By PHIL JARRATT
About a year ago Shaun Cairns of Panga Productions and I sat in his edit suite and watched so much great vision of the 2014 Cricks Noosa Festival of Surfing that we both had the same idea at the same time.
This deserves to be a TV show.
We cracked a couple of beers and started brainstorming.
I first met Shaun in London about a dozen years ago when he was starting to make waves as a super-creative designer and videographer.
Since he and wife Carol set up their Panga office in Tewantin, we’ve done a lot of creative projects together, had a hell of a lot of fun doin’ ‘em, and have even hit a few home runs with viral funnies on YouTube.
I’d like to say that now we’ve hit the ball out of the park with our festival doco 8 Days of Pure Stoke screening in prime time on free-to-air national television, but since it’s on something called 7Mate – a channel I only just discovered I had somewhere on the dial between sumo wrestling and how to cook an eel – that might be gilding the lily a bit.
Up until 8 Days, our co-productions have all had two things in common – no time and no budget.
These minor impediments tend to nurture creativity.
For example, when Steph Gilmore and Quiksilver came out with a highly controversial video to promote the Roxy Pro France that included bedroom scenes we saw a way to jump on the back of it (so to speak) with a similar promotion of the Noosa Surf Festival, as long as we acted fast.
Shaun and Carol shopped around for some suitably un-sexy under garments, then stayed up all night writing a shot list that mimicked Steph’s to the finest detail, except that a man in his 60s – and since we had no budget for actors, that would be me – played the lead role.
We shot the whole thing in a day and it went viral on YouTube within a week.
And the silly old bugger who’d appeared in it semi-naked was suddenly making feeble attempts to defend himself on the ABC TV news.
Shaun and I did another successful one-day shoot in Sydney to make a promotional video for a book of mine.
It worked so well that we decided to make a film in Bali to promote my book Bali Heaven and Hell.
Since the pace of life is slower over there, we gave ourselves three days for this one.
Exhausted when I arrived, I started to have respiratory problems, then Shaun arrived from a Sumatran surf trip with a burst ear drum and no hearing.
As we lurched from scene to scene, almost falling over, the standard line was: “Are you OK?” “What?”
But the show must go on, and it did, and that flick has been a big success, too, with the book now going into its third print run in six months.
When we took the idea of a documentary centred on the festival but also outlining the surfing history of Noosa and the Sunshine Coast to the funding bodies, we found fantastic financial support from Tourism Noosa and Sunshine Coast Destination Limited, while Tourism and Events Queensland offered to shop it to TV and the airline in-flights if it was good enough.
Noosa surfing pioneers Hayden Kenny and Bob McTavish were generous with their time and festival ambassador and multiple world champion Layne Beachley agreed to come up and host the show.
With these guys on board we had a great combo going – waves, warmth and wicked wit – and I guess the show made the grade.
I know it’s Anzac Day on Saturday but if you’re not too tired from the march, 7Mate at 4.30pm.
It will also screen on the Qantas sports channel for the month of July.
No Anzac fatigue – yet
Speaking of Anzac Day, I was beginning to feel just the teensiest little bit over the whole damn centenary media overkill, until I channel-hopped into Australia’s Great War Horse on the ABC last Sunday night.
Here was an Anzac story with a difference.
Apart from Simpson’s overworked donkey, I hadn’t even considered the role of our four-legged friends in the Great War campaigns, mainly because the generals thought horses unsuitable for the Gallipoli landings and sent the Lighthorse men in as infantry, with tragic results.
In the end, the cavalry triumphed at Beersheba and had a profound effect on the war in the Middle East but when the troops finally shipped out, the gallant horses that had come from Australia with them did not.
I had a tear in my eye as this well-crafted documentary recreated poignant scenes of battle survivors being put down by their masters.
I’m sure I’ll be able to hold off Anzac fatigue long enough to witness a recreation of a different kind at dawn on Saturday, when Noosa stages its own Gallipoli landing at Main Beach.
That’ll be the start of a big day in our house.
