Drift Surfing » filmmaking

Devon Lanes and Longboards…..

Chris P — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 18:06:48 +0000

Chris Preston caught up with Andy Haworth, the man behind a new British longboard film, for a sneak preview and to find out more about the man behind the lens…

North Devon is a beautiful place to live, a rugged coastline of wide sandy beaches and secluded coves. It’s a fantastic place to be a surfer, especially if you enjoy the glide of longer equipment.

The area’s natural beauty and the way surfers immersed themselves in it captured the imagination of a young boy on family holidays from Sheffield. Like so many before and after him, he convinced his parents to rent him a board and on his 16th birthday, way back in 1975, he stood up on his first wave and the hook sunk deep.

It took Andy Haworth another 30 years of growing obsession to finally make the move to the coast, helped in no small part by his son’s obvious keeness and natural aptitude for surfing. In 2004 he moved his family to Landkey, a small village a few miles from the North Devon coast, retaining his job in the Midlands and facing 40 000 miles a year in the car to keep the life/work balance steady.

Many Surfers are creative people and Andy is no exception having painted, written peotry and made several of his own boards through the years. As his son, Ben, grew into one of the countries best longboarders, Andy picked up a camera to document and help promote him in what can be a difficult niche of surfing to make your mark. Inspired by other local filmakers he had a half formed idea to do somthing more concrete with the pile of tapes in his spare room but it took personal tragedy to inspire him to take the plunge.

In April last year, Andy’s sister was diagnosed with a serious form of cancer a difficult time in anyone’s life and often bringing with it a desire to DO somthing to help. Andy himself jokes that he was hardly in shape to run from Lands End to John ‘O Groats, instead it became the push he needed to embark on a surf film, with the intention of donating any profits to cancer charities.

A year later, almost to the day, I’m sat with Andy watching a preview copy of “Devon Lanes and Longboards”.

It’s an impressive debut but setting himself the target of a year from start to finished product certainly heaped the pressure on and was not without some difficulties. A few months in, Andy had to almost start again from scratch after computer failure forced a switch from Pc to Mac and a whole new piece of software to get to grips with. Add to that problems with the beurocracy of trying to work with various charities, leaving Andy scratching his head musing that it shouldn’t be that difficult to give money away and it’s ended up being a stressful twelve months.

With a deadline looming and working near Leicester for much of the week, almost every spare moment at home has been spent standing in front of a tripod or in front of an expansive Apple monitor. Andy describes the film as an attempt to convey the joy and sense of community that being a longboarder in the close knit North Devon scene brings and it’s loosely organised around the changing faces of the spots and characters as the seasons change. The film has a relaxed pace, mixing some high quality modern longboarding with scenics that really convey a sense of the beauty in our everyday surroundings.

Ben Haworth features heavily, and that is perhaps to be expected, but he is ably supported by local standout Ashley Braunton and several others including younger up and comers like Greg Norman and Zak Lawton who are beginning to make a name on a national scale.

There is a voice over and I must admit to being slightly allergic to voice overs in surf films, especially British ones. I think they often come over as poor imitations of Bruce Brown. Andy, however is ot afraid to poke fun at himself and enlisted the services of a very Devon sounding fellow and it does work well as a result(honestly!)

The soundtrack reflects the mellow feel of the footage and meshes well with the visuals. The man responsible is singer songwriter Chris Warner, a chance accquaintance who offered to score the film and wrote eight new tracks specially for it. Initially Andy says he was unsure about just using one artist but the music is varied enough in style for this not to matter and if anything adds continuity to the idea of the year cycling through as each section fades into the next.

Overall it’s a fine first effort and hits it’s mark to showcase one of the biggest and most vibrant longboard scenes in the country. The final section especially will make you want to go surf, evoking the dying moments of a summer evening solo session,catching your last wave as the sun slips beneath the horizon. Despite it’s obvious Devon centric focus, Andy hopes the film will have a broader appeal, as he says “good surfing is worth watching wherever it’s filmed”

With this project nearly in the bag, Andy’s thoughts are already turning to the next one. He says he likes the idea of a more documentary style film focusing in depth on a single surfer.

I have a suspicion his wife might have other ideas!

