"Stranger Things" meets surfing

The Netflix series “Stranger Things” was undoubtedly the monster hit of the summer. With its unabashed nostalgia for the early 1980s and homage to films by Steven Spielberg, John Carpenter and Stephen King — not to mention its catchy post-punk and synth-driven soundtrack — the show quickly became a sensation and struck a chord with audiences.

Among those who became obsessed with the series since its release in July was Long Beach resident and surfer Etan Blatt, a 33-year-old New York City firefighter and videographer who films local surfers in action.

“I grew up in the ’80s, on ‘The Goonies,’ and I grew up on the music – and I was a huge comic book fan,” he said.

In May, when Blatt was approached by friends Mike Nelson and Dave Juan, owners of Unsound surf shop, to help them produce a sequel to the cult surfing documentary “The Couch Tour,” he was immediately on board. The original movie, a no-frills, hardcore surfing video that captures the shredding, aerials and other maneuvers Long Beach surfers have become known for, came out in the early 2000s and quickly became popular among those in the New York surf scene, Blatt said.

“The ‘Couch Tour’ was an old, classic East Coast surf film that Mike and Dave put together with a filmmaker named Brian Walsh,” Blatt said. “I had seen the trailer for the original ‘Couch Tour’ and I was just like, ‘What? These guys are surfing in the winter!’ And now surfing in the winter is the norm here.”

Unsound — which opened in Long Beach in 1997 and is known for its professional surf contests with major sponsors such as RVCA, Volcom, Quiksilver, and Nike — wanted to spread the word that a sequel was in the works, and asked Blatt to create a teaser trailer.

“[Mike Nelson] had a hard-drive with a folder full of surf footage of Balaram Stack, clips of Ryan Carlson and a folder of TJ Gumiela, and he asked me if I could put together a hype clip to get the word out,” said Blatt, a graduate of the Art Institute of Boston who previously worked as an audio engineer on shows such as “Law and Order” and “Sex and the City.” “It’s something they’ve been wanting to do for a while.”

But Blatt needed a hook for the new trailer — the video clips taken by Nelson and another professional photographer, Thor Larson, featuring local pro surfers Stack, Gumiela and Ryan Carlson tearing it up in Puerto Rico and Long Beach last winter began “collecting dust,” he acknowledged. After Blatt watched “Stranger Things,” however, his creativity blossomed and work on the “Couch Tour Two” teaser began to fall into place.

“I watched ‘Stranger Things’ and those opening credits, and me being the video nerd I am, I wanted to recreate those,” he said. “I am beyond obsessed with the show, and it was perfect timing to have something like that come out. The minute I saw those opening credits and heard that song, I got chills up my spine and immediately said to myself, ‘I got to start [expletive] around on Adobe After Effects and recreate these titles for something ASAP.”

The result is a thrilling, atmospheric three-minutes of surfing action, with an introduction that mimics that of “Stranger Things” by substituting its title sequence with “Couch Tour Two” and set to its opening theme music by the electronic band Survive. The intro cuts to Stack riding a wave, and Blatt used a remix of the show’s theme song that includes a pulsating electronic beat to propel the rest of the action in the trailer — and wet appetites for the full documentary.

“It gives it that early 1980s feel,” he said. “I took it one step further and took those clips and found this song that was a remix of the ‘Stranger Things’ theme. I started bobbing my head to it and said, ‘This is really punchy.’ Some would ask why I would ever mix surfing with such a thing — I don’t know, but just watch it.”

The trailer, which dropped in August, has been written about in numerous surfing publications such as Whalebone, Surfing Magazine and Surfline, to name a few. It also went viral on social media and received more than 10,000 views in just two days, Blatt said.

Though no release date has been set for “Couch Tour Two,” Blatt said that he, Nelson and Larson are shooting new footage for what they anticipate will be a 30-minute film. And unlike the trailer, the full documentary will ditch the “Stranger Things” theme and have its own feel.

“I grew up on a lot of different surf flicks and this is my first real surf film,” Blatt said. “This is actually big for me — we’re going to be shooting Balaram, Will [Skudin], TJ, and Leif Engstrom — really talented guys. Obviously, for sure we want to grab hurricane season footage. Long Beach and New York City will be a huge part of this.”

Though Blatt said that most surfing documentaries these days tend to take on a reverent tone — too many sunset montages, for example — “Couch Tour Two” will be a throwback to the underground punk- and hip-hop-influenced videos that came out more than a decade ago.

“We want to capture the essence of New York,” Blatt said. “It’s punk rock and hip-hop; there have been a lot of surf movies out in the past few years that are too hipster-influenced. Back in the day, you put a DVD on and the first image you saw had [music by] Pennywise and guys spitting barrels, and it would get you pumped up and we want to bring that feeling back to people.”