These days, when you watch a movie and wonder “How did they do that?”, it’s typically a technical question. How did CGI create that dragon, those thousands of Middle Earth warriors, the Chinese swordsmen skipping across a lake, that web-slinger’s battle with Doc Ock? How did they get that incredible angled shot of Victoria Falls (or a bird plummeting a thousand feet)? How did they get those dangerous exotic animals into the same frame with the hero?
With the 2004 surfing documentary “Riding Giants,” “How did they do that?” becomes a different question—or rather, two. There’s the psychological one: Where did those young men get the cojones, never mind the skill, to ride a board down a 40-foot wave, at 35 miles an hour and more, with white foam curling behind, rocks up ahead, and a vicious undertow below? Then there’s a procedural one: Just how did they produce that 1950s video footage of big-wave surfing off Waimea Bay, Hawaii, and how did they manage to live out there, year after year, simply to surf?
