Photo: Vampires Surf
Vampires, Blood Lines and High Lines
Jaleesa Vincent spoke with Demi Taylor to spill the tea on the new Vampires Surf showing at London Surf Film Festival.
“We started brainstorming different fantasy creatures like witches, aliens and zombies, and eventually landed on vampires.” This is not your average opening to a conversation with a surf filmmaker about their latest project. But then this is not your average surf movie…and the people behind it are not your average filmmaking duo. Jaleesa Vincent is a tap dancing, board shaping, own-furrow-ploughing, music making, art creating, filmmaking Aussie surfer, her partner, Luka Raubenheimer is a snake wrangling cinematographer. Over the last few years they’ve become known for producing movies together that combine creativity, originality, unabashed fun and impeccable waveriding in equal measure to serve up their sideways take on the surfing world.
Photo: Vampires Surf
Their latest movie, the hotly anticipated Vampires Surf is a fantasy surf film about friendship, freedom and female empowerment. Mixing epic surfing and a good dose of green screen, it’s also one of the most creative surf films we’ve seen in a while. After centuries of surfing in darkness, three female vampires – namely Jaleesa, Frankie Harrer and Caity Simmers – the youngest world champ in history – finally step into the sunlight. Celebrating individuality, femininity and the strength of female friendship through killer sartorial style, scripting and surfing, at its heart the film is all about challenging outdated beliefs, embracing change and having the freedom to be yourself.
Photo: Vampires Surf
Jaleesa and Luka are in town to present their UK Premiere at the 15th London Surf / Film Festival x Finisterre hosted 5-7 November where they’ll be talking story about the film and their journeys. Ahead of their premiere, Jaleesa spoke with Demi Taylor to spill the tea on Vampires Surf.
I’ve always loved art just as much as surfing. So mixing those two passions and making these strange surf films keeps it fun for me. Luka’s been making films forever and has always loved storytelling. Growing up on the Sunshine Coast, we were surrounded by surfing, so making surf films came pretty naturally. We’ve actually been creating together for over 10 years, well before we were dating hehe. So we’ve had a lot of time to experiment and come up with weird ideas together.
We’re both fully involved/committed. It’s awesome having a partner who’s just as passionate about making films and art as I am. We come up with the storyline and script together, usually on long drives. Luka’s more focused on the camera shots and how we’re going to film things, and I’m more focused on the story line, outfits, music and stuff. We both direct on set, but we naturally notice different things, so it works well. When it comes to editing, Luka’s the tech guy and I’m more of a backseat driver giving my opinions haha, but I jump in and edit bits myself too. We definitely have disagreements, but we always get there in the end.
With Vampires Surf, we went through so many different ideas and scenarios, probably working on the script for nearly a year before we even started production. Then we spent about another year filming. We had to work around everyone’s schedules, filming with Caity Simmers, Frankie Harrer and Kobe Hughes whenever we could get everyone together.
Frankie and Caity are my favourite surfers, and I freaking love Kobo’s style and personality. It just felt like a dream team. I’m so happy everyone was down and committed as much as they did. Frankie was such a good vampire. I wish we’d given her more lines and scenes because I reckon there’s a great actor in there. Caity was channelling Wednesday Addams, and with Kobo, we had to try to bring out his evil side even though he’s the most chilled, happy guy ever haha.
Photo: Vampires Surf
We filmed all the acting scenes first, and the production grew into something bigger than we’d imagined. Then we filmed the surfing afterwards, which was a little scary because we felt like we needed some really good surfing to balance out all the acting. But we also didn’t want to put too much pressure on it because, at the end of the day, we were making a fantasy film. Luckily, we scored some really good waves with everyone. Some scary barrels too! Caity gets so smoked on one eeek! And it all kinda fell into place.
Photo: Vampires Surf
Photo: Vampires Surf
There were plenty of times when we couldn’t get everyone back together to film something we’d missed, so we had to get creative. Luckily, we’d filmed the girls in front of a green screen, so we could build miniature sets and add them into those. We also got friends to wear cloaks and be stunt doubles - just working with whatever we had.
Photo: Vampires Surf
The whole process was so much fun, but obviously a lot of work too. From the initial concept and scriptwriting to organising trips, juggling everyone’s availability, filming, music, props, miniature sets and everything in between…it honestly felt like a never-ending to-do list. But it was all totally worth it – we got to make something completely ridiculous with our friends, travel around the world, surf and play dress-ups. For me, the highlights were getting to buy all these cool vampire dresses and singing and dancing with the girls. We made a rap video too haha. And getting barrelled, of course! A dream project!
Photo: Vampires Surf
15th Edition London Surf / Film Festival x Finisterre touches down 5-7 November 2026 hosted at the iconic Riverside Studios. Serving up 3 nights of the ultimate in cinematic surf inspiration - travel to stir the wanderlust, documentaries to inspire, plus cinematography, stories and surfing that redefine the bounds of possibility – all accompanied by talks, icons, change, culture, community good times and more, you don’t want to miss this. londonsurffilmfestival.com
