An Underwater Filmmaking Guide

How to Shoot Underwater Video

Jacques Cousteau produced some of the world's greatest underwater videos. These videos inspired those of us at Untamed Science to follow in his wake and sparked the imagination of thousands of deep sea explorers and avid wildlife filmmakers. As a result of his work, many people saw for the first time new species of flora and fauna, famous historical shipwrecks, and unexplored underwater caves. His passion brought to life thing's previously unknown to the general population. Thus, Cousteau's films gave underwater filmmaking a greater prestige and responsibility. Underwater videographers are now relied on to share this unchartered environment with the rest of the world.

Unfortunately, not all of us can become Jacques Cousteau overnight, but with a little preparation and hard work, you can become an exceptional underwater filmmaker. The following chapter introduces some of the key elements you must consider before beginning your underwater adventures. From learning how to SCUBA to adjusting for light and color, this guide will walk, or better yet, wad you through the basics of underwater filmmaking. 

Preparation:

Learn to Dive

Becoming a certified SCUBA diver is perhaps the most obvious requirement for underwater filmmaking. Filmmakers often bypass the bulky SCUBA equipment when taking video of large animals such as whales, but you'll need to learn the basics of SCUBA diving to take your skills to the next level. Understanding how to dive properly will allow you to do things a novice camera person cannot, this such as get close enough to coral without damaging it or wild marine life without endangering yourself.  It will also help you learn to camera steady while the animals perform their behaviors for the camera.

In addition to SCUBA training, we also recommend that you spend time learning to free-dive. The disadvantage of traditional SCUBA is that you often scare large fish and marine mammals with bubbles. Free-diving allows you to swim freely with these creatures. However, much like learning the art of SCUBA diving, learning the skills associated with free diving take time and patience to master.  Just remember, always practice your free-diving with a buddy around.

Know the Underwater Environment

When shooting video underwater, you want to make sure you don’t break or damage anything. This may sound obvious, but it can be a bit difficult maintaining your focus on your subject while making sure you are not sinking, floating up to the surface, or crashing into rare coral and dangerous rocks.

If you are diving in blue-water without a fixed reference, it's really hard to know if you are heading up or down. This can induce vertigo and lead to a potentially dangerous situation. Be sure to practice good buoyancy skills, so that you can stay at a constant depth, before you start playing with the camera. You will be glad you did when you get that camera in your hands!

To get close to wildlife underwater you want to stay relaxed. Move slowly and controlled; don’t chase fish or other marine life. You are likely to scare wildlife off if you swim after them. Plus, your footage will look better on the final video if you pace yourself.

Avoid kicking up silt and dust from the bottom. It will get in front of the camera and make the water look murky. There is nothing worse than thinking you have a great shot only to discover later that the cloud of dirt you (or your buddy) just kicked up ruined the clarity of the image.

Colors and Light

Colors are different underwater than they are on dry land. The intensity of certain colors like red and yellow diminish quickly the deeper you dive. Take a look at this shot at 100 feet.

The red colored tank topper looks almost black and the diver's skin looks blue! With increased depth, colors "absorb" at different rates into the water. Water absorbs red first causing the video you just shot to appear more blue or greenish than you hoped. In clear tropical waters, blue remains the longest, and when you are diving in temperate waters, the amount of plankton and particles in the water create a strong green hue.

There are two easy ways to compensate for these color issues when underwater. The first one is to use a color filter on your camera. This is usually a red filter. It will bring back some of the red in the image you are shooting, making it appear richer. The second option is to use underwater lights. If you are shooting in shallow water, or in clear tropical waters, you won't need any lights at all. Always make use of the natural sunlight. The deeper you go, the darker it will be. When you know you will be diving to depths where the sunlight is limited, you will need to bring a few extra lights.

Here is a short video we produced about the topic of light UW. Be patient, the good diving takes place after the first few minutes.

Equipment

The UW Camera Housing

The underwater housing is arguably the most important item for underwater filmmaking, other than the SCUBA gear and the actual camera. This single piece of equipment is the most expensive item (in addition to the camera), that you'll have to buy. It is also the best investment you will make because it protects the camera from the hazardous elements of an underwater environment.

Today, there are hundreds of cameras on the market but relatively few underwater housings.  If you don't already have a camera, you should first look for a quality housing, and then let that lead you to a camera. Housing manufacturers don't make housings for sub-standard cameras; their product specifications essentially help you make a smart camera choice.

In general, camera housings are mechanical, digital or sometimes with a combination of the two. For instance, Amphibico housings are made to work electronically. They tap into the LANx port on the camera. Many camera's, such as those made by Panasonic, don't have this port and thus can't be used in an Amphibico housing. Instead, cameras without a LANx port require a mechancial housing. Knowing the advantages and disadvantages of each setup will help you chose a camera that suits your needs and filmmaking style.

