A Quick Dose of Stoke from Ryan Lovelace

 BY PMK

Twenty seven-year-old  Santa Barbara, Calif.-based surfboard builder Ryan Lovelace had so much footage of fun surf sessions that he decided to put together a cool little film. The outcome, Almost Cut My Hair, (ACMH) features an extremely diverse quiver of contemporary surfboards, from single fin to mid lengths, high performance,  fish variations, 5' nuggets, all the way to the finless freedom of the RabbitsFoot experiment – all boards that he shaped.

Soaked in individuality and innovation, ACMH includes the imagery, musical and/or surfing talents of Travers Adler, Trevor Gordon, Michael Kew, Landon Smith, Will Adler, Morgan Maassen, Ryan Burch, Troy Mothershead, Ryan Lovelace, Ari Browne, Johnny McCann, Phil Browne, Joseph Horswell, Washmen and the Fisher, Simon Murdoch, Charlie Parr, Connor Lyon, and loads more.

Almost Cut My Hair  will be shown during the SDSFF 2014  UNDERTOW VIP PARTY, Wednesday May 7 from 7 p.m.- 11 p.m. at Karl Strauss Brewery Tasting Room, Downtown San Diego. (This event is for VIP Nautilus Pass holders).

PMK caught up with Ryan to hash out the details of his film, surfing and life.

Shape, surf, film...cosmic collide?  What don't you do?
RL: What don't I do?  Cope with boredom well, hahahaha!  I suppose a
better answer is, assume that I can't do something - thinking that
something is beyond you is something that I've been slowly realizing
is total bull.  I swear the more I plug away at things, the more
possible stupid ideas (a bus...surf movie...etc...) become. If you
keep your eyes on something and your focus towards it, and your
options open, there's very little that can stop you.  I know I could
plan my life better, but I try to counter-act that with being open to
interpretations of what I'm after.  What I end up with in terms of
projects is rarely exactly how I saw it in the beginning, and I love
the process of discovering the final 'thing' as I plug away.   

Hopefully you got some great waves this winter, and now that things
have slowed down a bit in your neck of the woods, any travel plans for the
summer?
RL: I usually wait out the summer flat spell by getting out of Santa
Barbara as much as I can. The last five years I've been doing little
summer shaping trips around Europe, Australia, Indonesia and the East
Coast of the U.S.  It’s turned into a whole lot of cool trips that I
string together now with a few weeks at home between them to make sure
I'm on top of my orders and life.  I named the tours the “Shapetastic
Voyage.” It’s an amazing contrast to my life at home that really
makes me value what I have and the people who make it possible.  

ACMH is a "zero-budget" surf film. Explain the importance of the
grass-roots projects and what you want people to take away from
the film.

RL: I want people to want to go surfing after watching the movie.  I want
them to realize that they just watched something rather
unpolished, extremely unprofessional, cheap, and receive a heavy
dose of stoke.  I don't know if zero-budget was really the best term
for it – I did spend money putting it together, but it was just
what I could scrape together, and I made it happen to the limitations of
what I had in my pocket at any given time.  All of the material was
given to me by friends, and people who liked what I was trying to do,
and I paid them the best I could in board trades, favors, and cash
when I had it.  I shot some of it, then edited and produced the
film.  For me, the value was in seeing a project through to its
completion, whatever that was. So many amazing movies have
disappeared in the past few years before they ever existed for one
reason or another, usually because there wasn't enough money to
finish putting it out, or sponsor complications or whatever.  I
wanted my project to show that none of that shit has to matter. You
can still provide shitloads of stoke and a great movie with hardly
anything, and that people don't necessarily want helicopter shots and
triple overhead tubes with lasers blasting out of them, or the
latest board shorts to be featured in this section, so if you didn't
score a mega session - fuck it!  If you make a fun, real movie and put it
out there, people just want to watch a surf movie and they'll support
a good effort if you can just get it out there and show them what
you've got – it’s valid and valuable, so share it even if it’s not mind
bending.  I'm proud of my cheap movie with some wobbly shots – it
makes me happy.

If you’re stoked, we’re stoked! Thanks Ryan! Hoots & Shakas!

Check out the trailer for Almost Cut My Hair:

Almost Cut My Hair - Official from Ryan Lovelace on Vimeo.