Dive Into Your Imagination

When scuba diving with our underwater video systems, we need to be prepared for a variety of situations. When filming shipwrecks you need to know how to shoot ambient light, mixed lighting with the sun and your video lights, and silhouettes. Shipwreck diving can be lots of fun if you are prepared for the wide variety of lighting situations you will experience!

Editing and Shooting Tips:

Everytime I film underwater I try and get a few shots that can be used as transitions or filler shots anywhere in a program. So when I entered the water after a few other divers, I waited for them to descend and then filmed their bubbles. I wanted to be able to show the size of the wreck and tried to film divers next to the bow of the ship, yet these did not turn out so well because of the water conditions.

Once I filmed the wide-shot of the bow of the wreck I moved onto medium and close up shots because of the water conditions. When filming static objects that don't move, you need to add motion to the shots with how you swim and use your camera. You don't do this with the zoom, you do this by obtaining neutral buoyancy and then swimming holding your camera steady. When on wrecks, in sand or salty conditions, you must be very careful how you swim with your fins!

Lighting Tips:

Whenever diving in deep water, caves, caverns or around wrecks, you must add light to your images or everything will be black and dark. When shooting extreme wide angle, your lights will not cover the entire image, but you can at least fill the foreground with lights. In addition when you have a lot of particles in the water you want to avoid filming with auto focus because your camera will zip in and out of focus. You really need to shoot in infinity or manual focus. Every camera system is different. Once you learn the capabilities of yours, you will know what to do in every situation. The key is to practice! It will take experience in various conditions with your camera system to know its limitations. You need to make sure you review your footage after filming in every new situation!

Music and Narration:

This is created as a teaching tool, so we layed down only a music background because the point of this story was to demonstrate the lighting of the video and editing. But think, what music would you choose to give this piece a better feel? If you were going to narrate it, what do you hear the narrator saying? Each of us has our own story to tell. Video is visual, yet all the other elements play a role in the finished piece, and this is where you get to use your creativity!

Story About the Dive:

This was a deep wreck bottoming out around 30m/100 feet. There were two areas that you could anchor up to on this and usually you could see across the shipwreck from the bow to the stern. The water was so murky you could barely see 10 feet. So once I left the ship I started swimming in the direction I thought was the safety boat. A few minutes of finning and not seeing the dive vessel I was going to board, I looked at my compass and according to my compass I was heading completely in the wrong direction. I went to swim back to my starting point and could not even see a shadow of the shipwreck!!! The last thing I wanted to do was to do a surface swim with my 85 pound camera! Thank goodness I knew how to navigate underwater with my compass, I check it on every dive and know I can rely on it better than I can rely on where I THINK I should be heading. Green water can be fun!

Lesson:

Wear a compass, know how to read your compass and use your compass before and during every dive!

DAWN DAWN Release your past and live today in the future of endless possibilities. Alor Island, Indonesia

Visions of the Sea Visions of the Sea DVD allows you to experience the most amazing life on our planet while either listening to an award winning sound track or inspirational stories of Annie’s experiences around the world. Visions of the Sea takes you face to face with Wh

The Camera Coach® The Camera Coach®, Your Guide to Creating Underwater Video demonstrates and teaches you the necessary techniques needed to produce great video above and below the surface. You will learn shooting, lighting and editing techniques. This DVD teaches you sh

TrackBack URI for this entry

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed