Private Project

Lands End

Swimmers gather, plunge through the surf, and head West from China Beach where San Francisco’s Northern edge meets the Pacific Ocean, just outside the Golden Gate.

Taking a break from busy lives, they swim along the base of Lands End’s sheer rock cliffs, navigating wave-battered rocks covered with kelp, mussels, and harbor seals basking in the chilly gray fog.

Swimmers often experience the Pacific Ocean's violent mood swings. Visitors sometimes swim through calm waters, but often fight strong currents, big surf, and the threat of hypothermia.

They prepare physically and psychologically for powerful ocean forces, yet these explorers find something healing in the untamed waters!

  • Steve Peletz
    Director
    Shark Finale
  • Steve Peletz
    Writer
  • Steve Peletz
    Producer
  • Ginger Layden Braun
    Key Cast
  • Heejay Chung
    Key Cast
  • Terry Whalen
    Key Cast
  • Project Type:
    Student
  • Runtime:
    9 minutes 2 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    June 30, 2025
  • Production Budget:
    350 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Student Project:
    Yes - City College of San Francisco
Director Biography - Steve Peletz

Steve Peletz swims outside San Francisco's Golden Gate and explores our oceans as a research diver and underwater photographer.
Studying film production at City College of San Francisco, he is working on a documentary about shark research and conservation efforts in the Pacific.

Steve strives to educate and inspire audiences chronicling ocean beauty, complexity, but also tragedies at sea at DeepBlueMonthly.com where he shares the latest news on scientific diving, marine research, and critical conservation efforts.

Steve sits on the screening committee for San Francisco’s acclaimed International Ocean Film Festival. There he brings experience garnered from over 3,000 logged dives in the Pacific and around the world, filming marine life, primarily sharks, whales, dolphins, rays, sea lions, and many species of fish and invertebrates.

Steve helps scientists push governments in the Americas to protect larger portions of the ocean from overfishing as a board member of MigraMar, an NGO made up of marine biologists dedicated to tagging and tracking migratory species of sharks, whales, turtles and fish in the Eastern Pacific.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

Lands End documents the magnetic forces that attract swimmers to jump into 51-degree water and head West.

Swimmers narrate footage of themselves swimming in calm zen-like waters, later in active midday waters, and finally in violent churning seas that sometimes pound San Francisco's rocky Northern coastline.

The footage features the active and bumpy energy in the water and a growing community of swimmers that huddle on the beach deck to get warm, eat, and drink after navigating cold water, rocks, surf, and strong currents.

“I have attempted to craft a true life, sometimes gritty, view of the experience, (more “mise en scene” than glamorized) to convey the zen-like mornings and those moments when the Pacific turns "ugly.”