Beneath the Blue (originally titled Way of the Dolphin) was filmed
during a total of 4 weeks - three eventful weeks utilizing the
beautiful, natural backdrop of the Bahamas and one week on set in Los
Angeles. The majority of the shoot took place in the quaint, friendly
town of Smith’s Point, Grand Bahama, where Director Michael D Sellers
worked creatively intertwining the actors and story with the Bahamian
community both on land as well as beneath the ocean. Sellers captured
researched developments of human-dolphin interaction while bridging
fictional elements with actual ongoing supreme court rulings.
The
project began to take form on June 16, 2008. Sellers flew to the
Bahamas with Producer Susan Johnson and a talented pre-production crew
to begin location scouting and costume and set design. From searching
for the accurate navy uniforms, taking cover from tropical storms, and
adjusting the shooting schedule multiple times, it was a long first two
of four weeks of prep.
It wasn’t until June 30 when Sellers
and Johnson met with DP Lila Javan, Line Producer Keith Coene, and
First Assistant Director Parker Lonbaugh that everything started to
fall into place. These three were key members in the final two weeks
of pre-production.
July 14, just over a month after Sellers and
Johnson arrived, the excitement intensified - a script, written by
Wendall Morris and casted by Matthew Lessall and Lynn Reinstein, was
about to breathe life. It was the first day of PRODUCTION.
With
sleepless days, underwater shoots, dolphin trainings, alarming storms,
and generators getting stolen, this was an independent production that
was underway in a race against time to stay within budget and on
schedule. The production is filled with many stories of laughter as
well as stress that can be found on the Director's daily blog http://dolphinbuzz.wordpress.com. Below are select excerpts:
NOW THIS IS A GUY WITH AN UNDERWATER CAMERA
One of the things that makes life on the edge (that may be an exaggeration) interesting is that you get to meet some people who have made truly remarkable choices in their lives - who have escaped the ordinary and found a different path.
Consider Paul Mockler. First of all let’s look at the humble side. The guy lives in a little “cabin” (as he calls it) in Smith’s Point – our little town in Grand Bahama — directly across from it is the most gorgeous seafront you will ever see, anywhere. He didn’t just stumble into this house…he had his eye on something. That door, by the way — he found it on the beach.. It’s about half as wide as a normal door.
But there’s more about Paul. Now… how does a guy who lives in this little “cabin” in Smith’s Point end up being IMAX’s number one cinematographer?
Let’s look at it.
So — and I realize I’m kind of backing into this, but bear with me — here is Paul’s story.
He’s Canadian. Grew up in Ontario, around Hamlton but in a small town. He saw photos of scuba diving…..decided he wanted to dive at the age of 14…saved enough money to buy SCUBA gear. There was no certification possible (didn’t exist where he lived), but he figured it out on his own and, started diving in Canadian lakes and quarries. To make a wetsuit he ordered rubber and cut/constructed his own wetsuits. That first year he and a friend went diving in the lakes until the freeze was too severe. Then they waited until spring and continued. Again - no certification, they just did it.
Paul eventually went to work for CBC…then later broadened to work for international companies. He filmed — and continues to film — all over the world. At one point he figured out that he didn’t have to live in Canada, and it was at this point that he thought about Smith’s Point, Grand Bahama — an idyllic little town he’d shot in, but one with good air access in and out. That was 30 years ago…he talked to Mama Flo Edden about renting him “the cabin” — her beachfront cabin which at that point was rundown and unoccupied. Mama Flo said okay — he moved in…has never left…yet continues to travel the world for IMAX, BBC, and others.
The hammer is about to drop on us here. One week to go in our little enterprise, which in the larger scheme of things is just a little indie film, one of a thousand or more that get made each year, nothing that extraordinary. But when you’re on the inside of one of these it doesn’t seem so unextraordinary, it seems like you’re looking for miracles to get the money to come together, the cast, the crew, and in our case dolphins, water, weather (hurricane Bertha is brewing). It can seem a bit overwhelming as evidenced by the fact that neither Susan Johnson nor I seem to be able to sleep past about 4 am.
