Longboard
Also known as: log, longboard surfing
A surfboard of nine feet or more, ridden with a style built on trim and nose riding rather than on sharp direction changes.
Updated
What it means
A longboard is a surfboard rather than a skateboard, which the word alone never makes clear. Nine feet or more, ridden for glide and position on the wave rather than for vertical turns.
The style decides how it films. Trim, nose riding and long drawn-out turns are slow and graceful, which means a clip needs to be held rather than cut quickly.
That is the opposite of how a Shortboard is covered. One rewards fast cutting on sharp turns and the other rewards holding a single long ride from beginning to end.
How it works in practice
A long lens from the beach is the standard approach. The ride happens a long way out, and compression from distance is what makes the wave face and the board position readable.
The nose is the shot. A rider standing on the front of the board is the signature of the whole discipline, and an angle that shows the board rather than just the person is what captures it.
Holding the clip is the editorial consequence. A long ride cut into three pieces loses what made it good, which is why a Shot length here runs longer than in most action footage.
What to watch out for
Fast cutting destroys it. A longboard ride cut to a beat drop reads as frantic, and the style it was ridden in disappears entirely, which is a Pacing mistake rather than a footage one.
Distance flattens everything. A wide lens from the beach turns a head-high wave into a ripple, so a longer focal length is doing most of the work in this discipline.
Water on the glass ends a session. Water droplets on the lens from spray or rain are the usual reason beach footage is unusable, and nothing afterwards removes a drop in front of the subject.
How RawClip handles it
Long rides score on continuous motion, and the selection keeps them as single shots rather than breaking them up. Where a session produced several rides, the one with the cleanest line and the best light survives into the sequence.