It’s usually not a good thing when the expert you’re relying on is running late. But in this case, it was research.
“I just got out of the water. I’ll be down there as soon as I can,” Ken Collins told me on the phone just a few minutes before the scheduled start of a screening of Storm Surfers, the new 3D documentary from directors Christopher Nelius and Justin McMillan that follows two Australian big-wave surfers through an entire storm season as they seek the most extreme rides they can find.
Collins, better known as “Skindog” to the surfing community, is a pro surfer himself, a Santa Cruz native who was ranked fifth in the world in the final standings of the 2012-2013 Big Wave World Tour, and whose moves at Mavericks last year earned him a nomination in the Billabong XXL Big Wave awards.
Collins agreed to come with me to Storm Surfers to provide some technical perspective—and somehow he did make it on time—while I approached it as a surfing outsider. The strange thing is that we got a lot of the same things out of the movie.
I’ve never seen a movie, surfing or otherwise, that made me feel so much like I was actually in the water. There’s a lot of wave-hijacking spectacle throughout, but even in the subtle moments—the camera bobbing in the waves with surfers waiting for a ride, the pristine shots of glassy barrel walls as our wetsuited heroes glide through them, as if operating on Matrix bullet time—Storm Surfers make you feel soaked. After so many lame let-downs trying to cash in on the technology, witnessing the power of fully operational 3D in this movie is almost a shock; it affects you not just visually, but viscerally.
Collins had a similar reaction, but he also had something concrete to relate it to.
“The thing that captured me the most about the 3D was watching a stormy set come at you, and you see the chops and you see the wave, and then you see a wave behind a wave, and it gives you that full depth,” Collins said afterward. “You’re looking in there going ‘oh my god, this wave’s in front of me about to get me, and the next one’s even bigger.’ It immediately kicks in your fight or flight. You’re going ‘oh my god, I should be running away, I should be trying to get away from this.’ It’s like looking at a train or a bull or something running at you. The movie nailed that.”
Surfing movies have, as far as I know, never been able to capture that fear factor before, which is ironic since it’s a big part of the rush that thrill seekers like the movie’s Tom Carroll and Ross Clark-Jones are chasing. But perhaps understandably, fear is not something surfers are known for talking too much about in general. Carroll, a former world champion surfer, does talk about it in the film, though, as he’s torn between his increasing desire to settle down with his family and his partner Clark-Jones’ all-out lust for the Next Big Ride. Carroll’s anxiety quickly becomes one of the movie’s central storylines, as he shies away from the intense action early on, much to the frustration of Clark-Jones.
“He brought an element of realness that you don’t really see too much in surfing,” says Collins of Carroll’s honesty. “Everybody that rides big waves, there is a bit of doubt every time you paddle out. It’s life or death.”
Then, of course, there’s Clark-Jones, the total opposite, who is a force of nature in himself in the film, especially on one of the duo’s trips to Tasmania.
“I thought the Ship Stern Bluff was the highlight,” says Collins. “I could watch that over and over and over again. Ross Clark-Jones’ surfing there was top notch.”
Along with the wave footage he calls “spectacular,” Collins was impressed with the way Storm Surfers captured the adventurous spirit of surfing.
“Surfing movies tend to be corny, and kind of miss the mark. In this, they did a good job of representing surfers at their best,” he says. “Those guys are definitely goofy and what-not, but you’re going ‘wow, they’re real adventurers,’ like Jack London’s Call of the Wild. Those guys are out there chasing a dream, chasing a rush that some people will never understand, or even care to understand. But I totally understand. I see what they’re doing, and it makes me feel young.”
Storm Surfers opens Fri, July 5, at the Del Mar.
