EP42: The Making of Gwynnik

14:37Seth Hughes:sacred geometry there you go there you go now that's obviously a scene that plays in the film Gwynnick tell us what Gwynnick is what is a Gwynnick where did you where does one see a Gwynnick what does it mean in the Cornish language

14:55Mike Lay:Well, I never know what I'm going to call films and they kind of come to me while I'm editing them. And I was just editing this and instead of trying to like force a name and like try and give it too much meaning, I decided to like pick a sound. that I thought kind of fit how the thing felt to me. And I picked the word Gwynic and I chatted to my friend Morden who lives down the road from me who grew up speaking Cornish in the pub in Camborne. And he's been teaching me Cornish and we've been doing a few Cornish lessons. And I asked him if Gwynic meant anything and he told me that it meant little fair one, little like small fair one.

15:38Mike Lay:And I thought that was such a beautiful description of Mike's two children who are not necessarily a central focus of the film, but they kind of make up the... They're a big part of it. Yeah, they're like the spine of it. They're the why of coming back and surfing at home. And I just thought, wow, how lovely it was to pick a name based on a feeling and a noise that felt nice in my body and in my mouth to say, and then for my friend to go, yeah, that's what that means. And yeah, I just felt great. I could probably do that more often. will it work again i think it will yeah i think it'll work every time yeah intuitive film naming

16:19Seth Hughes:yeah well you you were asked in a clip somewhere to describe the film in one word and you said home which is a big part of what this film is right it's been about exploring your relationship home be it in west penworth but also you're maybe like ancestry cultural roots home being Celtic as well because this is a shot across not just Cornwall but also Brittany yeah I mean it is

16:46Mike Lay:my surfing experience now is entirely driven by being at home and not wanting to be anywhere else um period what does it does that in terms of my own motivation if it were down to me which isn't always but I would I'm not motivated to go anywhere that being said we might talk about it later but I'm doing this big trip on my bike and I'm up for exploring and still have a sense of adventure but it's not one that is that's going to lead me to the other side of the world for purely surfing's sake like I've got lots of friends in Australia I'd love to see them one day maybe that'll happen But whereas 10 years ago, I really wanted to surf everywhere around the world that I'd heard of and I'd read about in magazines and watched in films.

17:41Mike Lay:But I just don't, I'm not that interested in that anymore, probably because I've been so fortunate enough to have done a lot of that. Yeah, exactly. So I'm not saying like I have become enlightened through any great personal journey. it's just I've done it and now I feel fulfilled from that part of my life I love surfing but I love doing it at home and I love the challenges that that presents

18:10Seth Hughes:and you've spoken about that for quite a while now this isn't a new narrative for you or for you both in terms of these films right this is something that you I mean Ennis is how old now? He's four and I think even a couple years before that you were kind of locking into Cornwall a bit more and You kind of said the Mexilogs Fests and those trips were, you know, great and beautiful celebrations to surf. But again, like something was yearning back home.

18:38Mike Lay:Yeah, absolutely. I don't know whether, I mean, it's obviously multifaceted, but riding a longboard and having the ability to make the most out of even really marginal conditions means that I don't have to chase amazing waves. that being said the banks have been very bad for two or three years at senand um so i would like like i like good waves over bad waves but i'm at the same time i am fortunate enough to really enjoy surfing any kind of wave and maybe that's through being a lifeguard as well where i'd spend a lot of time on a paddleboard or on a surfboard during breaks just surfing whatever was in front of me um and it's something i cultivate within myself as well just to like i don't want to feel like waves are a scarce thing that have to be battled for or that I have to go to Indonesia for because they're just like they're everywhere all the time and if you manage to just flip the narrative inside of your own head to to be grateful for that and accepting of the fact that there are waves absolutely everywhere and you can surf on your own or just with friends or just down the road or whatever it might be then you're on to a winner and it's not easy all the time but I'm I'm in a pretty good place with it at the moment.

19:58Mike Lay:Yeah, having a good time surfing average waves.

20:02Seth Hughes:And very well, may I add. Just in quick summary, there's two films that have like the predecessors for Gwynnick here. So Cunhaven to Hireth and then Hireth to Gwynnick. Just track us back a little bit about where you've been, where you've covered some of the stories and kind of the, yeah, I guess like the, yeah the stories that feature before this because Gwynic probably being am I right in saying the last in this series

