Riding Giants (2004)

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General		Extras
Category	Surfing	Main Menu Audio & Animation Dolby Digital Trailer Audio Commentary-Stacy Peralta (Director) And Paul Crowder (Editor) Audio Commentary-Sam George (Writer) & Greg Noll, Jeff Clark, Laird Hamilton Featurette-Making Of Featurette-Fuel TV's Blue Carpet Special Deleted Scenes-5 Trailer-Being Julia, Bobby Jones: Stroke Of Genius
Rating
Year Of Production	2004
Running Time	97:13 (Case: 101)
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (79:12)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4,5	Directed By	Stacy Peralta
Studio Distributor	Sony Pictures Home Entertain	Starring	Jeff Clark Darrick Doerner Laird John Hamilton Dave Kalama Brian L. Keaulana Buzzy Kerbox Titus Kinimaka Mickey Munoz Greg Noll Evan Slater Kelly Slater Darryl Virostko
Case	?
RPI	$29.95	Music	None Given

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) English Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) English Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.85:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English Hindi English for the Hearing Impaired	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	Yes
		Action In or After Credits	No

    An ode to big-wave surfing, Riding Giants is an overly long documentary that lacks focus and subsequently tries to cover far too much material. Co-written and directed by Stacy Peralta of Dogtown and Z-Boys fame, Riding Giants has a number of problems.

    Director Dana Brown recently provided us with a cheeky, inviting, and entertaining exploration of surfing with Step Into Liquid, but sadly, Peralta's deadpan Riding Giants is far too solemn and far too ambitious. Peralta tries to cover far too much, and the film often meanders between being a history of surfing, a history of big-wave surfing, a history of surf movies, and a biography of the film's Executive Producer Laird Hamilton.

    There are also way too many talking heads, with extensive interviews with surfers Greg Noll, Jeff Clark, Billy Hamilton, Ken Bradshaw, Dave Kalama, Titus Kinimaka, Gerry Lopez, Steve Pezman, Buzzy Kerbox and Laird Hamilton. Noll, Clark, and Laird Hamilton would have been enough.

    While there is some great footage of Teahupoo, Jaws (Pea'hi), Mavericks, and Waimea Bay, the film lacks some of the hair raising big-wave footage that we've been treated to elsewhere, such as in the brilliant Billabong Odyssey.

    Also, probably because Quiksilver is the film's Co-Producer, this documentary on Big Wave surfing chooses to ignore the annual big event in Big Wave Surfing - the annual Billabong XXL Awards, which honours big wave surfers and their accomplishments each year.

    On the other hand, the film also has a number of good points. For example, the interviews do provide a decent insight into the lifestyle of the big-wave chargers, and the risks they take. Perhaps there could have been some further exploration of the psyche of the men who decide to cheat death on 60-70 foot waves for a living (and hobby).

    The film also features some great and clever animation, such as the opening "1,000 Years of Surfing in Two Minutes or Less". This section animates a large number of archival stills, maps, and diagrams to cover how a Polynesian pastime, invented by Hawaiian natives, was developed and exported around the world.

Video

    Overall the quality of the transfer is good, considering the age of a lot of the source material.

    The widescreen transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1, 16x9 enhanced.

    The image is quite soft throughout, but the sharpness depends on the source. A lot of the material is taken from old 8 and 16mm films, and there is also some home video footage. The shadow detail is good in the interview segments. Obviously all of the surfing footage is shot outside with natural light..

    The colour is good overall, but obviously there is some black and white and even sepia tone archival footage included.

    There are no problems with MPEG artefacts, but a lot of the footage, including the recent interviews, is very grainy. There are no problems with film-to-video artefacts. A number of film artefacts appear throughout, and understandably in the archival footage they can be frequent and huge.

    English, Hindi, and English for the Hearing Impaired subtitles are present, and the English subtitles are accurate.

    This is a dual-layer disc, with the layer change placed at 79:12.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    There are three audio options on the DVD: English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s), and two English Audio Commentaries, both presented in Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s).

    The dialogue quality and audio sync are fine, and importantly the narration is always clear.

    There is no musical score per se, but rather the music consists of a collection of Hawaiian-themed music and a collection of surf tunes from the 1950s to the present.

    While the surround mix is quite front heavy, there is some surround presence and activity. The rear speakers are used notably to help carry the score and provide some ambience. However, while the surround sound is rather average for a documentary, the film is accompanied by a great LFE track. The subwoofer is used very effectively, for example with the deep rumble of the giant wave that opens the film.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    There is a good collection of extras, dominated by two audio commentaries.

Menu

    Animated with audio

Audio Commentary 1

    Stacy Peralta (Co-Writer and Director) And Paul Crowder (Editor) provide a screen specific commentary, in which they focus on the aims of the film and the techniques employed to achieve these aims. They also identify a number of locations and surfers in the film who are not mentioned in the documentary's narration.

Audio Commentary 2

    Sam George (Co-Writer), and surfers Greg Noll, Jeff Clark, and Laird Hamilton provide a relaxed and chatty screen-specific commentary. There are a number of anecdotes and jokes throughout.

Featurette-Making Of Riding Giants (28:03)

    Stacy Peralta (Co-Writer and Director) joins a number of other key Crew members, including the film's Producer and Editor, to discuss this film project moving from an idea, to a script, and into a finished film.

Featurette-Fuel TV's Blue Carpet Special (20:21)

    A look at the film's premiere at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood. This Featurette also includes the film's trailer. Interestingly, the film also opened the Sundance Film Festival.

Deleted Scenes (15:41)

    There are five deleted and alternative scenes, and text explaining why each scene was cut.

Trailers

• Being Julia
• Bobby Jones: Stroke Of Genius

    Riding Giants was released on DVD in Region 1 in January 2005. Apart from some minor differences, such as subtitles, both versions are the same.

    Riding Giants starts off well, but I found it quickly became a little tedious. As a well-known Elvis song lyric spells out, the film needed "a little less conversation and a little more action".

    The video quality is good overall.

    The audio quality is very good, albeit quite front-heavy.

    The extras are good.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall