Slyde Videographer Spotlight: Jacuzzi Surfer Talks Film Equipment, Youtube Stars, and Nazaré

Have fun, go surf, and always be positive are the underlining theme behind our friend Jacuzzi Surfer's Youtube Channel, and we couldn't agree more.  

He has a stellar line up of over 300 entertaining Youtube videos featuring bodysurfing, junk car races, UFC, and beyond.  Slyde couldn't help but find out more about the man behind the lens.

Where did you get the name Jacuzzi Surfer?

I don’t really have a cool reason for picking it. I was trying to think of the most random thing in the world, and something that was really fun to say. I love jacuuzzi’s,  I love surfing, why not be Jacuzzi Surfer? 

Tell us about your video gear and set up:

For my gear I use a Macbook Pro laptop a Sony A6500, it’s a mirrorless camera that shoots really good video. It’s highend and won’t cost you an arm and a leg. Along with a cannon 1-400lens with a metabones adapter.

A Phantom4 pro drone, which is really awesome because you can shoot in 4k, which is a really high frame rate, and that’s what you want for those nice buttery slow motions, and I also have a Phantom3 Pro. I edit my videos with Final Cut Pro and if it’s a real basic video, I just use iMovie. They’re both really good video editing softwares, it just depends on what you want to do, and what level of editing you want to do. 

Who or what got you into shooting videos?

I ski and I surf quite a bit and I would always bring my GoPro, and I just started filming by buddies getting wrecked on the slopes or totally getting pitted gnar out in the waves, and I had a really good time doing it. 

What’s your inspiration behind your videos?

I like filming and I like surfing so what better combination? Plus I live in San Diego and there’s a beach like 5miles away from me. 

Who’s your favorite Youtuber? And Why?

I don’t have a favorite Youtuber, but I do have a lot of Youtubers that I watch regularly. I’m into all kinds of things like motorsports, surfing, skiing, you know anything there can be like Redbull or Mountain Dew involved.

If you want to talk about surfing, definitely Ho Stevie, DrewBTube. Definitely Man of Water, he makes some really good video, and I’m trying to do a collaboration with.

What’s your favorite video you’ve ever made and why?

Oh, that’s like asking who’s your favorite kid. I have a video that has almost 50,000 views which is a lot for me. It’s just a random video that I made, and It’s got a ton of views, I don’t know why.

I film Mark Drewelow a lot he’s a bodysurfer down in San Diego and we filmed a video together at Moonlight beach, and it was probably one of the smallest days I’ve seen at Moonlight. I started filming Mark doing underwater stuff with my drone, and I got really low to him, basically just framed him up doing all these underwater maneuvers in a wave, and it hasn’t been done anywhere that I’ve seen. It was crystal clear water, so you could see all of his hand placements, you can see what his fins are doing, how he’s carving into the wave, so I guess that might be my favorite one. 

If you could pick only 1 location to film for the next year where would you go & what would you film?

I love Blacks beach that’s a really good wave down here in San Diego, it gets really big during the winter time. But, I went to Nazaré, Portugallast February ho my gosh, Portugal in general has some of the most amazing surf I have ever seen. 

I would go to Nazare, and I could film there for a year easily, cause even on the smallest days the insiders are like 20 feet it’s nuts. I saw the biggest wave I’ve ever seen in my life, it was 100footer. Mark Drewelow and I flew out there and saw some of the biggest rockstars in surfing Garret McNamara, Rodrigo Koxa, Pedro Snoopy, Toby Cunningham, and they looked like little specks on these waves, it was just incredible.

Watch the Epic version of this Q & A Session below: