“I really don’t want to film this because I might film my mate getting eaten…”
And they build them different on that western half of Australia, don’t they just though? Women who laugh in the face of robust, muscular kangaroos. Men who surf on top of rocks with man-eating Great White sharks circling, just waiting to feast. Waiting to tear legs right off surfers, bodyboarders, water cameramen too and suck the marrow from those hips.
Famous surf cinematographer Brendan Foster was out recently and almost caught his fine friend and water cameraman Anj Semark plus two bodyboarders become Jarret de Veau.
Scary?
Terrifying?
Apparently not to the brave Western Australians involved.
Foster went on the fine podcast Grin Reapers and told the story, which goes a little something like this…
It was just the other day, I just went down to film some empties by myself. I was there for two hours and there was no one there and I just packed up to leave when I looked at my phone and saw I had a missed call from Anj Semak. He was up top checking and while I was one the phone to him he was like, “Oh shit, did you see that?”
I was like, “No, what?” And he said, “I thought I saw something launch out of the water…” but you know what Anj is like and about two seconds later he said, “I’m gonna go out and shoot.”
Well, I had two batteries left so I told him I’d shoot him shooting the water and also just to keep an eye out.
So he was getting set up and two bodyboarders paddled out. I didn’t have the drone up in the air yet but I saw directly in front of me a shark launch out of the water only five meters from the shore. I saw fully all the way down its throat, teeth and whatnot, and thought, “That’s not a dolphin.” And the bodyboarders had just gotten out and the shark was… I don’t know, 80 meters away so I just decided to play it cool… thinking, “Ahhh it wasn’t that big. His teeth weren’t that sharp.”
I was gonna fly the drone up and just drop it on them so they knew and I waved at Anj “shark!” but he just waved back. And I thought, “Ohhhh this is not working.” So I scaled down the cliff back to the beach and saw the shark moving toward one of the bodyboarders and had a bit of an “Oh shit” moment just sprinting up the beach. One of the bodyboarders sorta came in so I told him and we were talking about it but they were like, “But it wasn’t that big right?” And I said, “Well, sort of but it did jump out of the water so…”
But they all stayed out so I just flew the drone again to keep a lookout. Fifteen minutes, didn’t see anything and then all of a sudden I saw a shark pop up on my screen, max 1.5 meters from Anj and it was heading directly towards him.
At that moment I yelled so, so loud and I can’t believe Anj heard me. It was kind of like when Simba tried to learn how to roar in the Lion King. I felt like I had found a new sound, like I had just become a man, and he heard it and as soon as that happened the shark looped back around and I had a thought that I don’t want to admit but… I thought, “I really don’t want to film this because I might film my mate getting eaten…” but then my brain went… “Yeah but if he doesn’t get eaten Anj will definitely want to screen grab this.”
So I hit record.
In the footage it wasn’t nearly as close to him as the first time it popped up on the screen. You know, it was mellow because nothing happened but when I thought back on it thought, “That was a little close for comfort.” I told them how close it was, I left and they all went back out. I know it’s like cool to be, “It’s not a big deal…” but… I did it twice, I warned em twice and they went back out so I left.
Different, I tell you, and if the whole world was populated with Western Australians this silly Coronavirus would be so scared it would likely just find another bat and go hide in cave forever and ever and never even think about frequenting wet markets again.
Listen to the whole Grin Reapers podcast here featuring special guest Jack Robinson!
And also, would you like to play Western Australian at home? BeachGrit has an exciting new product just for you!
Poor shark. New “mates” running off on you like that, I’ve had that done to me too. It hurts.
Just ordered my socially distant girlfriend one of those dissolving sharks. Hope it works!
Maybe the loud shouting was on another piece of ‘cinematography’.
That sounded more like a small boy yell rather than a man-like Lion King roar sorry…
Who the fuck do these sharks think they are breaking quarantine protocol? They don’t even have masks on!
Call the Beach Gestapo. They will have it handled.
So he yells a sound, and “felt like I had found a new sound, like I had just become a man”, like his balls had just descended, and yells at them to “go in”. Hopefully he wasn’t talking to his balls.