20130909: Documentary Review--Thirty Thousand

Thirty Thousand: A Surfing Odyssey

1. Australian live action feature film, 2011, 50 minutes, NR, documentary, surfing.
2. IMDB: no search results
3. Rotten Tomatoes: no search results.
4. Watched this on Hulu+
5. Written, directed, and produced by Richard and Andrew James.
6. Cinematography and editing by Richard James.
7. ----------------------Setup and activities.
8. Two Australian men surf off the coast of Morocco, then proceed southward, surfing the local coasts, until reaching South Africa.
9. Lots of surfing music, Australian style.
10. Western Morocco: still under military dispute; this is kept in check somewhat by UN peacekeepers.
11. Next step, Senegal.  Big changes: many people, lush vegetation.  Very few surfers.
12. The two stars of the show are more adept at staying on their boards than many I've seen in surf films.
13. Third step, Liberia: extended civil war was in the recent past.  Their foreign currency was well received.  Bigger waves here.
14. Fourth step, Angola.  This was the most difficult to travel through: check points, bad roads, language barriers, grouchy military.
15. Fifth step, Namibia, crossing the Kalahari Desert to the ocean.
16. Sixth, continue south to the ocean off South Africa.
17. Eh, home.
18. ----------------------Conclusions
19. One line summary: Two Australians surf African coasts from Morocco to South Africa.
20. Three stars of five.
21. ----------------------Scores.
22. Camera work: not as good as the top surfing documentaries. Graininess and soft focus is much more common in their work.  Lose one star.  There was more inland footage than I expected.
23. Sound: The volume of the spoken word is way too many decibels below the injected music. Lose another star.  Jockeying the volume for each segment is a pain.
24. Screenplay: organization is fine for a surfing film.
25. Pluses: these are two of the most skilled surfers I've seen on film.  Some of their techniques were new to me, as well as clever and low-tech.  They could stay up on their boards in quite turbulent waves.  Many of the locales were new, so that was good, but the darkness of their images took some of that virtue away.