Surf Cat

LAGUNA BEACH, CA —A Laguna Beach professional traveling free surfer has spent the coronavirus shutdown surfing through footage to create the perfect getaway flick, Surfline.com reports.

Over nearly ten minutes of video highlights some of Nate Zoller’s most significant moments, both on and off the board. There’s more to surfing than just the waves.

Much of what Zoller has experienced is in the areas of Baja, Mexico, South America, Fiji, Indonesia, and Hawaii appears in the short film, including the steep trails one must traverse to reach the off the beaten path locales where he goes to work, in better days.

Images of rutted roads, wildlife, and locals pepper “Gone’s” footage giving a true perspective of life when he’s not at home in Laguna.

When the world stopped in 2020, he’s been able to put together this surf-project to maintain his sanity, he says.

Haunting music with themes of leaving, getting away adds to the flavor of the short film. There’s a little “Endless Summer” nod in Zoller’s Super8 footage, giving this little flick just what it needs to spark that travel vibe.

“It was awesome being able to travel all over the world filming for ‘Gone’ before the pandemic hit,” he tells Patch. “I feel fortunate that I recorded a lot of those trips and was able to piece this project together during the quarantine with my brother Isaac.”

According to Surfline.com, Zoller named the piece “Gone” during the coronavirus shutdown, to “ignite the travel flame again within people.”

He worked with Isaac, his brother, who edited the piece, produced by Roark.

“Leading up to the lockdown, I’d been on the road a lot,” Zoller told Surfline. “Gone a lot. Mexico, South America, Fiji, Indo, Hawaii, with plans to keep going. But as the world shut down, the ability to disappear was stripped, and we were all left sitting in our houses nostalgic about yesterday. In honor of that chase we once held so tight in our grasp, I decided to release a longer form edit filmed entirely abroad with original songs by Matt Costa, Yves Compositions, and Rebeka Fodor. It’s a celebration of the good times on the road, gone from home but exactly in the right place.”