Mechanical Housings

Here at Untamed Science we have two different mechanical housings. Mechanical housings generally have buttons and pins that go through the hard casing and physically push buttons and turn switches on your camera. The benefit of a mechanical housing is that parts can be replaced if something breaks in the field. The buttons and switches have to be kept in good condition so they don’t jam or get stuck, but you don't need to worry about electronics getting wet and ruining the electronic board. Gates and Ikelite are two manufacturers who make mechanical housings. We own housings from both companies. There is a huge difference in the final price though.  Oddly enough, we tend to like the footage the cheaper setup gives us, just as much as the bigger, more expensive setup.

Digital Housings

Digital housings protect your camera in a similar fashion as mechanical housings; however, generally plug into a port on the camera and remotely control all the camera functions from digital controls on the housing. They are often constructed so that all the buttons are in an ideal place for the diver to control in the underwater environment. For example, many of the buttons are located where your thumbs would naturally grab the camera. This is a real plus. Be advised though. An occasional failed circuit board can leave you stranded if you are in a remote location. 

Amphibico housings work well with Sony cameras adn are a great example of a quality digital housing.

Watertight bags are a less expensive option, but they tend to restrict your range of depth when shooting in the water. In our experience, some tend to leak slightly when you dive below 15 feet or so. 

Lights

When filming underwater, you can't just bring your dive light and expect to get good results. There are specialized underwater video lights specifically designed to give a wide, even beam of light. Fortunately, today you can choose from three different types of lights.

HID Lights

More and more underwater videographers are using HID lights with a much greater effect than conventional halogen light. Traditionally, they have a much bluer light than halogens although their battery time is a limited. HID’s require large battery packs that mount to your light rig.

LEDs

More energy efficient LED’s are also gaining popularity with deep water filmmakers. They have greater batter life and the decent colors they produce are making them a reasonable alternative to HID lights.

Halogen

Small halogen lights are what most divers carry with them. These lights can not be used for video work though, as they produce a concentrated and focused beam. If you want your video to look like daytime, you would have to get stronger halogen lights made specifically for use with video equipement.

You also want to consider how you are going to hold both the camera and the light or lights. Most divers use a mounting mechanism that attaches to the camera housing. With professional lights, the lights and mounting is usually bought separately. If you are customizing your own lighting system, just remember that you will want to adjust the lights underwater without much effort. This is more difficult than it seems. Mix in a some the excitement of an animal in front of you with all the troubles that come with the underwater environment and you'll realize the importance of an easy to adjust light set-up.

Rebreathers

If you don't want to make bubbles, but you need to stay down for extended periods, professional underwater filmmakers often use closed circuit re-breathers. Re-breathers are self-contained dive units that recycle the air we breathe so as not to release any bubbles. A re-breather adds oxygen to the system and filters out carbon dioxide. These systems generally allow a diver to stay underwater for a long time. It is important to know that whatever technique you decide to use will require getting appropriate training from professionals.

The Intricacies of Filming Underwater

White Balancing

To compensate for the change in the color of light at depth, you will need to adjust the white balance as you descend. Remember, white balance is basically the camera's way of re-calibrating what "white" is and all you have to do is hold down the camera's white balence button when shooting something that you know is white. You can improve the quality of your shots if you constantly white balancing as you descend to different depths. All you have to do is remember to bring a white slate. Experienced underwater cameramen also use white fins in order to achieve a white balancing. They can quickly white balance on their fins and never have to worry about forgetting the slate.

Focusing underwater

Most of the time, you'll want to turn off the autofocus feature on your camera. The camera's auto focus features work by finding "edges" to focus on. If the camera pans up towards the endless "fuzzy" blue of the ocean, the camera will start searching for a focus. At Untamed Science we avoid this by focusing on an object that is around 6 feet in front of us. If you're always shooting with a wide angle, (you're not zoomed in) while shooting, this puts almost everything in sharp focus. From here you can fine-tune the manual focus settings.

Think About the Angles

To make your underwater video feel more alive you'll need to consider the perspective of your shots. Novice underwater filmmakers tend to shoot the entire time from a diver's perspective. In other words, they shoot the whole video facing down. We encourage filmmakers to get as low as possible and even to shoot slightly up towards the surface. This creates some very cool effects from the sunlight coming down and illustrates the perspective of an underwater creature. This angle gives the viewer the feel that they are part of the underwater environment.

Stable Shots

If you have a cleared area where you can set the camera down without damaging anything, you could stabilize the camera for a steady shot. Do this by diving with soft dive weights on a weight belt. Then set the weights on the camera at depth. Traditional tripods are difficult to use underwater, especially with a large heavy underwater housing. 

Remember, experiment and have fun there is no right or wrong way. Now that you understand some of the basics of underwater filmmaking, remember to have fun and experiment with your own creative style. Jacques Cousteau did not become the world's preeminent underwater explorer by doing everything according to a book. Explore your chosen deep sea world passion, and share with us all you find and create in your very own underwater film.

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