Devon Lanes and Longboards premieres at the Surf Show in Bristol on 24th April but you can see clips and more info at http://www.born2surf.info. The dvd will be available to buy for £15 from the end of April on the same website.

surf photos by Jamie Bott, huts by Andy, more of my musings at http://adventuresintrim.blogspot.com

Protect Our Waves

Howard — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 09:27:57 +0000

Richard Stewart is the director of the new Surfers Against Sewage film ‘Protect Our Waves’, which is currently being screened around the country, and will be showing this Friday at Howies, Bristol, at 7pm.

This inspirational film captures some of the best waves and beautiful coastline around the country, but contrasts this with a strong environmental message, as you would expect from our homegrown ocean guardians. Drift managed to grab five minutes with Rich, to find out a little more about the man behind the film…

How did you break into filmmaking?
I started out as an assistant to a few artists (Tony Hill, mainly) who were involved in filmmaking. A little while later I briefly became a wildlife film cameraman, but pretty much on the same day as I made it I fell in love with Anna, my sweetheart, and the idea of being away from her (and now our three daughters) some 300 days a year wasn’t feeling good.
Also, I wanted to be able to craft what I was working on, and so I became a director of photography (DOP), working on documentaries and music videos to begin with and then later on commercials, animations and films (you can see some of my other work at www.rsdop.com).
I filmed the Arctic Challenge 2000 in the Lofoten islands and there met Terje Haakonsen. Over the last few years I’ve been to the far north with Terje and his friends, and I think it was this work that made me think about filming surf.

Who or what influences and inspires you?
I’m influenced by so much stuff… I think Sean Mullens’ ‘Birthright’ is the most beautiful thing I’ve seen recently and I pretty much always cry watching the video for ‘1234’ by Feist.

Andrew Kidman’s films made me feel in some way connected to other surfers around the world and I like Patrick Trefz and Mickey Smith’s work. But it’s the guys I see every day near my home at the beach and their relationship with the water that inspires me to reflect that love on film.

How did you get involved with SAS?
I had been interested in working with SAS for a long time. I admired what Chris Hines was doing back in the beginning and then I started bumping into Andy Cummins around the place playing around with sustainable surfboard ideas (www.loraxsurf.com is a project I’ve been neglecting recently – I love surfboard design). Andy and Hugo saw ‘Powers of 3’ and asked me to come see them for a cup of tea and it just seemed like it was the right time to do something. The cup of tea was back in the spring last year but we didn’t really get started until the autumn. The film came out at the end of February, so only really took us a few months to put it together.

Did you storyboard the film, or shoot organically and piece it together afterwards?
There were no storyboards. I liked the way in ‘Powers of 3’ you could feel the friendship between the surfers,. so the SAS film had a kind of loose narrative of some friends on a road trip meeting locals at quiet spots. I was hoping that through these characters and the way the film is shot you would experience the sea and the coastline in an intimate and familiar way. We shot mainly at dawn and dusk to capture the most beautiful light and help protect the identity of some of the secret spots that we wanted to shoot at. We had decided from the beginning that all of the SAS issues would be contained in some funny little animated sequences and that the surfing – and most importantly the sea – should be idyllic, hopefully inspiring you to protect what you love and are passionate about – clean, beautiful waves. In the end the film has no need for words

Who got involved with the project?
I had so much support on this film; I was really inspired by the generosity and attitude of the surfers we worked with, and by those we came across in the early mornings on the cliffs and in the water. Charlie Chambers, a friend and filmmaker, was by my side, laden with gear clambering up and down cliffs and sliding across reefs, as well as driving us hundreds of miles through dark icy nights. Thanks must also go to the gang of accomplices from the world of music videos who helped us to finish the film once it was photographed.

Was this your first ‘environmental’ project?
I’ve always been interested in the relationship we have with nature (especially the sea and water), so I’ve done a few projects that had environmental ideas. It was pretty interesting for me to see how it affected my own life and attitudes once we got started – I’m suddenly acutely aware of litter and the amount of junk that is produced because of my existence.

I wanted to make this film for Surfers Against Sewage, but also to express in the simplest way possible my own relationship with the sea; to protect it and honour it. We all share in this world and these are our problems, which we face together, so all we can ask of each other is to do our best. I think that the apocalyptic cloud that hangs over us can be paralysing – all we can do is little things in our everyday lives. Whatever we feel we can do on any one day. Some days we can pick up the shit on the beach and other days we say “fuck it” but that’s ok… it’s just doing what we can, when we can. If everyone did just little things it would make a huge difference.

What’s next for you?
I’m in the middle of shooting a new video for the Chemical Brothers, and after that I’m starting on a film about terrorism.

All photos by Charlie Chambers