I am unsure exactly when we thought "Let's make a movie". Now granted we had been collecting footage for many years by then and I suppose the idea of a movie had been just hovering under the surface for a long time, but we actually began to 'make the movie' in 2003.
Some people choose to write screenplays and hire actors and state important concepts in their movie. We set out to do just one thing. Put together conclusive evidence that the state of Texas had surf, it had people who could surf and when you put the two together it was fun to watch. Up to that point in time, there had been very few attempts at making a movie about surfing in Texas. This makes a lot of sense because although Texas has over 400 miles of coast, it has just a few areas that receive appreciable surf for more than a handful of times per year.
Ask just about anyone where they think people go surfing and they will answer Hawaii, California, and maybe other places like Florida or Fiji if they have any knowledge about surfing. Almost never will they say Texas. So Texas surfers suffer from a lack of recognition and often harbor insecurities due to this. They know their favorite surfing spots don't have good waves all the time and quite frankly they never have waves equal to some of the better surf locations in the world, however, each Texas surfer knows that on the right day with the right conditions there is surf in Texas. "If only there was some documentation of it," they mourn, "If only I could prove it to all of my ignorant friends and relatives that scoff at my surfing because I do it in Texas".
It was with that in mind we made our movie and with that in mind, we called it "There Ain't No Surf in Texas" meaning by the use of the double negative that there IS surf in Texas wink, wink, doncha know. For our movie, we felt we had the perfect name, the perfect timing since there were no other movies like it, and all the footage we would ever need because we had been videoing Texas surf for over 7 years. Piece of cake we thought.
I will fast forward a bit here to avoid going through the blow by blow account of us learning how to capture analog video to a computer, edit video, create transitions, learn computer animation, acquire music and rights to use music, rent a venue to show the movie and make the final version of that movie. We will just jump right up to the point where two weeks before the show when we are doing all the final editing and touch-ups, we have a massive total computer failure that wipes out our hard drive with all the movie files. Some sort of 'electrical-power-something' that fried the motherboard and put an electrical surge into the drives.
Imagine you are running uphill through terrain you have never been in before. Imagine you are carrying a heavy load, oh let's make it really dramatic and say you are carrying a wounded friend. Now imagine it starts to rain so hard you can no longer see and your shoes fall off and the ground gives way beneath your feet so that you are falling backward faster than you can make progress forward. Oh, and people are throwing rocks at you and hitting you and you are really, really, really tired. It was sort of like that but only worse.
Lucky for us the absolute forward momentum of the situation did not allow us time to contemplate the disaster. We just bought another computer found some files we had backed up (thankfully) and recreated over a month's worth of final editing work in just a few days. I am pretty sure that for both of us there is some sort of permanent damage. Upon our deaths, they will be examining our remains and point to an area of our brains and say "Look at that, all that horrible sign of stress. Why if they hadn't gone through that they would have lived much, much longer."
But we did it, somehow. It was an uphill fight all the way, in fact as we were leaving for the show we had the final best version still rendering on the computer and had to leave with the next best version. The premier was great and sold out both showings and everyone who was there was hooting and hollering like only surfers watching surf movies can do. The walls shook with their shouts and rattled with their laughter too. Of my memories in life, this will be one of the finest.
What have I learned from making a movie? 1. Please yourself because critics are a fact of life and you will never please everyone. 2. Disaster is just nature's way of revealing how much harder you can work. 3. Back up your files and then back up your backup files. 4. Enjoy the show.
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