FROM THE 6th ANNUAL ESM VIDEO AWARDS:
VIDEO OF THE YEAR: THE BEST LAID PLANSWhat more needs to be said? Four ESeMMIES, national praise, 12,000 results when you Google "The Best Laid Plans," an East Coast all-star lineup, a year's worth of solid swells, footage from three different continents and over five different islands, professional backing from surf vid heavyweights Studio 411, excellent editing, cinematography, surfing, and soundtrack... the quintessential East Coast experience, distilled into 50 superior minutes. The Best Laid Plans was a shoo-in for "Video Of The Year." If you haven't seen it yet and you consider yourself a proud Right Coaster, well, get with the program.
SICKEST EAST COAST FOOTAGE: THE BEST LAID PLANSMost years, we give this ESeMMY to the video that documents the best East Coast swell, whether hurricane or nor'easter-generated. But in 2007, we decided to congratulate The Best Laid Plans for its cumulative effort. Documenting the Right Coast in all its moods and humors, Alek Parker and Jerry Ricciotti gave us footage of heaving New Jersey barrels, summertime Florida fun, clean and green Massachusetts, gnarly Barbados, playful Puerto Rico, and the now-infamous Andrea swell. So rather than focusing on one given season, Parker and Ricciotti went one further by providing us with a broad glimpse of what the East Coast represents. Hard work, if you haven't realized it, and that's award-worthy in our books.
TIGHTEST EDITING: THE BEST LAID PLANSYes, The Best Laid Plans won quite a few awards this year. Not that Alek Parker and Jerry Ricciotti's project didn't deserve them... but Editor Nicole Orozco earned extra props. Combining footage from over eight different locations on three different continents, Orozco took hours and hours of East Coast surfers chasing swell and filtered it down to an action-packed 50 minutes. And no part of the movie comes across as unnecessary or superfluous, with slow-motion and high-speed edits, drawn-out testimonials, day-in-the-life scenes, driving, flying, and unpacking segments, and of course the obligatory surfers poring over their laptops, which all contributed to the best East Coast video to date. A diverse soundtrack backs up Orozco's fine work, with the perfect mix of live audio and recorded music adding artistic flourishes to an already-solid documentary-style video. Filmmakers always get the biggest applause, but in this case The Best Laid Plans' editor may be due a few pats on the back.
BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN EASTSIDER: BEN BOURGEOIS IN THE BEST LAID PLANSOn land, Ben Bourgeois is a humble guy. But throw this Wrightsville Beach, NC, native in the water, and you'll get a flashy yet solid bag of tricks. That's what filmmakers Alek Parker and Jerry Ricciotti got from Benny-Boo in The Best Laid Plans, where this 28-year-old charges big barrels, executes butter-smooth turns, punts clean airs, floats heavy sections, and somehow manages to fit more maneuvers into less space than anyone else... not to mention he absolutely kills it on his backside. There's a reason Bourgeois qualified for the 2008 WCT, and there's no better display of that reason than his surfing in The Best Laid Plans.
