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Mike Prickett: Local Boy All The Way
By Alison Stewart
Although Mike Prickett was born in Boulder, Colorado, he's a local boy all the way. Coming to Hawaii with his family at age 2, Mike grew up being an avid surfer, swimmer and photographer. Little did he know that a tragic car accident would permanently and positively change the course of his life.
Shortly after graduating from Kaiser High School, at age 18, Prickett was in a car accident that broke both of his legs, and put him in a wheelchair for an entire year. Through all that, he refused to give up his passion for taking pictures. “My friends would take me to the beach, and wheel me down to the water, and I would take pictures of them surfing,” Prickett recalls. “The first job I ever had was in Waikiki shooting pictures of tourists, then the accident happened, and my doctor said swimming was the best for me.” Soon thereafter, Prickett started swimming, and then started swimming with his camera. Twenty-four years later, he's still in the water with his camera.
Prickett's extreme camera work brings the world of surfing and the excitement of big waves to life on the big screen. “I absolutely love doing a movie, then going to a movie theater to watch it, and sitting in the theater to listen to people's reactions,” Prickett says. “It gives me good feedback, and it's very rewarding.”
His resume is filled with exciting big-name movie titles such as X-Men 2 , which he served as the Hawaii director of photography, and Riding Giants, which he did the water cinematography for. When asked what his proudest achievement was, he took a deep breath, and a long look at the walls (proudly covered with posters of all his movies) around his home office and answered, “Hmmmm, (smiles) probably Billabong Odyssey since I got to oversee the whole movie.” This self-proclaimed “Extreme Director of Photography” also had the pleasure of making Step Into Liquid, Shelter, Blue Horizon, The Ride and Days of Days.
The neighborhood kids that live around Prickett know this down-to-earth guy as “Uncle Mike.” Sitting with him, you can tell he's an absolute family guy that loves kids and moreover, his wife Marya and five-year-old daughter Mirachloe. “I love this neighborhood,” Prickett smilingly says as one of the neighborhood boys asks him to ride a skateboard with him. “Everyone in this neighborhood has kids and I just love it. My daughter has made some good friends here to run around with.” (As the interview went on, we were pleasantly interrupted by neighborhood kids that came and went, and continued to ask Uncle Mike to ride a skateboard or a scooter with them, or asked for his daughter to come out and play.)
Though his physical office is at home, “the real” office Prickett claims is the North Shore of Oahu. “I work around the whole world, but the North Shore is my office,” says Prickett. “I also often shoot in Tahiti, Fiji and South Africa. Tahiti's water is cool because the water is so clear. There are so many nice places in the world, but the North Shore is still my favorite. I like South Africa too, but the waters are very sharky.”
Okay, sharks. . .Prickett had a story on that. While filming in South Africa, he always swims with an anti-shark device strapped to his ankle. This contraption floats behind him as he swims and it sends an electric pulse to anything that touches it. One day, he saw a very big shark near him, getting a little nervous, he checked his device's gauge only to find that the battery was dead. “I've had a lot of shark encounters but this was probably one of the biggest (sharks) I've seen,” Prickett says with a chuckle. Luckily, nothing happened to him.
Prickett's brushes with sharks still don't detract him from his love of being in the ocean. He enjoys almost everything in the water from surfing to windsurfing and simply just swimming in the waves. His adventurous nature also draws him to other outdoor activities. In his younger days, Prickett skateboarded competitively, and still continues to skateboard for fun today. In addition, he enjoys rock climbing and snowboarding. Prickett's visits to Colorado, where his older brother lives, takes him up the powdery slopes for the snow thrills.
Traveling around the world seven and a half months out of the year can be draining for this 40-year-old camera mogul. “I'll take my family with me on some of the trips, but not all,” Prickett says. “It's getting harder since my daughter is getting older, and the school schedule and all. Soon I'll be staying home more. I've been doing the (Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP) World Championship) Tour for about 14 years now. I'm not tired of it, but tired of the travel. It'll be nice to stay home and be with my family more.”
Prickett's focus would like to take on more locally-shot movies and commercials. Currently Prickett Films covers almost all the events on the North Shore. “My company hires all the cameramen and shoot the events,” Prickett says. “We work with a lot of different companies on these events.” He has dealt with almost all the major television networks: ABC, BBC, CBS, Discovery Channel, ESPN, FOX, The Learning Channel, NBC, National Geographic Channel and of course the ASP World Tour of Surfing.
His work with the networks started bringing him bigger jobs around seven years ago, and surely keeps him busy in between surfing competitions. His commercial list is too long, but some well-known ones include Super Bowl spots for Michelob Ultra and Anheuser-Busch, and national spots for Nissan and Lexus. Still, his favorite type of work involves the waves, and he enjoys shooting Andy Irons, Kelly Slater and Laird Hamilton since they're the best at what they do and they always try new moves. “Might as well shoot the best guys so you can get the best footage,” Prickett says as he starts up his DVD player to show the author some footage.
As Prickett enjoys shooting the best, he is the best at what he does. His dealings with Paramount Pictures, Artisan Pictures and Tri Star Pictures prove it. He has a list of much-coveted awards. Some of those include winner of the Sundance Film Festival, Sundance Shelter – Best Cinematography, Surfer Poll - Best Cinematography and Louis Vuitton Film Festival – Best Picture.
If you ever need Prickett to provide cinematography for you, he also does event production, web casting, live feeds, satellite uplinks and rentals. Check-out www.pricketfilms.com to see some samples of his work.