20:31Mike Lay:I don't know who knows really I guess we just I wouldn't I wouldn't know I was making any of them on the first day we filmed them we started filming them and definitely fine with probably my best projects it's like I would go day by day by day by day and then it turns into something um and most of it for me at least is an excuse to you know go and have a nice day with my friend mike you know and then those things kind of build off that and beautiful moments happen from that and the first time we met was on a trip with wavelength surf magazine and visit scotland up on the north coast of scotland um kind of thurso and west and um mike picked me up with Luke Gartside from I think a station in the Midlands somewhere and then we drove uh drove north to the north coast of Scotland and we spent that week there and I was um assisting and filming in the water for that project alongside Matthew Hamm who was the DOP and then I think we just really clicked on that on that trip and just really enjoyed filming together and I had mainly filmed like shortboarding before that I was like came from quite like a high performance shortboard filming background pretty traditional yeah and it's not that i didn't like that i did like that when it was good and kind of what you were speaking about like there was a chase element to film it to shortboarding particularly in the uk and then the filming of that where like to make a clip from a shortboard surfer a high performance shortboard surfer it's like you're looking for almost the like compilation of their you know their absolute cream of the crop you know best four minutes of surfing and i think i just stopped enjoying that process of like most surfs feeling like i was walking away with no footage and just sat there freezing cold in the rain like someone's trying air reverses for two hours and sometimes we'd get a great one and then you and then but most of the time we wouldn't or you'd have to mike's not nervous for air reverses i'm just consistent i just land most of them yeah i just it's like did you get that one said yeah like okay i'll do another one but a bit loftier this time but i mean yeah longboarding like represented a different a different way of enjoying the ocean in cornwall specifically and in the uk it feels like the uk of course uk is fantastic for for high performance surfing and for shortboarding and for getting tubed if you know where to go at the right time but if you want a consistent relationship with surfing probably don't want to just be on like a 6-0 thruster the whole time and yeah so that kind of that's where me and mike met and then we made ken evan off the back of that which was just filming at home um and that was a kind of just a decision to again just to film loads of stuff around cornwall and then we wanted to do a trip up to the hebrides so then that was where here earth was born along with um colin mcleod and that was like that was like I think the Hebrides it represents maybe a lot of what the west coast of Britain and Europe maybe would have been like you know 20, 30, 40 50 years ago so I think like through growing and through foraging me and Mike are both really interested in deepening our relationship to place like I think this I think it's created the illusion that we can all move around really far away and really fast it'll be a blip in our history in my opinion for most of our history we've not been able to do that for the rest of most of our history I don't think we'll be able to do that and I think that's what we can do right now and I think it's fun in the same way that like having a massive session is fun or like watching a really exciting film is fun but I don't think it's like a way of like I don't want to go and have a party every single night but occasionally that's something i want to do and and i think our relationship to place right now is like kind of wide and shallow rather than like narrow and deep and i would rather my relationship to place to be that because i think that's how that's what is fulfilling for humans and i think that's what's fulfilling for me um so in our own lives through like foraging learning about food systems which is in my opinion pretty much the best and quickest way to root yourself into place those films are kind of what surfing means in those ecosystems like if we were going to stay in one place what does it mean to um find beauty in surfing but we can't go anywhere that that's almost like the criteria don't go too far you know you you said

25:18Seth Hughes:beauty there and i can't the three films you've just referenced a pack full of beautiful shots beautiful landscapes beautiful sounds beautiful people and it's um i watched hit i watched um i watched gwinnick last thursday for the first time in a few weeks a few months actually and it was short work week i had to pack everything into four days it was a stressful week let's say and for 18 minutes of just watching it on a laptop on a second screen i genuinely at the end of 18 minutes felt like my cortisol had kind of rebalanced that I'd slowed down a bit that and it was it was like I phone turned upside down you know I sat in the corner no one was disturbing and I could like I switched off and just felt I was you know transported to those places that you've shot yeah I guess there was a I mean I wanted to ask you some questions around like the power of storytelling and film particularly in this current climate but it's um there was something very very beautiful about the film that just yeah like I say transported you to those places that you guys have spent so much time in that's a and you guys do it really well together as a pairing and you behind the lens I guess you know exactly what you're making or set out to do with these things but it's yeah how do you look on the film six months on from its first airing I just

26:50Mike Lay:maybe it sounds weird to say and I feel a bit weird saying it but I love watching my films I love going back and watching them um even some of the earliest films I made and it really does show that like I really make them for myself first and foremost and they're just a instead of an exploration of an opinion or a take they're just an exploration of things that I find beautiful you know and that feels like really refreshing to me um that like if they're if we suddenly find us found ourselves in a world with no more problems to solve and no more takes to have and opinions to have the only thing left worth doing in my opinion would be like look how amazing that snake out there is that's all that that's would be left and it's an opportunity for me to like um just you kind of almost jump the gun a bit and just go straight to that and dedicate my time to making something that i think is just really immersive and beautiful um so someone like you say someone I can just switch off for a bit.

27:48Seth Hughes:Oh, and I did, genuinely. I noticed it and I put a half-baked question down at the end of it. But I mean, I just wanted to touch again on that kind of the power of storytelling and film and the need for it and the need for people to, even though you're still sat in front of a screen and watching something, which, you know, we're not going to completely eradicate this day and age without all the employing every single device and brick and this and that. and I was thinking about awards season the Oscars the BAFTAs you know all of that and seeing all the directors or actors up there speaking and so many of them would talk about the importance of film and storytelling right now in times of kind of crisis uncertainty unnerving kind of like global issues that are going on and there is there's something really potent isn't there about being able to tune in and watch something that is grounding or is hopeful or just transports you um visually or audibly you know it's um that's that really stuck out for me this year i don't know if you guys watch the the award season stuff but it's it's interesting you know whether it's paul thomas anderson or chloe zoo or these people you know they talk about how how important that storytelling is right now.

