Utmost Spirit

About Steve Core

A little history about Steve Core and ‘Ocean Rhythms’…

Above: Steve surfing on the Sunshine Coast, Qld. Photo by Californian Paul Gross.

Born in 1950, just 5 years after WWII ended, in terms of surfing, Steve has always been a Cronulla boy. His family lived in Kogarah and he graduated from Kogarah High School in the early sixties. He was part of the original surf boom of the mid-sixties when The Beach Boys were topping the music charts world-wide. Apart from surfing the beaches of Cronulla, growing up, Steve’s dad owned and operated a Cinema right on the beach at Bondi Beach. It was called the Bondi Beach Kings. This enabled to Steve to learn a lot about the cinema and movie business, the projection of film and a bit of theatre showmanship from his Dad. The other key factor was that Steve could surf directly across the street from the cinema whilst working for his dad during the school holiday periods.

Photo Left: My Dad’s cinema, the Bondi Beach Kings, was located right on Campbell Parade in Bondi Beach. My Dad rented the corner shop to top 60’s surfer Robert Conneely – who had the Hayden [Kenny] Surfshop in there. I couldn’t believe my Dad actually knew a top Australian surfer and called him by his first name!  

Steve says, “my first surf shop job was in 1963 at the iconic Norm Casey Surfboards on the Princes Highway at Rockdale, working after school.” My earliest tasks in the Surf Shop were taking apart roller skates and screwing their trucks onto wooden pre-painted skateboards decks. That was in the days when the Midget Farrelly Skateboard ruled supreme and it was long before the innovation of the urethane wheels with sealed bearings.

Photo Right: This photo from the early 60’s shows two surf industry icons – the Gordon & Smith founders; on the left Larry Gordon and on the right, Floyd Smith. Steve worked with Floyd in the mid-60’s when Floyd came from San Diego, California to Australia to set up G&S Australia in Taren Point, near Cronulla.

After leaving school and initially taking a job as a photographer’s assistant in the city, where he began to learn the basics of photography, Steve followed his passion for surfing and moved into the surfboard industry and took a job at Peter Clarke Surfboards in Taren Point. At Peter Clarke’s I worked with Ross Longbottom, Keith Paull and Alan Blythe. Later Steve worked with Gordon & Smith Surfboards with its Californian founder Floyd Smith and Dave Wilson [current owner of the G&S franchise]. 

In 1970 Steve broadened his skills while working with 1964 World Surfing Champion Midget Farrelly at Brookvale. Working in surfboard production at Midget’s factory in Brookvale, I was working side by side with not only Midget himself, but exposed to working with and alongside such surfing legends as Bob Cooper, Randy Rarick, Peter Crawford, Bruce Channon and Chris Crozier.

During Steve’s early days in the surf industry is when he started to pursue his interest in surf related photography. “I actually shot a lot of the ad photos for those surf company’s that I worked for – those photos were then used in the surfing publications.” Steve diversified his photographic skills and was both a still surfing photographer and in the days before video, he was also a cinematographer – shooting 16mm motion picture film. Apart from his movie work, many of Steve’s still photos were published in the leading surfing magazines of the day.

Photo Left: Cover by Core: This was my first ever published ‘cover shot’ for an Australian glossy surf magazine. Surfing World – SEPT 1973 edition. The caption reads: Colin Eagle surfing at Sandshoes Reef, Cronulla – Photo by Steve Core. *Note the cover price in 1973 was: $1.00

For the record, which has never been accurately recorded or published anywhere, Steve’s first 16mm film was titled ‘In Natural Flow’ which premiered at the Cronulla Community Hall in Surf Road, Cronulla on DEC 17th 1971. Then Steve Core filmed, edited and produced ‘Ocean Rhythms’ which was mostly shot in 1975. ‘Ocean Rhythms’  was to be Steve’s second and his final full length surfing film. ‘Ocean Rhythms’ was released in October 1975.

For those techno buffs; ‘Ocean Rhythms’ was shot on 100 foot rolls of 16mm film using a 7252, a low-contrast, Kodak Ektachrome original film stock. Steve used a hand cranked, spring-wound  [non-electric] Bolex camera to capture the action. The camera was mounted on an Australian made Miller ‘F’ fluid head tripod. Telephoto lenses were from US-based Century Precision Cine Optics in North Hollywood, California.  Steve used fixed focal length lenses, including; a Century 230mm, a Century 385mm and occasionally a Century 650mm lens. 

