So you’ve got great waves. Now what?

You can’t just chuck all your clips together. I’ve seen this before. It looks like the ocean just puked surfing. Even with good waves and great action, you need a plan. You need a concept.

You need a theme.

Taylor’s already given us his tips on building sections. Collecting sessions together from the same break, with the same board, the same outfit. Finding a balance of turns, barrels and airs. Linking together 3-5 of these mini-sessions with just the right song. Okay, but what else?

This is a surf contest. Yes. And, in that regard, the best surfing should win.

But what is “winning” in surfing? What is “the best surfing?” Isn’t this all subjective?

In the end, we’re really just making a surf movie here. We’re just picking the sections we want to see in our ultimate best-of mixed tape surf move. Something with both sick action and a memorable bit of personality to it. Part Campaign and part Shelter. Half Stranger Than Fiction and half Sipping Jetstreams. That’s the perfect section.

There’s no science to achieving this. But having thought about all this a bit too much, I thought I might throw around a few ideas you might consider stealing, adapting or building upon

WATCH MORE MTV: Music videos really set the precedent for balancing shredding with a theme. Except, flip flop the percentages, since surfing is way cooler to watch than dude’s playing drums or guitar solos. Another thing to note from MTV: hot chicks and cool hair never hurt any video.

FRAME YOUR SESSIONS: Here’s some section math: say you have three solid “sessions.” Frame these sessions with five short lifestyle bit. A beginning, a middle, and three betweeners. These are just short — 3-5 seconds — but they break up the sessions while pulling together the section.

BE CONSISTENT: Your five lifestyle sections should all be along the same “theme.” The surfer’s art or home scene. Location shots for the waves. A series of pranks or stunts. Time lapse shots. Building something. Breaking something. Any idea works…as long as it’s consistent throughout.

CONSIDER NARRATIVE: The best sections will actually tell a story, like a short film. The story will start at one place and end somewhere else. This is easier than it sounds. Examples: surfer starts a painting…and then finishes it. Surfer starts in a hotel room…and smashes it. Starts at dusk…ends at dawn. See, it’s not really that hard.

DELIVER THE FULL PACKAGE: When you upload your section for the project on March 1st, you’ll be asked to include cover art and a description of the section. If you’ve done your theme well, this should be easy.

“Think of it like this is your own profile film about to go on the shelves of a surf shop,” says Taylor. “How would you want the packaging to look?”

Ultimately, who a surfer is should direct the decisions and direction for the theme of the section. That way, all this “packaging” and “marketing” actually adds value to what’s actually important here: the surfing.

Many a surf career has been made or un-made by having a bit of personal mojo or being another sunburned super-grom with a killer air-reverse.

Make a section people remember you by. —NM