Surfing Heritage Foundation board member Denny Michael shares his new video for Surfing Heritage TV, encourages others to share theirs
By Andrea Swayne
Denny Michael, like nearly every surfer, has many family memories of the sport that is a lifestyle for enthusiasts who are all connected by the waves to the larger global “surfing community.”
As a member of the board of directors at the Surfing Heritage Foundation in San Clemente he has come up with a way for everyone to share their own surfing stories and histories online—Surfing Heritage TV.
Surfing Heritage TV is a YouTube-based channel hosting a collection of short films and video segments, created to extend the foundation’s ability to preserve and promote surfing heritage for the education and entertainment of current and future generations.
Heading up the foundation’s Technology Committee—the group responsible for creating Surfing Heritage TV—inspired Michael to record and share one of his family stories as part of the project.
His short subject film, The Big Pink Hobie, tells the story of an “Uncle Buck” model Hobie longboard shaped by the late Terry Martin. The board made its rounds including being ridden by many local amateurs and professionals and even by Christian Wach during one of his wins at the Noosa Heads Australia pro longboard event a few years ago before ending up in Michael’s family quiver.
“Looking back just a few years at the Doheny Boneyard, surfers like Wach, Tyler Warren, Bucky Barry, Alex Knost, Lindsay Stienreide and my son Blake Michael were growing up surfing there. Their families were filming them, not realizing that these kids would eventually become pretty famous professional surfers,” Michael said. “We want to include these videos in our archive. We’re basically weaving together the history of surfing, through a combination of personal videos.”
Michael said his video is probably over-produced and pointed out that the SHF will even take “little pieces of surf magic shot via cell phone, with no production, added music or editing necessary.”
“Sometimes unadorned clips stand on their own by merely capturing a significant moment in time,” he said.
Along with video from the public, the foundation will also utilize the talents of video production students at Saddleback College to film, edit and archive future SHF programs and events.
To participate, upload a video to YouTube then log on to www.surfingheritage.org, go to the “Exhibits” section of the home page and click on “SHF TV” and follow a few simple instructions.
The channel can be found online directly at www.youtube.com/shfsurf.
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