Clearly, Taylor Steele doesn’t like sitting still. The Bali-based surf filmmaker’s travel opus Sipping Jetstreams has been out for a couple years, and in between super high-performance shred-flicks, he’s been going loony on google earth, plotting new, weirder destinations for his follow up, which is called Castles in the Sky.

Tuesday night saw a special sneak preview of Castles at the Montalbán Theater in Hollywood, where dozens of semi-famous to famous surfers, industry types and various other Beautiful People turn up to check out Steele’s newest work, as well as another chance to see Sipping on the big screen.

In typical Steele fashion, he’d just got off a plane from India with a head wound from a car accident — a less-than-glamorous byproduct of spending half the year crisscrossing the globe. “I do those other projects to keep this going,” he said of his shredflicks. “This is my passion.”

“We could go on for days about the meanings of the titles and everything,” explains Steele’s partner photog Dustin Humphries. “But really, it’s all about the wonder of travel and getting outside your comfort zone.”

The first peek at Castles was as impactful and lush as Sipping: Dane Reynolds + friends pulling into snow-capped slabs in Iceland, Rob Machado going local in Peru and more, all edited with Humphries and Steele’s trademark style.

Groovy as it all is, Steele’s quick to point out that we’re looking at a work in progress. “This is an ultrasound, not a baby picture,” he laughed onstage.

If that’s an ultrasound, we’re stoked to see the grown up.

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