Out of Place: A Local Filmmaker's Look at Surfing the Great Lakes
Scott learned how to surf on the shores of Lake Eerie, becoming a member of Cleveland’s own diverse surf culture. He found surfers from all corners of the globe who had wound up living in the Cleveland area and still surfing. He realized that this was something worth documenting and in 2001 began shooting “Out Of Place.” About the documentary, Scott says, “It’s an insider’s perspective on the surfing culture here. How the surfers themselves relate to Cleveland.” The film was shot locally, relying on local filmmakers and surfers coming together in order to make Scott’s vision into a reality. Even the soundtrack is 100% donated from Great Lakes area musicians and three bands (The Dreadful Yawns, The All Golden, and The Celebrity Pilots) from Lakewood
The goal of the film was to capture the surfers and to highlight this vibrant and unique facet of the city. “The thing about surfing is that you’re trying to become closely connected to the water. And that’s the same here, in Australia, anywhere. You’re trying to live that life out in nature at the water’s edge and the pursuit of that here is just a little bit different than anywhere else. We really wanted to tell that story.” The film premiered last month at New York’s Surf Film Festival and took home this year’s Viewer’s Choice Best Feature award. Since then things have started to take off for the people involved in the project, but it’s been a long and tough journey to get here.
Back in 2006, Scott had five years of footage, but the project didn’t seem to be coming together like he had hoped. Scott decided there was only one thing to do: Quit his job at a local law firm and become a fulltime filmmaker. “I had trouble sleeping at night, thinking about bills. But I had to do this,” he says. “I drive a car with 270,000 miles on it. I don’t have cable. I don’t have too many luxuries right now, but it’s worth it because I have this.” This is the type of passion that Scott’s documentary focuses on.
The other star of this project aside from the surfers is, of course, the lake itself. “It kind of confounds me that, again we have this beautiful body of water here and it’s just been hard to get to, because It has been just seen so much as an industrial resource rather than back down to that human level, just experiencing it. I’m hoping that’s one of the things that can inspire people. They’ll see the film and be able to see a beautiful sunset at Edgewater and see the water and just want to connect with that themselves.” Scott especially hopes to see changes of this sort in Lakewood. “There’s not much public access at all to even get to the lake. I mean, living in Lakewood, I’m not even sure that it’s legal to get to the water’s edge unless you own property.”
To aspiring local filmmakers, Scott has this message. “Work with local music. There’s just so much talent here in North East Ohio that gets overlooked simply because we’re not a big market. I’m hoping that we’re demonstrating a template that can be used successfully in the future.”
In order to both raise money for promotion of the film and as a way of celebrating the success already achieved, The Beachland Ballroom will be hosting a fundraiser for the film on November 15th. The fundraiser will feature a raffle for a surfboard, some door prizes, and screenings of some excerpts from the film. There will also be live music, performed by some of the local bands featured on the film’s soundtrack. Scott has just submitted the film to the Cleveland International Film Festival. You can find out more about the film, the filmmakers, and the soundtrack at www.outofplacemovie.com. You can probably find Scott at Edgewater Park on stormy days, Out of Place and out in the waves.