Building a HD water housing.

I've just gone through the process of building an underwater housing
for a Sony Z1 camcorder.

This is quite a process as there are various things that are really
important when putting a decent housing together. The most important
is robustness, which is easy. The second is size... I tend to use
breath-hold a lot in the water instead of SCUBA, so the housing can't
be too big. The Amphibico unit that I used for this camera was like
pushing a paint bucket through the water.

The third factor is optics. HD (even HDV) is more demanding than
standard def when it comes to glass, so this was a big one to
consider. My requirements were pretty specific with optics here. I
wanted a lens length that was wide enough to be flattering to the
water clarity and seascapes, but it couldn't be too wide as to be
exclusive. By this I mean that most expensive housings have fisheye
ports that are great for underwater landscape, but when individual
animals are in frame they look a million miles away. 120 degree wide
angles do this, and unless you're two feet away, the shot is basically
useless (unless its a whale...). For me this is pointless as I do a
lot of shark shooting. I need the shark to fill the frame in every
shot.

To solve all these above problems I took the Z1 and took it apart,
removed the handle which is clumsy anyway. I was left with a cylinder
form which fitted well into a robust pipe housing. I put a .7 Century
adaptor on the front which , in 16:9, gave the required lens angle
without making everything look distant. The .7, which amounts to a 90
degree angle, is also fine without a dome port; its not quite wide
enough to barrel distort. I do a lot of "wet lens" surface shooting
too, which a good glass flat port is ideal for.

I also have an optical glass dome on its way to get the true potential out of my wide angle, so I'll be covered for wide and close.

So at the moment I guess I'm really happy with my unit, especially
since I saved myself $5000.00!

Planet Carnivore

Planet Carnivore

I spent almost two months in Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania shooting one of National Geographics flagship productions for 2007 recently. Varicams with 500mm lenses and remote controlled camera units were employed to aquire a different flavour of natural history program.

Sitting waiting for lions to do something is like watching paint dry and we watched and filmed the hyena clans out-competing the lions in the day to day scramble for food.

Challenges in the crater are numerous, tourists are like the plague, roads are terrible and hence dust is thick, coating everything within seconds. The rewards for all the waiting are also numerous... Morning light and scenes on the crater floor at dawn and dusk are like something out of "Lord of the Rings". NGT timelapse specialist ABC4 fuelled his obsession and pulled out some classic intervalometer work.

The gear we had worked like clockwork, Varicams produce incredible images, high speed, rich color and no hiccups. The only thing that let us down was the HVX200, what a nightmare. Don't go there.

I was DP on this one, a great opportunity from producer James Byrne, I'm just hoping I made the best of it.

Crocodiles of Katavi

I've just got back from a trip up to western Tanzania, out near Lake Tanyanika... We went to shoot a show on the big crocodiles there that crawl deep into burrows and caves in the dry river bank.

We came across individuals of around 19/20 feet long, huge animals that you could get within a few feet of if you crawled into the burrow with them.

Dr Brady Barr managed to break the all time bite force record by registering a bite from an unrestrained big croc... Over 5000lbs. He also caught one animal of 19 feet.

Katavi is an incredible part of the world, wild and largely unmanaged, its really out of the way and one feels isolated out there.

The series is in production, stand by for more news and pics on the site...

Amazing Planet:

Amazing Oceans, which forms part of the above series encompasses the geology of coastlines, waves and ocean currents among other things. I did some "fill in" shooting for this, mostly doing seascapes, both above and below the surface, and big timelapses with storms passing and sun hurtling overhead.

I used various different geological features along the rocky east coastline of South Africa to illustrate the variation of coastal environs.

Hunter & Hunted - Kidnapped:

This well known and succesful series turns to baboons to deconstruct the crime scene of a baboon that kidnapped a human baby.

The show was shot a la CSI, which meant lots of conscious camera movement and a pov style. We also did big wide Jimmy Jib shots (9m) to get back from the "in your face" feeling every now and again.

I worked under Los Angeles DP Paul Desatoff for this.