- Matt Kleiner

This story was originally published by SURFER.

Have you had a chance to watch the YouTube series "Twins React"? Oh, it's quite a treat. And like all viral videos, the conceit is quite simple and quite silly: Twenty-one-year-old twins Tim and Fred Williams film themselves listening to popular songs for the first time and reacting. Twins react. Get it? (Don't worry, we'll get to Asher Pacey in a second)

A couple weeks ago, the twins listened to the 80s-banger "In the Air Tonight" by Phil Collins and their reaction was something special, racking up more than 3.2 million views. Surely, you remember this song, if not for its ubiquity, for the very radically placed drum fill that busts down the door more than three minutes into an otherwise languid track.

All this to say, I think film director Matt Kleiner and photogenic twin-fin connoisseur Asher Pacey may have been inspired by Phil Collins when putting together the short "Echoes from a Silent World." Beginning with a montage of meditative and visually stunning B-roll, Kleiner deploys Pacey's surfing-which surf media outlets like this one and surf fans can't seem to get enough of-with temperance. Similar to how Collins teases any dynamic changes to his 1981 magnum opus before dropping the beat after the tune's final stanza, Kleiner waits until roughly three minutes into his five-minute film to give us Pacey's full kit.

While on lockdown, Kleiner dug through his "Planet Earth"-like archives to create this visual stunner. He took something old and made something new, so to speak, to submit as a short for the Lockdown Short Film Festival. Click play above to watch Kleiner and Pacey redefine the term teaser.

This story was originally published by SURFER.

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