These 2 guys have been really important to the development of surfing. Greenough started riding kneeboards in the 60s because longboards turned to slow, and it's said that that led to the shortboard revolution. Mike Stewart has been the best tube rider on the planet for 20+ years. Greenough made 2 movies, The Innermost Limits of Pure Fun in 1968 and Crystal Voyager in 1972. Mike Stewart shot footage for about 15-20 years, and finally released Fire in 2008. If you look close in these 2 images both guys are filming while surfing -- Greenough is using a backpack-style harness, and Stewart is hand holding his camera.
The Innermost Limits of Pure Fun is a neat movie. It's generally a pretty traditional surf movie, with the exception of his in-the-tube footage which was brand new to surfing audiences. Actually, I'm not sure how common tube riding was in general in 1968. You can't really tube ride on a longboard, so while his footage definitely was groundbreaking on the big screen, it also probably showed many people things they hadn't seen before when out in the ocean. Most of the footage in Innermost... is from Australia, mostly from Lennox Head. That said, the session from Kirra was my favorite -- I love sand bottom, very hollow tubes. The in-the-tube stuff was very, very interesting. He was definitely not just documenting the experience, but trying, and succeeding, to make artistic images. 
Also, most of the tube riding was done on a mat, which he rides prone, like a bodyboard, but he couldn't hold an edge as well as you can on a bodyboard, so every so often the lip would hit the camera, which led to some really unusual imagery. He also included quite a few unmade barrels, longer tube rides where he got shut down at the end. Great, great movie.The following few pics are from his website. Tube riding somewhere in the the Ranch, I think, tube riding at Sandspit, and with a tiger shark jaw in Australia.
Crystal Voyager is only available in PAL format, shipped from Australia. It's pretty cheap though, I got it for under 10$ new. With that out of the way.... It's a very different movie than Innermost. The first 52 minutes are much more documentary-like than surf movie-like. About his life in SB, about his boats and car, his boards. Lots of footage from the Channel Islands and Rincon. A couple of the in-the-tube shots from Rincon were unbelievable. 
They would have been long barrels at regular speed, but slowed down they were very long, very cool. The last 23 minutes is pretty crazy, the soundtrack is the Pink Floyd song "echoes." I think it's all water footage, dolphins from underwater, waves from underwater, in-the-tube footage. Really quite epic. The Australian National Film & Sound Archive has 3 clips from Crystal Voyager on the interweb. Check 'em out. The 2 movies cover different territory, Innermost is more traditional in form, Crystal is unique, and has some amazing footage. I highly recommend both.
This is a pic of the motorboat he built, 'the pod.' It comes from a neat article about Greenough by Denny Aaberg {you have to scroll a ways down the page, or search the page for 'aa'}. It's an interesting read.
And then there is Fire. I saw Fire before the 2 George Greenough movies, so didn't know how influenced by him they were. Alot of the shots were similar -- the backlit shots through the back of the wave for instance. Also, the climax of Fire is done to Pink Floyd's "Tme" from Dark Side of the Moon. Mikey was giving a nod to George, I reckon. The footage in Fire is very different from Greenough's. For one thing alot of the waves are lefts -- Pipe and Teahupo'o. But also with the benefit of better wave riding technology Mike rides the waves a bit differently. He also makes most of the barrels. I really liked seeing him riding waves with his kids. This is a good movie, but over-edited. The best part of the DVD is that it is a 2 disc set, and the 2 hours of raw footage on the 2nd disc is just freaking awesome, especially the 'bliss' segment, barrel after barrel after barrel. This interview includes some footage from the movie. Highly recommended.The following pics are from Cloudbreak at Tavarua, Pipe, Teahupo'o, and Pipe.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment