Buried Treasure

Finding the perfect day of surf can be extremely elusive for a lot of surfers. Lining up the elements of swell, tide, time and the perfect sand structure takes patience and a bit of luck. In this case, Torren Martyn made a dash from the snowy Sierra Mountains to a remote location in Central America on a forecast in the faint hope the swell would deliver. His gamble paid off, but what you don't see in this short film is the many times he has travelled to remote locations only to be let down by conditions. This amazing sandbank had all but disappeared by the end of this swell. Here filmmaker Perry Gershkow speaks about the creative process capturing this moment in time in the feature  TESORO ENTERRADO {buried treasure}

"The main reason we were able to get such quality waves for Tesoro Enterrado was because it was more of a strike mission than planned out. With these sorts of spur the moment trips most of the time you're going because you know the waves are going to be good, whether it be looking at the forecast or hearing from someone in that area. We ended up staying for about 12 days and scored some of the best waves I have ever seen.  We knew there was potential we might get good waves, but our expectations were completely blown out of the water after pulling up to a couple of beaches those first few days.  After coming home and watching the footage from this trip, I knew we had something very special.  With pumping waves, an incredible surfer, and the opportunity needessentials gave me to get as creative as I wanted, the canvas was well set up!

When it came to the soundtrack, both Torren and I decided it would be cool to put the message out to friends that we were looking for music. We ended up getting an overwhelming amount of responses and after digging through found some amazing tracks that paired really with his surfing and the mood of the film. Music is such an important part to every surf film and when I know it connects with the images a feeling of relief and excitement sets in.  

There’s quite a lot of ways to approach creating a film, each varies with different concepts, colours, scenery and moods. This film already had all of the workings before I even got to editing — all I had to do was showcase it in a way that would connect with the audience. It's the ability to keep the fluidity throughout the whole film with images without having to tell the audience what is going on. Thanks to Torren’s timeless surfing and needessentials founder Ryan’s support, I was able to create this story and make it an enjoyable experience for people to watch - hopefully over and over again”.