Scottish documentary director Martyn Robertson has been holidaying on the Isle of Tiree in the inner Hebrides for many years. On his visits there, he long ago became friendly with a local man, Marti Larg.
“We were young together. We grew up together. He had moved to the island and I was out there holidaying,” Robertson says of Larg whom he has known for many years.
Robertson had been searching for a story to follow in a new documentary. He started to see coverage in the press about Larg’s son Ben, celebrating his prodigious achievements as a young surfer. He phoned Larg. At that moment, his friend was in the Canary Islands, watching Ben, then 11 years-old, surfing 12 ft waves.
“We agreed to meet at the Scottish National Championships and I said I was keen to start following the story and explore where it could go,” the director remembers. That is how he embarked on his debut feature documentary Ride The Wave (sold by MetFilm Sales). The film is screening this week at the London Film Festival.
Robertson committed to follow Ben on his surfing journey for 18 months. At that point, there was no budget in place. The filmmaking was self-financed.
This isn’t the typical surfing movie. You won’t hear any Beach Boys music or see bronzed, Adonis-like Californians strolling down beaches.
“I watched a lot of surf films when I started making this film. The surf films that a young audience are watching now are typically wave after wave after wave with fast and furious music. Or it goes down the route of the Beach Boys side of things. I was much more interested in the story going on inside Ben’s head in this film. Surfing was obviously key but it was the backdrop to explore a story that was much deeper than that for me. It was a story about love, about family, about growing up and parenting.”
The musical score written by Scott Twynholm was far more sombre than the usual surf soundtrack. It was intended to reflect the emotional journey that its young protagonist goes on as well as the dangers he faces and the tensions placed on his family.
“Ben is not the Macaulay Culkin [type]. He is not a cocky wee chap surfer. He is a boy on a journey and therefore I felt the music needed to reflect that throughout.”
Away from the surfing, Ben is a very personable and likeable kid. Nonetheless, at school on the island, other pupils pick on him and bully him.
“He is the most delightful young lad I think I’ve ever filmed with. What happened with Ben is that he is very different from the other young people on the island. In some ways, he is the coolest kid out there. He is like the typical Californian surf kid living on a Scottish island,” the director muses on why he encounters such hostility. “His hobbies are not aligned to a lot of the other young people on the island. Clearly there was a bit of jealousy at Ben’s success.”
This is a small community made up of crofters and fishermen. The locals aren’t used to having a surfer dude in their midst and don’t know what to make of him.
Not that the film dwells on the bullying. Ben takes it in his stride and uses it as motivation to push himself yet further as a surfer.
As the project developed, Robertson and his producer partner Louise Storrie brought on board financiers. Jerry Rothwell of MetFilms was one of the early champions who convinced the director that this could work as a feature documentary. Eventually, partners like Hopscotch Films and Screen Scotland threw their support behind the film.
The executive producers are Al Morrow, Jerry Rothwell, Vesna Cudic, John Archer and Benjamin Taylor. The film has already won an award at the Galway Fleadh and screened in the Cannes market as part of the GREAT8 showcase, a BFI initiative showcasing some of the best new British features to buyers on the Croisette.
Robertson combines his personal documentary making through indie outfit Blackhouse Films with his work for his commercial video company Urbancroft Films. He is now preparing a new feature doc, Wild Rider, about a young boy who grew up in Toxteth in Liverpool during the riots of the 80s. Many years later, after a very turbulent life, he now works rehabilitating horses who would be shot dead for bad behaviour.
As he moves ahead on that, Robertson’s surfing documentary is living up to its title and riding the festival wave. After the LFF, other forthcoming destinations include surfing hot spots such as Hawaii, Newport Beach and San Diego. Cosmic Cat is handling the UK distribution.
What will the surfing community make of the doc?
“What is going to be interesting about this film is that it’s about a boy who not only decides to give up competition surfing and start surfing the big waves but he is surfing these big waves in freezing cold water,” the director reflects. “These waves that Ben is surfing are freezing cold and the rocks are dangerous. The surfers round the world will be fascinated with the scale of waves that can be found off the west coast of Ireland…I am pretty sure they’ll be amazed to hear of this boy who has tackled these waves aged 15, having never rode a big wave in his life before.”