29:10Yeah, it's interesting because when Seth and I worked together, Seth's mentioned it, I certainly don't have any ideas.

29:20Mike Lay:I just go surfing. But I know that Seth, what we're doing is quite intuitive and we're not setting out to portray any great cause or like answer any questions through what we're doing. We both really get on and we see the world through quite similar lenses. And that helps, that synergy helps us work together and is the reason why there might be another film in the future just because it's fun to hang out and go surfing and film things. That being said, and to your point, Larry, I think though it's not explicit, there are messages and things to be gleaned from even a beautiful surf clip at home.

30:07Mike Lay:The thing for me, and this doesn't necessarily, I speak for myself, not necessarily for both of us, but through these films is demonstrating that one does not have to, as we said earlier in the conversation, travel around the world in order to get great satisfaction from something like surfing. And I think that is a perspective which is very, it's not prevalent at all within the wider surfing culture in which travel, international travel is a massive, massive part of it. And they're almost inextricable. They're like deeply connected, international travel and surfing. And I don't think there's a, I don't think that they shouldn't be necessarily, but I also think that there's space to just say, hey man you don't have to do that and that's kind of been part of the dialogue for a while right

31:09Seth Hughes:people have reset the way in which they do that you know more people if you're a londoner it can almost be easier to find yourself down in the southwest of france than it is to get down to cornwall but you know people still make their pilgrimage down here jump in a car car share

31:23Mike Lay:totally um i think it's just more like if i listen to a surfing podcast it will be sponsored by a travel company and like travel companies and it's just constantly like where's your next trip like what are you doing like what what are you saving for and that's like you know quintessential like

31:40Seth Hughes:surfers utopia right is the mentawi's boat trip yeah yeah yeah i mean yeah wouldn't we all love to go on one of them yeah i don't think that's bad but i just think that there's there it's a

31:50Mike Lay:more there can be a more like rounded picture of what it what it is and and i think that's where films like Gwynnick and other examples have a place just to remind us like actually look it's pretty sick you can stay home even somewhere as fickle as our island

32:10Seth Hughes:How much did you guys film in the wave pools? The whole thing was wave pools Green screen wave pool

32:16Mike Lay:Yeah I mean again I would love to it's not it's definitely not a knock of travel it's not it's more just a love of place rather than a dislike of travel and i'd love to one day do um you know a boat trip it'd be great yeah i think it's forget what i decided it's all about like what am i optimizing for what is the like going on a boat trip wouldn't represent like constantly in a state of travel for surfing wouldn't represent the height of success like the height of success would be having a really good day at home that's not to say that therefore i wouldn't want to do anything else But I think so much of the surf industry and surf culture is about like that endless summer kind of idea where it's just like it just gets kind of better and better and better and better and further and further away.

33:02Mike Lay:And like I just that's just yeah, that doesn't feel it's a fun aspect of it, but maybe not a full picture.

33:08Seth Hughes:And of course the end of summer was about exploration and discovery at the time, right? You know, and it took them from, hold on a second, California to South Africa, to Indonesia, to Australia. Why not? Why not? It's been a while. I've watched Gwynnick more recently than I have in the summer. Or maybe that was in the summer too. That was all about discovery and arguably discovery now lies outside of those warmer water destinations. you know we've got our friends ben wyland who's been up in the bering strait you know chasing waves that may or may not exist um and you guys have done it closer to home you know the you'd mentioned the hebrides there you know they're a really special place very hard to get to you know mentioning it right now is not going to mean they're going to have an influx of people to the isle of lewis um i discovered holywell bay exactly well there you go there's genuinely there's something to that isn't there yeah well yeah it's a personal journey of discovery I guess I always remember a friend of ours Dan Crockett would say he'd try and surf somewhere different every couple of months so he might find himself on the peninsula around the corner and then you know he might take that hour and a half long drive to North Cornwall to surf somewhere different more to stoke his own fire and to not get jaded by surfing in your own catchment all the time

34:33Mike Lay:that's all I do now though I'm the opposite of that

34:37Seth Hughes:that this me at Holywell Bay is like I just well I haven't surfed Holywell for four or five years you know and it happens but like you say do the conditions line up are the banks there are they not and you can go two or three years without good banks I don't think I'll ever surf Holywell Bay again really I'd finish right there

34:59Mike Lay:same with the spot that we surfed near Bude with our friend Cliff Capono at the start of this year. I don't think I'll ever surf there again. Yeah, that's an interesting idea. One time. Yeah. I'm quite into just feeling content. Be like, that was great. I'll leave that.

35:18Seth Hughes:I like that. Right, you're going to be surfing less and less as this relationship goes on.