In recent days, there have been two things which have really helped me to reflect and put this in perspective — two things that have inspired me. They don’t have anything to do with film-making but everything to do with character.
The first is Ingrid Betancourt. I was aware of her basically as a ” Colombian presidential candidate who was kidnapped by FARC in 2002″…..that was about it. And then the recent rescue operation brought her back into the spotlight and I have been just mesmerized by her character and her ability to articulate not only the details of her experience — but her ability to process it and speak about it in such a way that illuminates what seems like every nuance of it. In describing the moment when she and the captives realized they were free, she was able to capture both the sudden joy but also the almost immediate understanding of what a moment of national pride it was for Colombia to have carried out, flawlessly. What is probably the most daring and extraordinary undercover operation anywhere in recent memory. Then when she got to Bogota - her reunion with her husband and teenage kids — and again, her ability to speak about it in a way that just makes you feel like being a human being may be a good thing after all. I then watched the documentary on her life that CNN is showing … and my respect and admiration for her just grew and grew. Somehow, at the end of that, I get up this morning feeling just a bit more resolve and bit less overwhelmed.
The other thing that just inspires awe and a sense that anything is possible with enough will and determination was the Nadal-Federer Wimbledon final yesterday. Even while it was still going on, John McEnroe was quite rightly describing it as the greatest tennis match ever. I was on my laptop in my hotel room with one eye on the match and the other on shotlists for the movie, but as the match went on and on I was just in awe of the stunning brilliance of the play of both Federer and Nadal. Guys — I’m a golfer, not a tennis fan, but this was even better than Tiger Woods gutting it out on a bad leg in the US Open a few weeks ago. I have never seen so many incredible shots — every point seemed a mini-masterpiece and each of them stared down “choke” moments with absolute grit and no “blink” of any kind. The press this morning is calling it a masterpiece and I’m really glad I saw it. It was two of the most indominatable spirits ever seen going at each other and ending in the twilight at Wimbledon in such a way that who won and who lost became a secondary storyline if you were watching it — it was more a matter of just awe at the display of guts and determination — skill and heart.
So... time to stop whining about how hard it is to make this damned movie and get on with it. Greatness is achievable. We have to just do it.
I’ve made fifteen or so movies, and I’ve never had a day like this one. I’m now sitting in my hotel room — it’s almost 9PM — and I’m about as bone tired as a person can be. I think this is both physical and mental — but I’m whupped. Here’s why:
* At 4:45AM I woke up to lightning flashes but it wasn’t raining and when we studied 5 different weather forecasts, it looked like we should have a lot more sun than rain during the day. So at 6 AM we decided to go for our scheduled day which involved dolphin work at UNEXSO in our “Navy Dolphin Pen” — which a segment of the movie that doesn’t have to be (and in fact shouldn’t be) particularly beautiful.
* We got set up and were able to get off one shot — when the rains came. On radar, this was a 110 mile stretch of rain. The rest of the day looked impossible. So at 9AM we pulled the plug on the Navy Dolphin pens and moved our entire traveling circus (and that’s what a film is, basically) to Port Lucaya and the hotel scenes.
* Our team made the move in record time. Seriously this was one of the fastest “company moves” I have ever seen, and this is even more amazing because we’re not set up for a lot of moving around. So we got over to the hotel, got set up, flipped the actors into their new wardrobe and scenes, and were up and shooting within about 90 minutes of pulling the plug at the first location. (For the director and actors, this kind of a flip is particularly difficult because you are all prepped to do one thing — actors have learned their lines and the director has planned his coverage and plan of attack — and then suddenly you have to do something entirely different.)
