23.1.12

SPENCER COOKE / ENGLISH VERSION

Spencer Cooke / "Coming Home" - a NEW surfkayaking DVD


Main differences between this project and the Interference…
This video is a completely different story than Joey's film, which was the first wave of Interference. We are calling this the 2nd wave of Interference, How to go surf kayaking.

Your contribution for this project…
My primary contribution to the content of the DVD is How to Go Surf Kayaking, which runs 45 minutes and documents the sport of kayak surfing from 1997 to present. Over the past fifteen years I have been traveling around the world with a group of friends on surf kayak trips (including some of the trips we documented in INTERFERENCE). As documented in the film, we have traveled all up and down the US East coast surfing, there were a couple trips to the West Coast; California and British Columbia, Costa Rica five times, Panama twice, Nicaragua, two trips to Ecuador, Ireland, Morocco and Portugal. It all started from a group who competed together in East Coast competitions year after year. Then we put together the first major trip to Costa Rica with eight people and got a good taste of international travel. 

One trip turned into five, then ten, and without knowing exactly when or if I would make this film we have haphazardly documented these excursions and I tucked away footage, photos and journals as the years have gone by. Due to the fact that this project was all about passion and fun it took me over a year to write the story and do the editing. I couldn't dedicate a large amount of time to the production all at once so I had to break it up over 12-15 months. Our co-producers, Shred Ready and Astral helped fund our DVD replication but there wasn't any production budget outside of our own time and money. The title, How to go Surf Kayaking, is both sarcastic and sincere, meaning that it’s not an actual instructional video.

So, it’s not an educational video?
Rather, the title means that we as a group learned how to go surf kayaking, how to travel with kayaks, how to survive as tourists in other countries, and how to have fun surfing together. The production was, as I state in my narration, “for my friends,” merely as a scrapbook piece, but now we are going to be able to share it with the world. And hopefully this video and the others on the Coming Home DVD will inspire people to go out and travel and find the fun and beauty we have found in the sport of kayaking.

Best waves surfed and filmed in the movie…
Best waves filmed and surfed in the movie would have to be some of the more recent footage from Portugal (2009 worlds), Costa Rica (2008, 2009, 2010) and the Outer Banks of NC (2008). Not only were we surfing better and using better boats in recent years but our video equipment improved drastically wit the advent of HD. Up until 2005 we were using Standard Definition cameras. There is a clear quality difference from the beginning of the film to the end, but it's understandable because the film occurs in chronological order starting in 1997 and bringing us to present.

About Portugal footage…
The Portugal footage gives a glimpse of how incredible the event was at Ocean Spirit 2009 and shows a broad selection of the surf kayakers who competed. It is one of the more beautiful segments considering the wave quality, the surfing, the scenery and the soundtrack. One of my favorite bands, Pygmy Lush, allowed us to use a song that really makes this segment flow. The first part of the segments shows some of the most dynamic shots I took at the competition and then the flow segways into some of the free surfing we did after the contest down at Praia Azul.

When and where can we buy this DVD?
This DVD only costs $14.99 and comes with three other short films about kayaking that I produced with my good friend Chris Gallaway of Horizonline Pictures. We called the DVD COMING HOME based on how much we appreciate traveling to distant lands to kayak, but coming home can be the sweetest part of the journey.

Thanks Spencer and all the success for this project ;)

ALL THE PHOTOS AND VIDEO HERE:
http://www.kayaksurf.net/SpencerCooke12.html