35:29Seth Hughes:well this this was a really nice quote of yours actually just to kind of round that back we say taking the joy of surfing as and when it comes that was a mike lay 2025 um and i think that's beautiful you know and it returns back to the basics of why anyone gets into surfing is joy right you know rather than the chase so to speak yeah exactly 100 i stand by that it's a good one it's a good one um let's you've we mentioned the kids and the kids are a big part of the film you just said they're the backbone of the film and you know you you end with a filter with a wave shared with um with Ennis and you said it's the best wave I've ever had and I can you know I'm not a father but I can completely understand why you would say that um what's that been like and Ennis being four now what's the yeah what's um what's his awareness of it all and his dad as a

36:20Mike Lay:professional surfer yeah i don't i don't know about his awareness of that necessarily but um he thinks that i i like watching surf contests on the on my computer and he he thinks that i know personally every single one he's like is he your friend is she your friend is he your friend is she your friend it's a close no and then he's like why as if maybe we had a personality clash and i didn't personally go. Daddy beat him in a heat. Yeah, exactly. Um, but I think he, I think he is excited by it. I think, um, for me personally, the experience of being a parent has just been the most phenomenal experience of my life and has at the same time simplified everything.

37:05Mike Lay:Cause it's just like, that's, that's the reason now these, these little people. And I don't think that you don't have to have kids in order to feel that but it has worked that way for me um and then the prospect of sharing something as like absolutely transcendentally wonderful as surfing with these other things that have transformed your life in a similar way it's just like this big collision of amazing things um and especially when they're as young as Ennis is I mean, he was three, I think, or maybe just turned four. He was either three or just four when we shared that wave together at the end of Gwynnick.

37:46Mike Lay:And at that age, they're just like, everything is incredible. It's also quite funny because he, I don't surf for very long anymore. When I was 15, I might have surfed for four hours in a row, but now it's not longer than an hour very often. But he surfs for like two waves. like it's a big build up we're like you're going surfing today and all they're talking about going surfing going surfing get all the shit down there and get him ready and all the wetsuit on carry the board down one wave he's like that was incredible that was absolutely incredible I'm like do you want another one he's like yes I want another one go out get another one daddy that was incredible I'm like yes let's go and get another one he's like no I'm finished I'm like okay just two ways yeah it's like yeah i'm going that's what you need right which i guess kind of like what i said about best two ways yes just like done he knows i'm satisfied which is that's

38:45Seth Hughes:all the judges ask for yeah yeah exactly yeah i think i beat everyone there dad yeah but that is i'm always like okay yeah no that's fine i remember doing i remember a couple years ago we had a like a wetsuit feedback session with you and a couple of the other guys and girls on the team. And your feedback was, I only need a wetsuit to serve me for an hour's warmth. And Noah, who likes to sit on the back of my lawnmower for four or five hours, is like, yeah, I need something more. Very different, yeah.

39:15Mike Lay:Courses for courses. Just get in, get out. I do catch a lot of waves very quickly as well.

39:20Seth Hughes:Very greedy. any apologies while the microphone's out I think I managed to

39:31Mike Lay:read the room if I'm at home at Sennon then I don't need to apologise for anything no that's not fair we can edit that

39:39Seth Hughes:for the sake of

39:41Mike Lay:well it's funny those things I feel a certain sense of entitlement which I grapple with sometimes when I'm at home at Sennon and I had to learn that people shouted at me when I was younger as a greedy child on a longboard taking all the waves. I like to think I rein it in a little bit. I just catch bad waves. I don't care about quality. I just catch loads and loads and loads of bad waves. I'm all about quantity.

40:08Seth Hughes:So, yeah. Well, as to whether they're some of the values you'll be handing down to Venice, I'm unsure. But definitely the film shows you handing down these Huckleberry-esque values, right? There's beautiful scenes of you in the field identifying Black Breeze and there's some really touching moments in there.

40:30Mike Lay:I hope to be able to pass on just a little bit of how wonderful being outside is and how much there is there. And we're in a very fortunate position to be able to do that where we live, not just our home, but the whole of this part of the country is pretty special. So I hope if I give anything to him, it will be, and Maura, it will just be how cool it is to go outside and have fun.

40:57Seth Hughes:Other side of the lens, of course, you're documenting this, but also in it, like really in it, right? You're following Mike around with his family down on the fields and in the water and then around the rest of the UK. But it's, I got a few questions here just about how you put these films together and what comes first, the vision? Is it the, I know I'd like to surf these beaches and these breaks. Is it I'll follow Mike where he wants to go. Does the way in which you want to score these films come first? Do you have, yeah, how does it come to be? You've got some great stuff where you've like trialed different ways of filming and follow cam.

41:33Seth Hughes:I think when you first reached out about this, you said, I've got 37 minutes of Mike footage. Do you want it? And then it's turned into this. So yeah, what does come first? What comes second and third?

41:46Mike Lay:Yeah, what comes first is, I think, like, the actual process of enjoying the filming and that I love, like, meeting up with Mike and with my friends and filming surfing and finding little beautiful moments and whatever they may be on the day, you know? And, like, today there was the adder. but that's one of loads of things that happens when I go out with the intention of wanting to find beautiful things and I guess it's a compilation of that it's like they then just get strung together with whatever I whatever feeling that I want to imbue is that the right word imbue into the film can be can be Mike is that the right word instill imbue something like that imbue is more you're causing the yeah imbuement dictionary

42:45Seth Hughes:dictionary dictionary corner Tyler I'll get an imbued check distil means

42:51Mike Lay:you're reducing something doesn't it you've got lots of things you're deducing imbues you're imparting something yeah I think that's what it is it's like an exploration of a of a feeling I suppose and I guess probably all three of the films are an exploration of the same feeling but maybe a refinement on that feeling and I feel that my whole life, at least as far as I know it right now, seems to be motivated by, I don't know, the only way I feel like I know how to explain it is like a journey to the center of the earth. I just feel like I'm just being pulled deeper and deeper and deeper into the land, whatever that really means and I want to, I enjoy filming that.

