Tiffany Morgan Campbell is in the final stages of putting together her ode to ocean-going females, Dear & Yonder. The film explores the relationship between women and their home breaks (the Dear) as well as featuring ladies who search out waves in the far-flung corners of the Earth (the Yonder). SURFING got a hold of Tiffany as she was about to head out for one of the movie’s last filming sessions.
SURFING: WHAT’S THE UNDERLYING THEME FOR DEAR & YONDER?
TIFFANY MORGAN CAMPBELL: It’s a mostly female cast and it covers a diverse range of surfers from longboarding to shortboarding to bodysurfing. It covers all ages as well. I guess the purpose of it is to show all the different ways that women, and surfers in general, can enjoy the ocean. There’s a bit of an environmental message in there as well. For instance, Ashley Loyd, who’s a surfer from Santa Cruz, shapes a BioFoam blank and then our friend Serena paints it and Ashley surfs the board in the movie. The point is to show that she’s trying to use materials that have less of an environmental impact. So throughout the movie there are themes like that, ways to enjoy the ocean without having too much of an environmental impact. The film also features the shortboard girls who are more contest-oriented. We wanted to show all angles of surfing and competitive surfing is an important part of women’s surfing so that’s in there.
WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO MAKE AN ALL-GIRLS SURF FILM?
I used to make skateboard movies prior to this then I started surfing more and that led to me making a surfing movie. The movie is also going to have a skating section in it. We filmed the top female skaters on a road trip to Arizona. The last skateboarding movie I made was called Getting Nowhere Faster.
DO YOU DO ALL THE FILMING AND EDITING YOURSELF OR DO YOU HAVE A TEAM HELPING YOU?
I film, my husband (Thomas Campbell) is doing a lot of the filming, Dave Homcy and Scott Soens are also filming. Me and my partner in the film, Andrea Lessler, are doing the editing and we have a team in New York, the Diamond brothers, that are doing the final edit.
HOW MUCH OF DEAR & YONDER IS SHOT IN 16MM FILM?
There’s a little bit of video, I’d say it’s probably eighty percent 16mm and twenty percent video.
LIZ CLARK IS ONE OF THE GIRLS FEATURED IN THE FILM, WHAT’S HER PART GOING TO BE ABOUT?
She’s been sailing around the world for almost three years now, and her part is pretty much going to document her travels up to this point. So the film tracks her through the beginning of her journey and we catch up with her in the Tuamotu Islands and Christmas Island and Tahiti. So we travel around the South Pacific with her and show her surfing and doing everything else that goes along with being the captain of a sailboat. So there’s fishing and diving and harvesting coconuts and all that kind of stuff too.
ISN’T THERE A GIRL IN THE FILM WHO BODYSURFS MAVERICKS?
Yeah, she’s from San Francisco. Her name’s Judith Sheridan, she’s 45 years old, has never touched a surfboard and was a swimmer who got into bodysurfing when she couldn’t get out past the waves to go swimming. So she just turned around and started riding the waves. I don’t know if we’re going to get a wave of her out at Mavericks on film, but we’re going to film her out there trying. She’s already tried a few times but it’s hard for her to get in the right position when there are surfers out there. They’ll give her a wave, but she needs to be in a certain spot. The guys out there don’t know which waves are good for her necessarily. But she has done it. She has caught waves out there when it’s smaller. She does an underwater take-off, she doesn’t paddle, she just uses the wave’s momentum to push her. Most people will say that you can’t swim fast enough to keep up with that wave but she seems to think that she can do it with the underwater take-off.
Sally Fitzgibbons: the new face of Women's surfing.IS FILMING FOR THE MOVIE FINISHED OR IS THERE STILL SOME WORK TO BE DONE?
Yeah I’ve got to go film today actually. And we’re still filming Judith’s bodysurfing. So it’s just local stuff left to film. Then we just have post-editing to do and the film will come out next summer.
THIS SATURDAY YOU’VE GOT AN ART SHOW/FUNDRAISER TO HELP OUT WITH PRODUCTION COSTS FOR THE FILM, TELL US A BIT ABOUT THAT…
The art show features a lot of artists from our community who have pooled their resources - which is their art – to donate to the movie. A lot of the artists are surfers as well and they just want to help support it. We’re going to have the trailer for Dear & Yonder playing at the benefit too and there’s going to be a display of photos that we’ve shot while we’ve been making the movie. The benefit art show is free and open to anyone who wants to come along.
If you’re in L.A on Saturday and want to help support the creation of an all female surf film, head down to New Image Art, 7908 Santa Monica Blvd in West Hollywood and throw your green down on some original, surf inspired artwork.