Shooting and lighting underwater

G

George Loch

Well-known member
I have a music video coming up where we are getting series of FX shots underwater. They will be composited against a plate to achieve a floating angel sort of look. Having never done this, does anyone have any tips or experiences to share? I am mostly wondering about lighting and setting up a background in the pool to key against.

-gl
 
George Loch said:
I have a music video coming up where we are getting series of FX shots underwater. They will be composited against a plate to achieve a floating angel sort of look. Having never done this, does anyone have any tips or experiences to share? I am mostly wondering about lighting and setting up a background in the pool to key against.

-gl
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If you want total control of the light... you need tons of light and with water there is always a danger of death by electrocution.

If you want less control, use a pool open to the sky, and shoot using the Sun.

For backdrops, you can use black bed sheets, kingsize, sew loops on the 'top' edge (arbitary chosen...), pockets along the bottom edge, use bricks to weigh down the sheets in the pool. Use the top edge loops with a pole that spans the pool.

Alternatively you can put the top edge on the deepest side of the pool, and use more bricks to secure the backdrop.

Have two to three spotters with floatation devices, should the models need assistance... spotters should have 'lifeguard' level of capability...

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Dry dock version... black/greenscreen backdrop. Use cable and harnesses, fans, and 'blousy' material for outfits. Use highspeed camera... at least high enough to do 200 fps... (which means lots of lights...)

slow the 200 down to 24 and you will have a 'in water' effect.

If you don't have harness and cable... some sort of stage so you can get lower than the feet of the talent, or on ladders to get above looking down shots.
 
Oh yeah, water does not mix well with cameras and lights :)

Lighting-wise, especially if your lights will be out of the water, watch out for a 'dappling' effect on the underwater lit objects (caused by refraction on the uneven water surface, I believe) - visually pretty, but can be a pain if you don't want the underwater look, and when you need a nice evenly lit green screen background.
 
I hope that you understand what a major production effort you are proposing. In addition to the above listed considerations, you will need to consider underwater shooting . . . waterproof camera or housing, camera stabilizing, underwater experienced crew with SCUBA, communications.

If you plan to key and composite your footage you should light your bkgnd from underwater. Any light passing through the pool surface will be refracted and will create a rippled, dappling shadow patterns on anything under water, particularly on the bkgnd. You need to consider Wardrobe and hair styking of your actor (actors). Hair separation from the bkgnd will be difficult to key.
There is a diving tank at a university close to us with underwater viewing ports. If you can locate a pool like this it would greatly simplify shooting, however, you will most likely need to have the power company run a special line in for your electrical. Not many pools have readily available poolside power.

I would certainly suggest testing before committing to the shoot. Good luck.
 
Bring in Pete Romano, that's what we do when we need underwater - you won't regret it, the man knows his stuff.

I hate working in water - love playing in water, but hate working in it.
 
IndyFilmPhreak2013 said:
Bring in Pete Romano, that's what we do when we need underwater - you won't regret it, the man knows his stuff.

I hate working in water - love playing in water, but hate working in it.
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Yeah, that's why I suggested the dry dock version... Beyond safety... beyond air apparatus... the pool water needs to be absolutely crystal clear... which usually means less chlorine... but not so little to allow algae to grow... and a 'real' filtration system that uses several levels of diatomaceous earth... as opposed to one hokey paper/fiber filter that only gets 'big' debris...
 
I tackled something along these lines (if I understood the original post properly) a few years back in this:


It wasn't actually that big of a deal. We shot in the director's swimming pool, used a single light, a Hydroflex kino, and also rented the underwater housing from Hydroflex. We were able to fly a 20x20 green screen over the pool, about five feet above the water. Whereas that would have been way more than we would have needed on dry land, the optical curvature from shooting underwater resulted in us barely covering the frame with the 20x20. My operator had scuba gear but it turned out that because he was pointing the camera straight up, the bubbles coming from him got in the shot. So, he'd only take a breath when the singer took a breath, and she turned out to have phenomenal lung capacity, only needing to breath several times during the four minute track. She'd be fine after each take and my poor operator was a gasping mess!

As far as the water being particularly clear, it was just a regular pool with a standard amount of chlorine in it. I think the homeowner had it cleaned the previous day.

The biggest issue was that this was during the DSLR era, so this was I believe a 5DMKII, and the compositor had a devil of a time with the H264 codec and the flowing hair. I believe there is at least one shot in there that isn't properly tracked to the background as the project ran way beyond "getting paid" and into "favor" territory.

But overall that shoot went smoothly and with a very small crew that day (we shot the rest of the video the next day and it was an absolute dogpile, aka a typical music video). One thing to stress, of course, is that you must work with a gaffer who is fully versed in the safety aspects of running lights underwater.
 
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The main reason for the water shoot was to get a weightless feel to the character and clothing. I am going to do a test with shooting "dry dock" slomo and see if that would achieve the look.

-gl
 
Not that this is practically useful to anyone, but I found it interesting. I shot some additional photography for the recent Houdini miniseries with Adrien Brody, including shots to be added to an underwater sequence where Houdini does an escape under a frozen river. The shots with Brody were shot dry on green screen and Brody was fitted with a bald cap covered with tracking marks, so that appropriately flowing hair could be added CGI.
 
That is actually more along my original thoughts, Charles where I shoot the actor on green high speed and then add some flowing elements in post. I may end up with a version of that.

-gl
 
CharlesPapert said:
My operator had scuba gear but it turned out that because he was pointing the camera straight up, the bubbles coming from him got in the shot. So, he'd only take a breath when the singer took a breath, and she turned out to have phenomenal lung capacity, only needing to breath several times during the four minute track. She'd be fine after each take and my poor operator was a gasping mess!

As far as the water being particularly clear, it was just a regular pool with a standard amount of chlorine in it. I think the homeowner had it cleaned the previous day.
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The Wife use to do this for her wedding business, and we would shoot in 'people's/friends/distantacquaintences' pools... some as shallow as 5' some 15'... The 'best' pool we ever shot in was one where the pool was rented by a physical therapist, and due to the amount of time the patients had to be in the pool, he reduced the chlorine to the bare minimum legal for a 'public pool', and added at his expense a very good filtration system, to allow for the low chlorine, as well as minimize any effects the chlorine may have on the patients...

The worse time we had was in Louisiana... where the owner had some thing against using chlorine at all... and the 'paper/fiber' filters... I think we could have gotten better shots on some bayou along the Mississippi... visibility was about 3 feet at best...

Since this was stills photography, we put several banks of strobes which were slaved via 'flash' to the Nikonos flash attached to the camera, which meant someone had to hold the flash above water while the Wife was taking shots from below the surface.

The models were in 'full wedding dresses' that the Wife picked up discount/clearance. And so it required that someone be a 'good swimmer'... the Wife has great lung capacity and could stay down for 2 minutes... no scuba, but still there would be a 'duck underwater' on the part of the model and photographer, then wait for the surface to settle down, shoot a couple of shots... the back up...

We did a couple of shoots during the day, but for 'dramatic' lighting, night and flash was required.

Here is a shot of a very early shoot...

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