43:39Seth Hughes:And then my sense is just to interject is you don't sit on a film or you have what you might be, but you can go, oh God, I want this to be quite perfect. I want this to, I'm going to wait until everything's come together with this vision I have. So actually like being on the receiving end of this is, you know, some of us, you know, we've been able to kind of release this with you is whatever's coming up for you at the time. and and and you're not i mean this is the atmosphere you're not overprotective or you it really is very organic there's a lot of buzzwords here but it's you know you you have something you'd make it you put it together you go there you go yeah i think that's really nice because people can like sit on a passion project for a decade i think that's and yeah which time it's you know it might be as relevant yeah i've been trying to balance that i think like

44:32Mike Lay:Like on the one hand, sometimes maybe I can be a bit too observational and I just like this new job that I've just started. I'm stepping in as a director and I'm realizing that that means actually like holding a vision and trying to execute on that particular vision. And these films are the opposite of that. Like the vision, I don't have this thing and then I'm going to try and like piece the things up the chain to create that. I'm like down here and I'm just like building as it goes. And I really enjoy that organic process. And sometimes it also feels that like the end got, like there's a few moving parts.

45:05Mike Lay:There's obviously like there's the land and the ocean that are a contributing factor and they have their way and the weather. And there's my desire for how I want it to look and feel. There's how Mike's going to surf. There's how someone's going to pull the music together. And I don't enjoy the feeling of trying to be deeply in control of all of those things. I much prefer the feeling of like almost creating the environment for beautiful things outside of my control to happen, you know, and letting them be like, oh, look at this thing. And then I don't have to lay too much claim to it. And generally, like, I think I started editing Kenevin because like it was lockdown and I was like, well, that's, we'll just stop filming there then.

45:56Mike Lay:And then we finished the trip in the Hebrides. so I was like well we've done the trip so I'll start editing it now and this time I don't know really why I just started editing it one day normally what happens is I might have some people around for dinner and I have a few glasses of wine and I can't think of anything more fun than sitting in my room and playing nice music and editing surf footage and then are they still not having dinner or when they've gone when they've gone might take the rest of the bottle of wine up with guys sit in my room just I just kind of like lock in for hours and just allow myself to explore that the feeling like that feeling and it's the nicest experience of just like sitting down color grading the footage finding music putting on in the background and and just being like that that's kind of nearly there and the only thing we hadn't shot was the day that we filmed with with you whereas i think um so with you and your family i mean like the only thing i think that film would need was that and the addition of that and all that stuff down at the beach and at mike's house that was all in one day less than one day was it really yeah one morning i think yeah so the surfing was filmed over months and years and then all the family stuff was filmed in one day um yeah that that i guess that's kind of the process and i'm sure the next the next thing will be more like but we'll be like that as well but the music is just music is such an enormous

47:16Seth Hughes:part of it yeah and for those yet to shazam who was uh who featured across that well i don't think

47:22Mike Lay:Shazam's going to get you very far with this one because it's not going to be on. He might release the music by itself, but it doesn't exist. He scored it for the film. Finnegan. Finnegan 2, yeah. So he wrote it. I was with him one day last summer and I showed him the film that I was working on and he was sat next to me. I was at his house and I asked if he wanted to play the music for it and he played some guitar next to me. and I was just like oh that sounds really nice so we just decided to go for that and I left it with him and again that was like a bit of a back and forth and working out the kind of thing we were going to make well it's really nice with working with Finn as I tell him like that like the feeling I want to go for rather than specifics of stuff and I think he said like what kind of vibe do you want to go for and I was like I like that kind of happy sad feeling that happens in like kind of maybe more traditional European music like Irish and British and maybe even if it's a folky thing yeah that kind of folky there's like a happy sad it's like a mix of both I like the mix I like that

48:30Seth Hughes:both things can be true yeah exactly and he was really up for that

48:34Mike Lay:and I think particularly violin I think brings that in and although he wouldn't say he's a violin player him playing the violin in the last song was so beautiful I thought yeah

48:45Seth Hughes:the score is beautiful and it was for Hiroth as well I can't quite place kind of in right now but it's and then on the big screen like this picked up you know not only did it pick up best cinematography at London's Surfing Festival but like the score and that big screen it's amazing there's a lot to be said for like if you can catch these things on a bigger screen definitely in a world of mobile digestion like if you can find yourself at even like a finished desk store screening which have been and gone but this last play on the big screen in Newquay Cinema right in the lighthouse and it's just played in the Tidemouth surf film festival I did yeah yeah yes it did the North Sea surf film shout out Sally Tom and Lewis yeah yeah I was glad to miss that one but yeah watching it on like when you when you work with people who are like really into

