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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Surfing Legend Greg Noll shot on Epic

Mike McEntire

Mike McEntire

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Here is a really cool piece I got to shoot, light and do audio on for Billabong. Greg Noll and his family are so awesome. I had so much fun learning about the whole early days of big wave surfing. The stories were endless and a couple of good ones made it in here.

http://vimeo.com/35286484
 
Legend.

I read his biography a few years back. Interesting life.

I'd love to have even a reproduction "Da' Cat" board... And I'd paddle it out, too!

Fun little piece.

Thanks!
 
Great piece very cool
 
I enjoy his perspective, nice work. Did you see the 4"x4" times 6-7 piece glue lam board he was making back then? Lifting it alone is a problem, surfing with it? Pretty awesome days to pioneer the sport.
 
Yeah he is a real character. He is 74 and as full of life as all the teenagers I surf with all the time. He and his son Jed make some insane wood boards actually replicas of a lot of the classic boards from sufings history. The really cool ones are the super early Hawaiian boards. They are all pieces of art. They have a shop/showroom in San Clemente. The 200 pairs of trunks he signed are going on auction starting in a few days. Not sure where yet but you can check on the Noll site for details. Anyways it was a pleasure to work with such a cool guy who broke down so many doors.

www.nollsurfboards.com
 
Very nice piece...;-)

Greg Noll and his family have been very good friends of mine for decades now. I've surfed since the late '50's, so I was a contemporary of Greg. In the late '80's and early '90's when I was doing a lot of sports television production, I directed several ESPN shows featuring the Greg Noll Legends longboard surfing events in Hawaii (Makaha). In 2005 I brought Greg, Stacy Peralta, and Jeff Clark to an international film festival I was on the Board for, because we were doing a look-back screening of "Riding Giants", which starred Greg, Jeff, Laird Hamilton, and was produced/directed by Stacy. We had a blast!

The last time I shot Greg was with one of my Red One cameras in 2007 in San Clemente, at the grand opening of his son Jed's new surf shop. Greg is a total prototype - one of a kind. To have the nads to drop into 50' face waves at Waimea, and giant outer reef Pipeline, in the 1950's, when nobody had really done it is phenomenal!

A few years back when I ran into Greg he surprised me with one of those limited run posters of him standing on the beach at Pipeline n the early '60's, wearing his iconic "jailhouse trunks" (black & white striped), with his "rhino chaser" big gun board leaning against his shoulder as he checked out a giant barrel grinding in the background. He signed the poster with a nice note to me - its on my office wall.

I could tell you tons of stories about Greg Noll - I've shot a lot of them over the years and they're in my archive, and that of other companies I worked with. It will be a sad day in the surfing world when he passes on...
 
Steve thats awesome to hear all your good times with the Nolls. Just stopped by the shop in San Clemente yesterday to say hi to Jed after a Trestles session.
You should try and get some of the collectors edition shorts to go next to your poster. I know I am going to try and get a pair! Thanks for the props guys. Its too easy
when you have a storyteller like Greg.
See you in Vegas Milan.
 
Good tip Mike! I'll definitely score a pair of the jailhouse trunks to put next to the poster ;)

I'll be in the San Diego area for about a week after NAB. If you're going to be in the area it would be cool to hook up and talk surf stories - maybe at Beach City Burrito in Cardiff ;). Shoot me a Red User PM...

Though I spend most of my free time on my ranch in southern Utah now, I still keep a few boards at my family home in the south end of San Clemente - close to Trestles and San Onofre - for when I want to surf.

The last surfing I shot with Red cameras was the 2010 Mavericks contest - 50' faces in 4k/29.97. One of the contestants I shot that day won the Billabong XXL competition for the largest paddle-in surfed wave in the world for the entire year of 2010 - for a wave he surfed that day, which I shot. Before Mavericks I shot 35' right barrel perfection at a secret spot on the Central Coast in 4k/29.97 and 3k/60fps. Before that was the 2007 ASP Pipeline Masters with three Red One cameras (air, water, land). Nobody but me has ever seen the Mavericks and very few have seen the Central Coast footage! Some day I'll bust all that out for viewing...
 
