Disney’s new adaptation of The Little Mermaid opens with a scene of a vast sea. Towering waves rise like a monster, spitting salt spray and reaching enormous heights before curling over like a gigantic tongue and crashing down in a mighty display of nature’s ferocious power. Those who have watched the movie might have been unaware that this tumultuous opening was filmed at Nazaré on Portugal’s Silver Coast.
The ocean here is an awe-inspiring spectacle that has fascinated Nuno Dias his entire life. His passion led him into his career path and now into the bosom of Disney. Like the little mermaid, his is a tale of a young person who looked at the world above him and was so mesmerised by what he saw that he would go to enormous lengths to pursue his dreams.
I talk to Nuno in his cosy wood-lined studio, located in the garden of his parents’ house near Cascais. It was once a store shed for surfboards and wetsuits, in the days when Nuno would follow his older brother to the beach to bodyboard. The young Nuno wasn’t just taken with surfing, though; he became enthralled by the enormous waves.
Nuno loves his hometown as it is just 15 minutes from Lisbon but close to the ocean, which has been the muse for his life and career. His father and mother instilled in him a passion for the beach and his father was also an amateur photographer. They visited the beach often and spent every holiday in Tavira in the Algarve. When he was a child, his parents took him to Nazaré many times, and his love affair began with the big waves. Influenced by his father, he got into photography at 12 years old. From then on, he became fascinated with taking photos of the waves, as well as wave sports. “I count myself lucky that I found my calling in life at such a young age.”
By the age of 14, he started photographing the regional surfing and bodyboarding championships of the Clube Regional da Quinta dos Lombos and, from time to time, selling photographs to surf and bodyboard magazines.
However, pursuing photography was just part of the education which was to lead Disney to his door. It was also the beginning of his apprenticeship in the conditions of this famous stretch of coast. “I probably know and understand the conditions there better than anyone from their cast and crew. That’s why they trusted me to track the forecast and choose the best day of the winter for filming.”
Nuno studied multimedia in school, winning a 500€ prize for ‘best student’, which he used to buy a ticket to Hawaii in 2013. “It had always been my dream to see the Pipeline (a surf break on the north shore of Oahu). It was my first time in an airplane and an incredible adventure for me. I believe this was a defining moment in my life and career.” It was at the Pipeline that he had the opportunity to film footage of some of the biggest names in surfing as they battled the waves with a sharp volcanic reef just metres below.
He went on to study multimedia at Escola Superior de Comunicação Social in Lisbon. Nuno was drawn to the course as it incorporated photography, web design and video. However, maybe because he had experienced the excitement of honing his craft in Hawaii, he found the experience disappointing. “There was so much theory, and I had to study sociology and economics, which I found really boring. I was going to quit at the end of the second year, but now I am so glad I didn’t as I now realise it was important to get to know different fields and areas besides video and photography.”
He was, though, relieved to finish the three-year course and achieve a university degree.
When Nuno’s music got too loud for his parents to bear, he renovated his surf shed into a studio. This became his metaphorical “mermaid cave” where he retreated. It is from this humble space that he worked his magic.
Until 2021, Nuno’s equipment comprised a Sony a7Sii and Sony a7sIII cameras, and he sometimes rented cinema cameras for specific jobs. Last year, he invested in a Red V-Raptor, which is at the cutting edge of technology and the most powerful and advanced RED® cinema camera. It shoots 8k at 120 fps, with an impressive dynamic range, sharpness, and detail on the image. Many TVs cannot actually adapt to 8k yet, so Nuno believes this investment will be good for another five years at least. This technology allows him to film in slow motion to capture the awesome power of the waves fully. “The image quality with this equipment is amazing and it blows me away what cameras can do now.” When he shoots, he needs lots of battery cards, a rain cover for the camera, and a good tripod. He also has a 7-inch display for the camera so he can view what he is shooting.
His film Empties is a nine-minute compilation of three seasons of shooting raw waves breaking at Nazaré and what brought him to the attention of Disney. Some of the slow-motion shots were filmed on perfect days and others on stormy days. It was accompanied by a soundtrack from a Portuguese artist and won Nuno his first award for cinematography. It was featured on Hostile Planet and by National Geographic. “It has brought me a lot of work from bigger productions around the world.”
Then, one day in 2021, he received a phone call from Disney, who had watched his film. They viewed his shots of the ocean as “poetic”, which is what they wanted for their movie. Praise indeed!
Disney sent a representative to talk to Nuno. He was told that Disney wanted to license some of his footage to use in a movie. However, on the second meeting, they informed him that they now wanted to film original footage. They didn’t say right away that it was for The Little Mermaid. But they said it was about a little girl who swam in the ocean, so he guessed!
There followed many meetings with the production crew to explain the conditions in Nazaré, as the production crew knew nothing about how the weather affected filming. Nuno then had to advise when the best time was for the crew to arrive to take the shots they needed. Added to this pressure, it was an unusual year, as the first big swell only arrived in December. Nuno remembers, “The crew were stressed as, although it was the initial scene, it was the last shot they needed to complete the movie. I felt a lot of responsibility on my shoulders.”
After studying the weather forecasts, Nuno finally made the call that the time was right and 30 crew arrived from LA and some from London at the beginning of December 2021. To add to this, there were still COVID restrictions, and precautions had to be taken.
Nuno recounts, “The day itself was the easiest part. It was the preparation and predicting the weather that was the hard part.” Nuno was on one camera with the lighthouse angle, while Disney’s director of photography, Dion Beebe, was on another. There were three assistants on each camera communicating over the radio. “It was the best job I have ever had. I wish I could have more days like this.”
Nuno might have cause for confidence on this front as he believes that Portugal is riding a wave at the moment with cinema. Recently Fast and Furious, Star Wars and Netflix’s Turn of the Tides have been filmed in Portugal. “Portugal is on a new journey and it has been assisted by the government, which has made an incentive for foreign investment in films with a tax rebate which has brought many Hollywood films here. Portuguese director João Gonçalves was also just Oscar-nominated for his short animation film Ice Merchants.
Nuno’s resume also includes working on the Emmy-awarded series 100 Foot Wave, available on HBO, which tells the story of Garrett McNamara and the giant waves of Nazaré. It has just been nominated for six Emmys for its second season. He is now focusing on a follow-up to his documentary Kalani, about Brazilian surfer Kalani Lattanzi, who bodysurfs 40-foot waves with no board, just using fins.
He met Kalani in Nazaré in 2015. “He went swimming from Praia da Vila to Praia do Norte without any assistance. I was there, and I managed to film him riding a wave. We met, and when he returned to Nazaré in 2016, he called me to go film him. It resulted in Kalani, an independent production, which premiered in 2019 at Cinema de São Jorge. “In my eyes, Kalani is the most extreme wave sports person in the world. I ́ve never seen anyone like Kalani: how he reads the ocean and catches 40-foot waves with just his body and a pair of fins, but never gets anxious and is always smiling. He has become a very good friend.”
Nuno has recently challenged himself to learn stand-up surfing as another way of enjoying the waves and is also in the process of closing an upcoming project he’s been dreaming about. His next ambition is to make a follow on to Empties due to its success in bringing his work to the attention of the world.
It is hard to believe that Nuno has only just turned 29 years old. Like the little mermaid, he has certainly ‘grown legs’ in the cinematic world; there is no doubt that the world is now Nuno’s oyster!
Instagram: @nuno_diass