49:36Mike Lay:music and audio and you know we're setting up the mics here and like you know videos my visuals my thing like I kind of understand audio but some people were just so into audio and that's just their whole world and then when it comes to them like exporting that final project for that final file for you i can't even tell how good that's going to be until i watch it at a cinema because they've maybe edited it on a studio with a hundred grand speakers and then it takes going to a cinema with that level of audio quality to really appreciate what they've made um i can never wrap my head around the whole thing where like a director will say we want you to watch this on

50:16Seth Hughes:climax it's been shot for but then are we all watching like lesser versions of films and regular cinema probably are if it was all is everything just condensed probably probably is yeah i think it's like the immersiveness isn't it like i guess films to a degree are always a uh they're like a

50:37Mike Lay:trying to be like a representation of reality and the i guess the next thing on from that from a film would be like full virtual reality immersion. And when I make films, I want that sense of, I want the film to feel so immersive that someone can't wait to get out of the cinema to return to being in their life rather than the kind of film that makes someone go like, I really want to escape the world. You know, well, tomorrow when I wake up in the morning, there'll be caterpillars in the garden. So I'll go and sit with them instead of being on my phone, you know? I want to kind of inspire that.

51:17Mike Lay:As opposed to sometimes I watch films and be like, no, I want to be back in there. Leave me there, you know?

51:23Seth Hughes:What was the last, slightly off script, but what was the last great film, surf, or otherwise you've seen?

51:29Mike Lay:Oh, I feel like I did watch something really good recently. You can come back to that if you... I'm going to watch Rose of Nevada this evening. Mark Jenkins' new...

51:40Seth Hughes:Ah, this is the new piece down in Cornwall. Yeah. I'll tell you later whether it was that. Who's the guy? Dua Lipa's Callum Turner?

51:51Mike Lay:I don't know.

51:52Seth Hughes:Didn't think I'd say Dua Lipa on the show. Is he? Callum Turner's acts in it with a handsome chap. Yeah, he's got... I'm unfamiliar with their names. It's from the director of debate, right? Indeed. Which was brilliant. Yeah. And this is about... Fishermen. on a haunted fishing boat.

52:11Mike Lay:Yes.

52:13Seth Hughes:Looks good. In Mullion. In Mullion? I don't know if he's in Mullion, but he looked like Mullion. Yeah, I saw that. That was great. Yeah. He was down here, wasn't he? They were both down here last summer. I imagine they were filming. I've got a nice quote from you here, Seth. I'm going to get back on script with the quote. It's, I love to film surfing. I love to have my little coffee in my camp chair and wait for my mates to get good ones so they can see their waves once they get out. And I was going to ask you, you obviously surf, you go out and you pursue that in your own time. But yeah, what's it like?

52:49Seth Hughes:I can't, maybe I'm too selfish to even comprehend doing it and filming for somebody else. But yeah, what is... Explain the quote I've just read to you back to me. Yeah.

53:04Seth Hughes:Do you still get a real sense of like, But do you still really get something from...

53:11Mike Lay:Yeah, I really do. I think for some reason I don't find surfing very peaceful. I don't really... I surf very, very infrequently. I don't know if that's just because I live in Nuki and I feel it's quite a busy place to surf maybe.

53:26Seth Hughes:Nuki's very eat, sleep, drink, repeat, surf.

53:30Mike Lay:And when we went to the Hebrides and I had nothing else to do but surf and film surfing, I surfed then. but I don't generally when I go surfing I actually spend pretty much the whole time like really in my own head and kind of just like I find it not very I don't find it a relaxing thing but when I film surfing for some reason I do you know like put a podcast on and sit there and it just feels really peaceful for me I don't really know why that is and then I enjoy the process of sharing the footage after

54:02Seth Hughes:I've just imagined you as a painter but you're doing it with the camera

54:05Mike Lay:right yeah it's out there yeah it could be it could be like that taking it all in i like the like when when if i if i just sat here right now and i had nothing to do i would my brain would start thinking about things that i ought to be doing when i film surfing and although someone's obviously not going to be surfing the whole time that i'm filming them there's like moments when i I filmed them. I'm always in this state of relaxing, but having to be focused. So it's a combination of those two things. So I have to be ready, but in a being state rather than a doing state. So it feels kind of ticks these two kind of weird boxes for me, which just feels really, really nice.

54:46Mike Lay:So I've got to be poised, ready for a thing, but I'm also not like mindlessly consuming digital content or like just going through my to-do list. And for some reason I find that really relaxing.

