Chris Rogers' videos regularly rack up millions of views. He’s worked with world class brands and athletes, but it was a clip of him foiling with dolphins that caught our eye. We got in touch to find out how that came about.
FALLING INTO FILMING
Tell us about yourself.
I'm a travel and action sports filmmaker. When I was about 15 I broke both my legs. I picked up a camera, and being into board sports, they were the first thing I took photos of. It snowballed into a hobby and then into a career. It's been about 10 years of doing this full-time. Pretty crazy.
When did you realise this was a viable career?
2017 was when things started to click into place. I landed a project with Coca-Cola and had no idea the insane budgets these beverage companies have, which was monumental at that early stage of my career.
I had saved up money from filming music festivals in South Africa to spend a season in Europe and film as much as possible. About six months after building my portfolio I was getting paid to shoot skiing and snowboarding by a company out of Sweden called Dope Snow.
Do you have a favourite type of project?
The dream situation is a really cool brand, a great budget, full creative freedom and combine that with an athlete I really like. My approach isn't about getting the athlete to do the craziest thing they've ever done. We're trying to film what they usually do in a way people hopefully haven't seen before. Any project where I can incorporate that, usually with going to a ridiculous destination to pull off the project, is the dream situation.
If somebody is watching one of my videos of a surfer, even if they've never touched or been on a surfboard, I want someone who knows nothing about surfing to enjoy my content. I'm trying to reach that broader audience.
INSANE MOMENTS
Talk through foiling with dolphins.
I was in Cape Town, South Africa, where they usually host Red Bull’s King of the Air kiteboarding competition. It's very rare to have a flat day like that with no wind.
I'd been shooting for Waydoo, the foil brand, and a drone company called HoverAir. I wanted a really iconic shot of me foiling with Table Mountain in the background with the drone.
I'd finished that and packed up the foil, when I saw all the dolphins coming into the bay. Dolphins always like to bow ride in front of a boat and I thought they might think the foil's a little boat, so maybe they'll come play. As soon as I was there, they were all about it. I think they could hear the propeller and the engine on the foil, and came straight to me. It was a massive pod. I didn't want to be in the pod because there were too many. I was off to the side, and a bunch of them would break away from the pod and come ride.
It was such a surreal moment to be flying above the water on the foil, look down, and see anywhere from 5 to 20 dolphins.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
Do you already have the edit in mind when you shoot?
If I've been able to plan things out, I'll film in a very particular way. If something unexpected happens that's better than we could have imagined, I'll pivot and let that moment lead the footage, and then that footage will lead the edit and the storyline.
How do you know when to publish?
You can fix and tweak things indefinitely, and it's a black hole you can get sucked into. There's a saying that "done is better than perfect." It's a hard thing to embrace when you're trying to be an artist and really proud of the work you're putting out, but it does get to the point where it's better to have something out in the world than nothing at all.
I'm trying to find the balance of embracing that. The standard I set for myself is, “is this something I'd enjoy watching myself?”
What’s your creative process?
It’s all over the place. I try to plan as much as I can, but in this line of work there are only so many elements you can control.
I am fully open to the idea of things not going to plan and us having to pivot. That usually adds to the whole storyline of what we're trying to achieve. Usually, my best shoots are fully planned out, but I'm always wary of having to adjust when we're on the fly.
Sometimes things pop up and we wing it and develop the story as it goes.
Are your shoots organised?
Some shoots are super well-organized and super efficient: we're in there, we get everything we need, we're done, and the video gets done quickly.
Sometimes crazy opportunities present themselves last minute, and everything doesn't feel very planned. A good portion of the time I'm a one-man team planning all the logistics and everything.
Which of your clips stand out for you?
The dolphin clip is definitely one. Another recent one was the shot we got in Tahiti last year with Tereva David. We rigged up a 360º camera on him, and it was the best day of surf they had in Tahiti last year. Tereva towed into an absolute bomb at Teahupo'o.
FUTURE PLANS
Do you have a list of things or places you want to shoot?
A snowboard trip to Japan; I've always wanted to go there, and obviously, we've all seen how insane the powder looks, and on par with that would be a heli-ski trip in Alaska.
On the warmer side of things, a houseboat trip to Lake Powell in Arizona and shoot a wakeboarding and cliff-jumping video. I grew up watching a lot of wakeboarding movies from that location, and it's always been a dream.
What impact is AI having on your approach?
I'm not a fan of AI-generated content from start to finish, and I'm not shy to be vocal about that. However, I see no problem with using it to enhance your content and speed up your workflow. I think that's awesome. It should be treated like a legal steroid.
I've personally used it to create dream camera movements that would have otherwise required super expensive equipment; something like a $40,000 robotic arm. I don't have the money to do that, but using AI and two cameras, I can pretty much recreate the same thing.
I'd always dreamed of creating a camera array, setting up 40 to 50 GoPros to create that Matrix bullet-time effect. I can now do it with two to three GoPros using AI. That’s a game changer.
What’s on the cards?
I filmed a snowboarding clip of my buddy Max doing this ridiculous Japan grab rodeo, there's a whole behind-the-scenes story on how we did that and how we captured it. I think that'll come out in November.
I also have a ski trip and a snowboard trip planned for New Zealand at the end of August, so I'm pretty excited for that. There's a few other things I can't really talk about…
What else in cinematography interests you?
I would love to do a bigger film or documentary-style project at some point, but it's not the goal right now.
You’re giving a speech to a class of film school graduates. What piece of advice are you sharing?
Go and create the content you want to get paid to make. You've got to put up with this upfront cost of investing in your own portfolio, but that's what's going to get you hired to film the stuff you actually enjoy filming. I invested into filming snowboarding, surfing, wakeboarding, traveling, and freediving, and it's led me to getting those exact jobs. You've got to build up your portfolio in the niche you want to get hired in.