Hawaii 501 – MAKIN WAVES

The journey of life especially film leads one to meet some amazing characters whom you either work with or get to meet. My trip to Hawaii which was very special , was aimed at researching an extraordinary story about a unique human being Brady Giusta. His story of turning a school system to support surfing and taking kids that had not surfed before and moulding a team that eventually won the National Champs in Hawaii. It’s a story of perseverance, hardship, elation and love.

In the packaging stage, Casting obviously plays a major role as this is what brings your characters to life, so one of the first steps was to meet talent in Hawaii. What better than to meet the cast of TV show Hawaii 501.

Another legend we met at an extraordinary meeting was globally acclaimed surf photographer, His studio was under his house, it was 100% full of every music artist you could think of, his sound system was outrageous, the house shook as he played records with artists of the 60’s and we went through his extensive library seeking the perfect shot to best tell the story for the purposes of a poster. The choices were endless, but eventually we settled on the image below. This poster depicts the our original thoughts as a poster to market the film.

The research helped package the project, tweaking the screenplay with the writer after first hand experience in Hawaii and partnering with key organisations to make this film happen.

Making a film is a miracle really, you need to get that magical screenplay then build a package which is attractive to a distributor and then get it into the right hands. Sounds easy, but it ain’t.

This should be a NETFLIX film, it is inspirational yet full of action, beauty, intrigue and it tells a story of a man who sacrificed his own needs to make a difference in a society that needed up-lifting.

Similar films would be :

Can you imagine the kids in the surf team could sea the ocean, but some had never been to it? Another anecdote, was that when Brady auditioned for a team, they first had to check that the children enrolling could actually swim. Imagine trying to surf in Hawaii and not be able to swim, thats paramount to ‘hurry curry’ Brady would list as one of the phenomenal people I have met, he held down several jobs so that his spare time jobs could assist others over an above his needs as a family man.

We also went to big Island and met top Hawaiian director David Cunningham, who’s parents founded YWAM. His track record of feature directing is humbling. His set up on BIG ISLAND, is one of the better facilities we visited.

I left Hawaii a humbled man, with great hope that we would make this film. Its still out there, it needs to get into the right hands, as this would be a great film that is worth making. Welcome to the film business.

Bruce Mac this time from