54:59Seth Hughes:how relaxing was it filming goofy footed going backwards follow cam in reverse that i guess maybe that was i'll just i'll just set this up for any listener at home so they can envision it when mike and seth were asked a similar question at some of the festivals last year you asked you you rather than explain you kind of re-enacted out the um in fact you can probably do it here now we're on camera um this is good you went i didn't say you have to do this but how yeah you did follow cam in reverse in that mike was following you yeah surfing filming

55:34Mike Lay:backwards yeah yeah yeah so just this is like a style of filming that i've really wanted to try with surfing for a while and i saw some of um james parry's photos of doing it he did some pretty sick follow cam stuff didn't he and and i think some of his stuff was what inspired me to do it maybe a photo I saw I think it was hanging somewhere like the Mexilogfest or something like that you got a really good one of Lola that's the one that's the one I saw and I think that's actually that's looking back towards her isn't it that's not from behind

56:06Seth Hughes:no it's

56:06Mike Lay:so that one frame kind of lives in my head that James Parry shot where he's in front of Lola shooting backwards rather than behind her shooting forwards and that's just I just thought it was the coolest image because it's so hard to do basically it was disorienting to watch yeah yeah and so we tried we tried a few times where so what i just as i put my camera in my water housing i go on a foamy and then paddle out and leave the camera on the nose of the board and me and mike kind of time it to paddle together but the camera's not like strapped on so you just have to like paddle in a way that it doesn't bounce off and then you've got to pick it up before it like before it falls off um and then once you're to your feet it's pretty straightforward and then you're just like then it's basically just doing like a party wave you know where's my mic's in front and i'm behind and it's kind of like i'm trying to like really really inspired by like the skate and snowboard follow stuff um that's a i'm really excited about what they're doing right yeah and and then there was a particular shot as well in um one of my favorite snowboard films called glue by chris ludy and um hitchhola where he's like i don't know who's actually filming it but they're like doing a follow cam shot um but from in front and it's on a gimbal but they're filming backwards on a on a snowboard so i don't even know how they're doing it um they must be like riding and just kind of doing that and it was just the coolest thing and i just like really want to see if i can do that with surfing so then we tried to do it the other way around and we kind of got it to click but because i'm we're both goofy i then have to switch my body around so i have to go i have to go switch but even a bit more than switch to kind of so i'm facing back so i'm kind of just doing a squat looking back at mike and um and it kind of

57:56Seth Hughes:worked so in that scenario your surfing is way more impressive than what you've actually captured

58:01Mike Lay:of mike probably is right yeah absolutely well i have to think this there's there's you mentioned

58:08Seth Hughes:snowboarding there but there's the skier isn't there candice the vex and like his stuff goes viral every time he does something and he just boosts all the natural hits on features on a mountain but it's normally someone following him doing it yeah which you know goes unrecognized here's the recognition here's the recognition um so what's next you mentioned there about um working with each other and so much of the success of these things is about surfer subject filmmaker director and the relationship you guys have and this has been a really fruitful pairing is there anything you're conjuring up i was actually no one of the things probably to ask is your trip around the beautiful united kingdom via bike with a surfboard in stages in stages documented on youtube you're already a hit on youtube yeah how's where are you and what's the what's the kind of impetus behind it all

59:10Mike Lay:I am where am I I'm in I'm currently in Tenby despite everything which is the end of I've done three stages so I did my house in Sand Creed to Croyd last September then I did Croyd to Bristol in December last year and then about a month ago I did Bristol to Tenby along South Wales, Cardiff and Swansea and the Gower I did it why did I do it? I spoke to Seth about it before I did it and he said and I asked for advice about the filming mainly and making the videos of it and he said make sure that you're very clear about your intentions for it I don't really know why I did it I thought it would be a fun thing to do I had an idea and I thought it sounded like a good idea and it did and then it took me a year of planning to get to the the first stage of actually setting off on the bike but I'm not I am I tried deeply hard to distill my reasoning behind the project into one thing but there are lots of things another reason was to I've been a professional surfer for a long time and I was just surfing at home and i need to i wanted to do something that could be of value to companies like finisterre and reef who've supported me for a long time um and do something that aligned with how i feel about surfing and what i think it means to me and i wanted to do something really hard as well because longboarding is not very hard um what you do on a longboard is is hard yeah it could be

1:00:53Seth Hughes:but then once you learn how to do that fine it's not right i get that well three stages in how hard It's been so hard.

1:01:01Mike Lay:I felt like a very silly boy when I'd left my house and tried to drag it all up. I got about 70 kilos of weight on my trailer.

1:01:10Seth Hughes:Okay.

1:01:11Mike Lay:Including, yeah, including everything, including the weight of the bike as well. Titanium soon adds up. Yeah, there's a lot of steel, not very much titanium. And yeah, I just cycled out of my drive and it was brutally hard. And the first week was brutally hard in Cornwall. I met up with some friends, Seth included, and they were like little islands of comfort amongst this sea of hardship that I'd signed up for myself.

1:01:40Seth Hughes:Was it a pretty easy no for you, I'm not going to film this entire project?

1:01:45Mike Lay:Yeah, it was actually, yeah.

1:01:46Seth Hughes:But here's my GoPro.

1:01:48Mike Lay:Well, I also thought it was the kind of project that would be better self-filmed.

1:01:52Seth Hughes:Yeah, I didn't actually film it, did I? No, I didn't.

