This VR Video Invites You for a Ride-Along on Kelly Slater’s Surfboard

Uh, shotgun?

May 24, 2017 9:00 am

Where you focus your gaze is where you go.

True for shooting a gun. True for your career. And true for maintaining balance while surfing. 

That third fact becomes plain as day when you watch Kelly Slater catch a barrel in the virtual-reality video above.

As he’s on the wave, notice how he navigates with simple turns of the head: it’s all about feeling the flow of the wave and then making tiny  adjustments based on what’s presented to him.

This short video is part of a longer surfing movie called Proximity. Shot by famed surfing director Taylor Steele, the video pairs young surfers with older surfers — Kelly Slater with John John Florence, for instance — in farflung locales. They talk about the sport, they talk about life. Lots of surfing metaphors. Lots of lessons.

And just the right amount of VR.

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