The Making of No Quarter
At BOTE, we live, breathe, and relish in the SUP lifestyle, which means we make more than just stand up paddle boards. We bring #BOTENation relevant content on best SUP practices and new ways to use your board, accessories to deck out your SUP for an array of excursions, and podcasts that immerse you in the behind scenes of our crazy creations.
We also bring you kickass videos. And our most recent video, No Quarter, is no different.
Before reading on, you gotta watch the video. Why? Because it will leave you wondering - How’d they film this? What does it all mean? And who the hell plays the protagonist?
The Inspiration
We’re always on the lookout for innovation, and lately, we’ve been finding it in our own boards, reinventing them to bridge the gap of usability. Meaning, we want to make our epic boards accessible to as many people as possible.
Our most feature-rich SUP board, the Rackham Aero 12′4″, has been a leader in the adventure and fishing arena, but its size and weight have been known to limit its use to someone with a broader stature. So we fixed that by creating a shorter, lighter version, the Rackham Aero 11’, and No Quarter is part of its hype squad.
You may be thinking - I didn’t see much paddle board action in this video - and you’re right. That’s because the inspiration was more than introducing the new Rackham Aero 11′; it’s introducing a limited edition Calico Jack (a.k.a. John Rackham)-inspired board, modeling ship wood planking, a red wax stamp graphic, and an ember burned logo (reminiscent of a pirate ship that’s been battling the sea for quite some time). It only made sense to emphasize the journey of a sea-wanderer to drive our design aesthetic.
“In true BOTE fashion, we just do shit differently. And when people look at this video, they’ll say it has nothing to do with a paddle board, but we don’t care.”
- Rob McAbee, BOTE Creative Director
The Aesthetic
This isn’t Captain Hook, and it sure as hell isn’t Pirates of the Caribbean. The goal for the design aesthetic was a grimy, post-apocalyptic vibe showcasing the hardship and internal struggle of a pirate on a quest. It sounds hard to hit the mark, but we just so happen to run with a crazy crew. When BOTE CEO Corey Cooper, Director of Photography Sean Murphy, Creative Director Rob McAbee, and good friend, writer, and director of 3-Hole Punch Productions Wil Beaucher, set out to make the vision a reality, they started with a phrase:
Give no quarter.
Simply put, giving no quarter means giving no mercy, and the video itself had to have that vibe. Inspired by movies like The Lighthouse and Sin City, the team set out to produce a black and white film with subtle pops of color where it mattered, keeping it ambiguous in direction, allowing the viewer, you, to come to your own conclusion.
The Set
The protagonist, our very own Rob McAbee, isn’t John Rackham, the famous pirate who inspired the name of our Rackham SUP board. He’s more of a timeless nomad, wandering the earth looking for something. A compass symbolizes that ‘something,’ but you’ll find in watching the video that it’s so much more than a tangible object. We weren’t creating this to provide a defined ending; we created this to capture the journey. Because much like our stand up paddle boards, it’s about how you get there, not where you’re going.
Creating a film that captures traveling to the other side of the world and back, all done in various areas in Northwest Florida, is what Hollywood people call ‘movie magic.’
The snow scene at the peak of Kilimanjaro?
That was filmed on a Destin bay sand dune.
The endless ocean with a rocking sailboat?
Shot at Bluewater Bay with the help of some friends’ boats so we could capture our protagonist at various angles.
The jungle and marsh McAbee wades through?
It was a wooded area in Fort Walton Beach.
Safe to say, Northwest Florida operated as its very own real-life movie set. And with all the props, costume, and makeup design spearheaded by our talented marketing team, the result is stamped BOTE-approved.
The Script
Written by Wil Beaucher, the script for No Quarter leaves a lot to your own devices. Here is a man on a quest for something he’s been seeking out over thousands of miles and decades of time to find it’s something he is stopping himself from finding. Mix in some time traveling moments, a broken compass proving it’s never been about the object, and some method acting from Rob McAbee, who didn’t shower for days and truly drank on set to embody someone on a never ending journey, and you’re left thinking about your own roadblocks. What’s stranding you in your current space? For our protagonist, it was his unquenchable desire for something he did not know, stranding himself in a purgatory of a sailboat. His reprieve? The Rackham Aero 11′, opening the possibility of moving on in a different direction. So what’s your reprieve?
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That’s a Wrap
Filming this video in a matter of days and editing with an even quicker turnaround, the team at BOTE took no quarter to produce something epic. It’s authentically BOTE. And whether it got you thinking about your journey, or just piqued your interest because it looked cool, then mission accomplished.
Oh, and check out the inspiration behind the video, the purpose for creating it in the first place, the Rackham Aero 11′ No Quarter Limited Edition.