ESPN Surfing

Courtesy McCoyShipsterns Dreaming.

For nearly four decades, Jack McCoy has created films that reach beyond surf action, and strive to make statements about the "tribe" we call the surf world. This has led to some of the surf genre's most iconic films—"Storm Riders," "Kong's Island," "The Performers," "Bunyip Dreaming," "The Occumentary" and "Blue Horizon," to name a few. Now into his 60s, McCoy just might be reaching his peak. He describes his current film project, "A Deeper Shade of Blue," as a "three-act play" centered in California, Hawaii and Australia. He's made advances in both technology and technique in order to capture surf action in new ways, but it's really the narratives of the real characters McCoy's discovered in these places who drive the film.

"I just don't think a lot of people know many of the more compelling surfers living today," McCoy says. "I hope this project will encourage people to dig deeper into our culture. It's a lesson in idiosyncrasy."

For 2004's "Blue Horizon," McCoy profiled free-surfer David Rastovich and world champ Andy Irons in a film meant to contrast two very different ways to live as professional surfers. Current work on "A Deeper Shade of Blue," alternatively, follows the stories of celebrated eccentrics as well as relatively unknowns. For example, McCoy introduces underground Kauai surfer Terry Chung, a man who hasn't worn shoes in 60 years. He unearths new material about Bob Simmons, revered forefather and inventor of modern foil and rails. With a fine eye for the state of the sport, however, McCoy also trips along with alaia inventor Tom Wegner, finless aficionado Derek Hynd, and a crew of young surfers taking cues from these two pioneers.

Courtesy McCoyWho needs surf stars when you've got toes and a plank.

Legendary "Morning of the Earth" maker Albie Falzon once told McCoy to simply make his films beautiful, and they'll be successes. Following this advice, McCoy has been known for pushing production quality beyond accepted norms for surf films and for employing Hollywood style technique. With "A Deeper Shade of Blue," McCoy has realized a 30-year long dream to actually track a complete ride from below the surface. Some of his most successful underwater cinematography was incorporated into "Blue Horizon," but it lacked the drop-in to kick-out journey that McCoy was after. Recently, however, he's discovered the tool—an under water "scooter" with the power to follow a surfer's trajectory—and the approach needed to capture a view of surfing never seen on film before. And it's beautiful—the trace of fins, a rail, a dragging hand, even a surfer falling and spinning in the wash reveal aspects of surfing we've only glimpsed. "It's a whole 'nother world," McCoy says.

McCoy has collected a lot of stunning imagery—a hellman bodysurfing Shipstern's Bluff, rare California reefbreaks producing Hawaiian-style barrels—and he says that filming will take place up to the wire of the production schedule which ends in 2010. But he insists that this one is about the surfers themselves and what they say about all of us. "I'm a story teller," he says, "And I want to share what I've learned."

Courtesy McCoyLights, camera, Parko.