Hey Ken I had a Canon 45mm tilt shift, a 85 RPP, a Duclos 11-16, and a 24mm Zeiss standard speed on the shoot. Mixed bag but I had baggage restrictions with all the rest of the gear I was bringing as well.

Cheers Carlo, stoked that you loved the old films so much.
 
Let the Legends talk and of course you will have great content!
Nice one Mike, I had a lot of fun watching that yesterday.
I love the way Greg talks, no BS. Right now in surfing we have true athletes and amazing performance but back in the days, these guys were just doing it because they loved it!
Good point on using the 45mm T&S, love how it cuts well with other shots.
 
Cracking short Mike,
They don't make him like that any more! Really nice camera work. I've been meaning to put together a doc on the Scottish surf scene since I started over 10 years ago. I feel now's the time! Thanks for the inspiration!
Steve...I would absolutely love to see your Mav's footage. Any chance of you uploading a few rides to vimeo!? Visited NorCal in winter 2004 but sadly the swell was a little inconsistent. Do remember a couple of big days but I was in the water at the point in SC. Heard it was nice up the coast...should've gone for a look see! Ah well, I'll just have to book another trip soon!
Cheers,
Pete
 
Peter Keith said:
Cracking short Mike,
Steve...I would absolutely love to see your Mav's footage. Any chance of you uploading a few rides to vimeo!? Visited NorCal in winter 2004 but sadly the swell was a little inconsistent. Do remember a couple of big days but I was in the water at the point in SC. Heard it was nice up the coast...should've gone for a look see! Ah well, I'll just have to book another trip soon!
Cheers,
Pete
Click to expand...

Hope to get around to posting some of that sometime soon. Mavericks is so intense when its pumping! But then again there are tons of other secret breaks up and down the California Central Coast and Northern Coast which rival Mavericks - if someone knows how to find them. There's a code of silence observed by all the locals though, and I respect that, so I've never revealed the locations of those breaks. The usual title is "Somewhere between Santa Barbara and the Oregon border" ;)

Beyond the other genres I shoot, I've been fortunate to have shot stills of surfing since 1969, and motion footage of surfing around the world since 1979. Red cameras, especially Epic, are incredibly well suited to documenting the majesty, power, and beauty of waves - whether they're empty or surfed.
 
Mike McEntire said:
Sounds like a plan Steve.
BTW don't hold out on the footage!
Click to expand...

Again, excellent piece on Greg! I've always liked your productions. PM me and we'll figure how/when to talk story for a few hours in SD or SC. We also share a snowboard filming heritage to compare notes on. I was on the TV team for ESPN, Fox, and Prime covering pro snowboarding from the very first Burton in the late '80's until about 2002 - and the same with the world pro tours of surfing, skateboarding, mountain biking, jetski, freestyle motocross, and about every other action sport. You and me share a common pedigree in the production world. Next up on the slate? Now that I'm deeply involved with 3D, among other genres, we'll be doing some 3D films of action sports shot with our super mobile Epic 3D rigs, supplemented with GoPro 2 3D POV footage. Fun times my friend...

I won't hold out on the Mavs footage and other big wave footage I shot with Red. I'm just looking for the opportunity to roll it out. I have lots of other surf legends besides Greg in my footage library - Rabbit Kekai, David Nuuhiwa, Dale Velzy, etc. For example, in the mid-90's when I was living in San Clemente, I took a small DV camera and spent an afternoon shooting Velzy in his home shaping bay as he shaped a balsa blank into a board. Velzy died a few years ago, and nobody but me has ever seen that footage either! If you'd like to team up to do a surfing legends film I'd be all over that. I have tons of broadcast quality interviews I shot in the '90's with a Who's Who list of surf legends - including Greg ;)
 
I love this.. I love guys from this generation.. They just DID, and whatever the consequences were, they didn't give a fuck.. LOVE IT!
 
Will do Steve. Would be great to hook up when you are down here. I am in Oceanside when not on location. Maybe see you at NAB too.
 
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