Tow-in surfing
Also known as: tow surfing, tow-in
Being towed into a wave by a jet ski because it moves too fast to paddle into, which puts the filming on the water and in the air.
Updated
What it means
A tow-in session exists because some waves move faster than anybody can paddle into them. A rope behind a jet ski delivers the rider at speed, which separates the discipline from ordinary Surfing from the first second.
The ski is part of the subject and part of the crew. It tows, it recovers the rider afterwards, and it carries the water filmer, so it appears in a great deal of the footage whether that was intended or not.
The waves involved are large enough to change every distance. A rider is far from shore and small in any wide frame, which pushes the real coverage out onto the water and into the air.
How it works in practice
A camera on the ski gets the tow and the release. A Suction cup mount on the hull or an operator in the back seat covers the part of the ride that no other position sees at all.
A drone handles the wave itself. Aerial footage from behind the peak shows the size and the line together, which is the frame the discipline is known for and the only one that conveys scale honestly.
A worn camera adds the view from inside. A board mount or a Chest mount records what the wave did at close range, and it cuts against the external angles rather than replacing either of them.
What to watch out for
Water on the lens ends a clip instantly. Spray at this scale coats glass constantly and a wipe between rides is the only defence, since Water droplets on the lens across one frame of a five-second ride remove the whole attempt.
The rides are short and very far apart. A session produces a handful of seconds of actual riding against hours of positioning, which is a ratio that nothing about the filming can improve.
Safety takes priority over every frame. A filmer in the water at this size of wave is an additional person to rescue, and the ski crew will abandon a shot to do exactly that.
How RawClip handles it
The riding occupies a small fraction of what gets recorded, which is the situation automatic selection handles best: the rides are found and the positioning between them is left out. Angles from the ski, the air and the board are assembled into one sequence.