“Surfer Dan” is a short film created by Camp4 Collective, for the outdoor clothing company Merrell. Camp4 Collective is a group of photographers and videographers who produce “everything from 60 second product videos to half hour documentaries,” according to their LinkedIn page. Their work is often produced with the sponsorship of outdoor companies, like this one, but they’ve also had clients from like Apple. I found their short video “Surfer Dan” interesting because it follows an unlikely adventurer, which is something I aspire to do in my own work as become more comfortable producing video.
The film opens with a bird’s eye view of the ice-filled Lake Superior on the coast of Michigan, and then it cuts to Dan, our main character, scraping the ice off of his from a shot filmed from the inside of the van. The next shot is him loading it with his dogs and surfboards. These jump cuts appear to be intentional, like they could be showing process of getting ready to go find some waves. Before the title even appears, we see him carrying a surfboard across the snow and even diving into the water between chunks of ice.
The coloring has almost a blue-tint to it, conveying a cold feeling for the viewer. This kind of scene-setting and letting the viewer know what this guy goes right up-front works for this piece because it hooks us in. Surfing in ice is not all that common, and even the guys doing it in National Geographic aren’t thought of as the kinds of people you’d expect to see surfing in the dead of winter in Michigan. So, who is the kind of person who would do something so crazy? That’s why the viewer wants to keep watching—to find out who this guy is and what he’s doing out there. The unanswered question could be “who is this person?” or “will he catch a wave?” But it could also be “will he survive the brutal conditions?”
The filmmakers then use a few cutaways in and around Dan’s home to begin to introduce him. While showing these shots, they’re also transitioning into a sort of slice-of-life for Dan, who we see boiling water in his kitchen in the morning and getting dressed for surfing and playing with his dogs. In one shot, his dog stands on top of a propped up surf board while Dan walks around the room while talking about what he wears when he does out in the icy water.
The image stuck with me because even though the light coming from the window may be over exposed, and even though the room is a mess and we’re not even seeing Dan’s face in this, it feels like an environmental portrait almost because shows so much information about who he is. The filmmakers then use a few cutaways in and around Dan’s home to give viewers a better idea of the main and only character in this story. We see close ups of photos of him surfers in his home, medium shots of him interacting with his dog, and boiling water in his kitchen, and a shot of his vehicle license plate that says “UPSURFR” on his old beat-up van. All of this just conveys that this guy, in Michigan, of all places, lives for surfing. Shooting this license plate while Dan loads a surfboard into his van is the very definition of what my professor means when he says “don’t shoot the donut, shoot the donut hole.” These are the kinds of details that make the story.
Moving beyond the visuals, this film contains both an internal and external conflict. Externally, we’re following Dan on his quest to find some good waves in icy Lake Superior and there’s an unanswered question of whether or not Surfer Dan will get to surf. The way its shot feels like we’re with him on one day and we want to know if he’s going to find good waves. But there’s another conflict he touches on during the stand-up interview during all of this when he says, “surfing saved my life.” We don’t know Dan’s entire story while watching this film, but it’s at this point where he says the sport saved his life that we realize his motivations are much deeper than they appear on the surface.
When he talks about how he used to drink and then quit and started surfing, or how someone can be having a hard time until he takes them surfing, and we realize this is how Dan copes with the challenges he’s faced in life. He also mentions wanted to bring people out surfing with him, so he can share this happiness he’s found. As the film concludes we see Dan happily jumping off this snow-covered pier into these crashing waves and then it transitions to him paddling out into the ice-filled water.
— Amanda Rhoades