This year, local “storyographer” Adam Boozer and his Jewell & Ginnie business partner Tim Tewell decided that they wanted to start heavily investing their efforts into creating some of their own original content. While they operate a successful commercial production company, creating films for companies like Verizon Wireless, the Charleston Area CVB, and more, they wanted to spend some more time on personal projects.
After producing an eight-minute video for Naish Kiteboarding last year, focusing on local kiteboarder Davey Blair, they got the inspiration to create their first full-length documentary exploring the relatively new sport. “We saw all these amazing elements to tell a great story,” Boozer says of kiteboarding. “They’re really strong characters, they’re international, and they have these interesting issues of identity … this identity and respect component to the sport.” Plus it’s really fun to shoot.
So this June, Boozer and Tewell will travel to Hatteras, N.C. for the Triple-S Invitational, an invite-only kiteboarding competition where Blair placed fifth overall in 2011, to create With a Kite. “We’ll be covering that event, but more importantly, we’ll be leveraging that event as the opportunity to get in-depth interviews with all of these guys and document where the sport has been and where it’s going,” Boozer says.
The invited kiteboarders participating in the competition will be a core component to the film, but an overall plot has been left open to some extent. “If you’ve ever watched any kind of action sports film, whether surf movies or wakeboarding movies or skate movies or anything else, most of them are light on story and content and much more visual piece,” Boozer says. “What we’re trying to do with this piece is to actually do an actual documentary that tells the story of where the sport’s been and the struggles, the conflicts and issues that the sport currently has, and tell that story and have the riders themselves tell that story to us, and intercut those stories with these amazing visuals of these guys riding.”
From North Carolina, they’ll be moving on to Hood River in Oregon and go from there, depending on funding. A premiere date is not currently set, though it will take place in Charleston, and Boozer says they’ve already received a digital distribution offer based on a pre-production trailer.
While the filmmakers currently have financial support from different sponsors and private investment, they also have a Kickstarter fundraising. “The whole thing with Kickstarter is to kind of publicize it a little bit and get it off the ground, but also the idea was to use it as a device to get to the core kiteboarding community around the world invested in the film,” Boozer explains. Last we checked, the project had over 100 backers, from as far away as England, Estonia, and Qatar. It runs through May 10; visit the Kickstarter page to donate.
Help keep the City Paper free.
No paywalls.
No subscription cost.
Free delivery at 800 locations.
Help support independent journalism by donating today.
