize the album's importance. I decided to make a short film in which kiteboarding action is used as a background for the plot and slowly the concept started to form.
The timing of this project was not a coincidence. I have a regular job at home so I can’t spend as much time on the water as I wished. Thankfully I was lucky to go on a few kite trips with sweet freestyle conditions in the 2021 season. Therefore I organized everything around the end of the year because I knew I would be in great shape and it is the best moment to film a big project like that. The plan was to spend a few weeks in Brazil where you can find beautiful scenery for the movie and the best freestyle conditions that you can get.
Preparations
Before actually going to Brazil I met in Poland with Aleksander Lewandowski who films and edits the Hitchhiker. We discussed the idea and I prepared a written script for the movie. The first draft was finished in September and it contained more or less all of the main scenes. I also sent sketches of some major moments in the movie as we were aiming for possibly the most cinematic shots. Thanks to the support of my sponsors (Shinn, F-One, Manera) we got a green light for the project and I booked tickets to Fortaleza in October.
Filming
We didn’t have a lot of camera equipment with us and during filming had some bad luck with camera malfunctions which slowed us down a little. Repairing this stuff in Brazil isn’t easy- trust me. On the other hand, we’ve managed to find beautiful locations for some scenes. Most kite action is filmed on Cauipe or Taiba lagoons and the rest of the shots come from the nearby area between Cumbuco and Paracuru. One thing we didn’t expect was overall light wind conditions during my whole stay. While filming I’ve managed to use my 11m WTF only 3 times. There were a few memorable sessions when we drove to shoot on a specific spot only to find out it wasn’t windy. All in all capturing freestyle footage took us much more time than we expected- we filmed tricks even a day before my flight back home. Of course, I wanted to do a bit more but I am still very happy with how it went and in the end, we succeeded with catching some hammers on tape.
Filming was also fun because we had a vision of what we wanted to do and it was a project where we spent a great deal of time searching for shots or ways to push the plot forward and constantly balancing between filming a freestyle part and keeping to the Hitchhiker’s story. It was never a matter of arriving at a spot and filming whatever comes to mind which in my opinion takes away a lot of creativity from kite videos. Many edits stick to well-worn schemes and “lifestyle” parts are often random shots that don’t have any purpose except they look nice.
What you might expect
The full movie is around 8 minutes long so it is not much considering that we wanted to fit a decent freestyle part in it. Nonetheless, this project is still a kite movie and it was important not to overdo it for the audience who is mostly interested in kiteboarding. The second more practical reason for the Hitchhiker’s length is the simple fact that I was still a single rider in the movie. We didn’t want to force the amount of kite action on a timeline and keep a good quality of tricks.
Kitewise you might expect the main freestyle part in the movie and a couple of shorter segments that serve the purpose of telling the story.
The Hitchhiker premieres at the beginning of 2022. Meanwhile, a second trailer is coming soon.
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