1:01:55Mike Lay:But you've asked if I want to come and film bits, and I'll be filming like maybe some legs of it but I think like the series element of it really works for like because so much of it is about like the personal journey I guess oh yeah

1:02:06Seth Hughes:and you've nailed that with whatever algorithmic cheats and you know codes and ways of filming that stuff like it's brilliant and you did tremendously well on those first few kind of run outs thank you so it's been it's been really

1:02:21Mike Lay:it's been interesting learning something new as well the filming and editing part of it is something that's completely new to me I've been really lucky to work with people like Seth for most of my surfing career who've taken all that creative and technical side and made beautiful work from it. So to be, but I am, I'm a writer and I am someone that has a creative mind, I think, and has a sense of narrative. And it was really difficult having to go through a medium that I was unfamiliar with in order to tell the story that I wanted to tell. like have it in my mind then I've just got this software that I don't know how to use even though I'm using iMovie which is like the most basic form of it I'm still just like oh my god this is frustrating because I'm just used to writing it down normally and having such a a minor hurdle between my ideas and the page so that's been um really interesting learning that and and enjoyable um difficult with two very young children stealing all of my time that's unfair on them providing me with a great amount of fulfillment and i love them dearly but difficult to sit down for longer than i thought you were going to say stealing your laptop stealing my laptop stealing all my editing things stealing my mouse yeah my camera they steal my camera quite often but this

1:03:39Seth Hughes:is going to take a while isn't it so every chance ennis could be on the front of the bike yeah come the uh southeast i hope so well he can cycle himself now so he's ready he'd be well up for it i'd love that if he brought me home that'd be cool but yeah that's where i am and i hope i hope

1:03:55Mike Lay:seth i mean it's hard because the way that i'm doing it like i don't necessarily have a lot of lead up to where i might go on one of these trips maybe the next one i might have a bit in wales and it'd be cool to share it with i might even rather just join it and not even film yeah come and ride that'd be really fun yeah yeah tandem or your own bike i just got a really cool e-bike so hopefully it's gonna do the job yeah powder blue powder blue very nice but i don't know whether charging is yeah difficult might be right yeah it would slow you down enough to my speed if you ran out of battery yeah true because i go very slowly i had people ride with me on the last one and they were just the whole time just like riding off into the distance then stopping

1:04:37Seth Hughes:riding on well it's great it's great content and it's um yeah when do you next when do you next set off? Probably not till October now.

1:04:48Mike Lay:Lifeguarding season has started and I will be working full time on the beach throughout the summer. So lots of the trips are in the winter. So yeah, October 10B2, Aberystwyth, all going well. Okay. Winter months.

1:05:03Seth Hughes:This is, yeah. It's quite the undertaking. Credit to you. Thanks. And Seth, you said you meant you're about you, you've got a new directorial project on the go.

1:05:11Mike Lay:Yeah, I've just gone into full time employment as of a week ago. They're looking back. And it's a nice change. Yeah. Yeah. It's working on a really cool series about stuff I'm into. Like the first episode of this thing we just shot was about eating deer and deer butchery and stuff. So it's all just really right up my street.

1:05:32Seth Hughes:Okay.

1:05:33Mike Lay:And it's allowing me to like, yeah, create a bit more boundaries around what is like digital online stuff and what is life which is nice been freelance the last 10 years and it's

1:05:46Seth Hughes:it's good and that's also quite exhausting yes that i can attest to yeah i always i always wondered whether spring watch or country file or some grittier version of it we're going to hit

1:05:58Mike Lay:you up for presenter duties yeah maybe still who knows i'm open to that idea because of course what

1:06:04Seth Hughes:you do on your social media is you know it's it's fantastic relatable educational inspiring content right and you do it in a really human way and you use that channel in you know arguably well in a really responsible manner you know and it's fun right and it's um i hope to see something on there in the next couple weeks with uh our little adder friend yes absolutely i'm sure he'll be there so hey listen um thanks for sharing in gwinnick and what it means to you both and the journey that you've been on over the last three projects and for joining us all the screenings and from selfridges department stores to new keys to you know in stores as well in fact i just saw a lovely video of you in store at the falmouth um well listen thanks guys thanks for swinging by and um look forward to putting us out for general consumption yeah thanks larry hope everyone enjoys Well, I hope you enjoyed that one.

1:07:03Seth Hughes:That was Mike Lay and Seth Hughes reflecting on Gwynnick, a film that gently invites us to slow down, to look closer, and to find meaning in the everyday. What lingers is the idea that the ocean doesn't have to be extraordinary to be transformative, that even in average waves, in familiar places, there's depth and beauty and a sense of belonging waiting to be rediscovered. Gwynic is ultimately a return to home, to family and to a more rooted way of living. It's a reminder that as life evolves, so too can our relationship with the wild, not losing intensity, but gaining richness in different forms.

1:07:42Seth Hughes:So depending on which way round you've done this, you'll either need to now go watch the film or you'll already have had the film fresh on your retinas. I hope that the film in some way does transport you somewhere or connect with you somehow. Thanks for listening to the Hell or High Water podcast. if this conversation resonated be sure to share it and take a moment next time you're by the sea to appreciate whatever it offers exactly as it is a big thanks to Mike and Seth for rolling with us give them both a follow on their respective YouTube and Instagram accounts you shan't be disappointed thanks to Gareth and the team over at Chatterbox Audio for stitching the show together sound design by CJ Mirror and if you want to watch the boys in the video version of the show head on over to the Finistay YouTube page now for a double dose.

1:08:28Seth Hughes:Until next time, happy hunting.