A Gordon & Smith Surfboards ad from 1975 featuring frame blow-ups from Ocean Rhythms

One of those lenses had real historic surf bloodlines; the Century 230mm lens. Steve purchased it from legendary Australian photographer and publisher of Australia’s Surfabout Magazine; Jack Eden. In an interesting twist, Jack had purchased the lens from Bruce Brown – whilst Bruce was visiting Australia in 1965 while filming the original Australian sequence for his award winning ‘Endless Summer’ movie.

Apart from making his own two feature length movies during the 70’s and 80’s, Steve contributed the Australian surfing sequences to several popular US Surfing Film productions including such all- time classics as ‘A Sea For Yourself’, ‘We Got Surf’ and ‘Super Session’ all three produced by Californian film-maker Hal Jepsen and ‘Fluid Drive’ which was a Scott Dittrich film.

 

During the 1970’s Steve’s stories and crisp surfing images regularly filled the pages of Australia’s leading surf publications like Breakaway, Tracks and Surfing World magazines and quite often Steve’s photos graced their covers.

Steve also had many articles and photos published in International surfing publications including countries like Japan, New Zealand, South Africa, in Europe and also in the leading United States glossy surfing magazines; including Surfer & Surfing.  

During it’s original release in late 1975 and through 1976, ‘Ocean Rhythms’ screened not only in Australia but stoked surf audiences in New Zealand, South Africa, Japan, Europe and across the United States. 

Subsequently ‘Ocean Rhythms’ has not been seen or screened in over 30 years. The footage became too old to be contemporary and the film was stored in sealed cans and placed in the vault of long lost and ageing surf movies. While ‘Ocean Rhythms’  gathered dust, times and technology changed. Video killed the radio star. Surf movies began their migration from projected 16mm film, at first, over to the VHS video format and nights at the local hall, surf club or flea house to see a surf movie projected onto the large screen by a 16mm xenon-arc projector became a thing of the past. The social gathering of surfers for a night out to see a surf movie gave way to watching a surf movie at home in the lounge room on the little square box.     

Steve’s life-long friend, Californian resident and former 1976 World Surfing Champion, Peter Townend [at the right] has always been enthusiastic about the re-release of ‘Ocean Rhythms’. PT was a key driver to get the film across the digital divide so that it could become available to the general public in an easy-to-view DVD format. With the invaluable help of surf movie archivist Warren Delbridge of Video-8 in Sydney, ‘Ocean Rhythms’ was successfully re-mastered and tweaked into a digital format to allow reproduction onto DVD. 

Please don’t forget that ‘Ocean Rhythms’ was shot on 16mm film 35 years ago – you can’t just flick a switch and make it instant Hi-Def. So putting a rusty, much-loved, but over-the-hill vehicle back into shape takes more than a new battery and a lick of fresh paint. It demands a full-bore refit and that’s exactly what Warren Delbridge at Video-8 has given ‘Ocean Rhythms’. Now Warren has rendered the film’s action sequences beautifully to assign ‘Ocean Rhythms’ a new lease of life on its evergreen franchise. Thank you so much Warren.     

In more recent times Steve has contributed his historic surfing motion picture footage to; Jack McCoy’s Billabong documentaries about fellow ex-Cronulla luminary Mark Occhilupo; ‘Occy, the Occumentary’.  To former World Surfing Champion Shaun Thomson’s 2008 DVD documentary; ‘Bustin’ Down The Door’. To Terry Fitzgerald’s 2008 DVD Hot Buttered surf anthology; ‘Hot Buttered Soul’. To Jolyon Hoff’s 2009 DVD documentary; ‘Searching For Michael Peterson’ and to the ABC-TV’s March 2009 two-part history on Australian surfing called ‘Bombora’. 

Steve welcomes any of your comments, thoughts, ideas or memories regarding his surfing life, his history in the surf industry, his films, photos or magazine work. Please use the e-mail address below - Steve would love to hear from you. 

I sincerely hope ‘Ocean Rhythms’ brings back many memories for you, or perhaps creates lots of new ones and also I hope you enjoy watching it as much as I did making it all those years ago. I can honestly tell you that at the time I shot it… the thought never entered my head that I was recording surfing history in Australia. My aim in those days was to simply capture the best surfers in Australia in action and share it with as many other enthusiastic surfers as I possibly could.

I want to particularly thank all the surfers who appeared or performed in the film for their selfless co-operation and boundless enthusiasm for surfing and their love of the ocean.

And lastly I would like to thank you so much for your interest in ‘Ocean Rhythms’. So when you travel the path less travelled like I did; may the road be clear and may the swell rise to meet you.

Happy Trails to everyone…

Steve Core

Please drop me an e-mail to Steve at: score@utmostspirit.com I would love to hear from you.

* Don’t forget ‘In Natural Flow’ my 1971 film – will be released onto DVD in Aug/Sep 2010.