* As we were shooting the hotel scenes, the rain passed and it looked like we could go back to UNEXSO and finish the Navy Dolphin sequences. But to do this, we HAD to finish the hotel before lunch (which had to be at 1PM because we started at 7AM and lunch has to happen 6 hours after call time or you incur “meal penalties” — extra costs for cast and crew). The reason we had to finish was that the limits of dolphin availability back at UNEXSO...they do not/cannot work past 4:15 so if we were going to get down there in time to work with the dolphins, we had to finish at the hotel by lunch. With this much at stake, we decided to take the meal penalty and ask the crew and actors to work until 1:30 - then take a 30 minute lunch so we could get back down to UNEXSO, get set up, and be shooting dolphin work at 3, giving us an hour and 15 minute of dolphins — and after that we could shoot all the non-dolphin material. The crew responded wonderfully to this — but as we got to our last shot in the hotel at 1:25, we did our first take, (two cameras working so we had it covered from two places), and it was a good take (Paul Wesley was the actor)…when the electricity went off. At first we thought we had blown a fuse - but it turned out to be an island-wide power outage (are you kidding me?) At this point I was faced with a dilemma because our actor - our star - had just had one take on his closeup and almost all the time an actor will be quite unhappy if you give them only one take. But in this case we had a very good first take. And Paul - God bless him - stepped up and said: “Don’t we have it?”. That was one of the coolest things I’ve seen happen on a set — and he was right, we did have it. So we wrapped the hotel and rushed back down to UNEXSO.
* At UNEXSO we got started at around 3PM — and for an hour and fifteen minute we jammed on dolphin material that was quite complicated. It was difficult for the crew and confusing for the actors and incredibly stressful on the director and cinematographer because we had to bounce our way through two complicated scenes, shooting out the “dolphin in the shot” elements while leaving the “no dolphin in the shot” elements for later. But we did it — we got all the dolphin stuff by 4:15.
* Then we continued shooting the rest of it right up until sunset — and of course, as we were getting to the final pieces of it, the rain started again. But we hung in there and the rain passed — but by that time we had very little light. Anyway — in a photo-finish, we got it all.
I honestly don’t think I’ve ever been more exhausted.
STOLEN GENERATOR FINALLY RECOVERED
Okay, so there was another drama going on during wrap, which I didn’t blog about because it was kind of sensitive. However, now that it has a happy ending, here it is. In the early morning hours (pre-dawn) Friday morning, a few hours before we were transferring all our stuff to the docks for (we thought) shipping that day, our generator was stolen. This was a rented generator — a $50,000 item that we were renting from Filmtrade in Miami. We had insurance, of course, but with a $7,500 deductible so it was pretty painful.
Anyway, I got a call from Siobhan Antoni, our “last person standing” in the Bahamas, that the police found it today. She went out in the middle of the hurricane to reclaim it, and now it’s safely locked inside the gated compound where Siobhan lives and will go to the docks tomorrow.
I also understand that Donna Mackey of the film commission was instrumental in keeping the police focused on this and that this helped facilitate the recovery.
Thanks, guys!!!!
Whew!
SHIPPING RAGE…NO OTHER WORD FOR ITAs you know if you’ve been following this, we have been mounting an absurd SWAT-team all-out effort to get our items finally shipped off the island. So finally today it was all coming together — three items (grip truck, generator, and container with all our other gear) were fully cleared by customs; we had Bills of Lading already issued — this after a two week ordeal of one problem after another. Just to be sure, I sent our production coordinator Siobhan Antoni down to the docks to confirm that it had left. I talked to her an hour ago, and she said all seemed well but wasn’t able to actually get on the docks for another few minutes. Then, when I tried to call her again, her phone was busy and busy again.
I called our customs brokerage company and that’s when I learned the following: The shipping company, G and G Shipping, it turns out, didn’t allow it to happen. Apparently when you ship, there is one agent on the docks repping the stuff being loaded and another on board - both from the same company in this case. It turns out that as they were about to load our truck on board, the agent on board discovered that there is a charge for $32.50 pending against the truck. Now this charge has never been presented to us, and as recently as yesterday, we were at G and G paying cash for all outstanding amounts (cash because the reason it didn’t ship last Friday is because just before loading, G and G decided that they wouldn’t ship until our check, which had been released to them on Wednesday, actually cleared their account).
So... this morning, with our production coordinator on the docks trying to verify that everything went on, somehow the G and G agent on the ship refused to accept the truck because of the $32.50 due (which we had no knowledge of)... and so now the truck is going tomorrow
.UPDATE 8:54AM PST
I just got off the phone with Siobhan who gave even more details. Turns out the $32.50 was actually payable to “Freeport Harbor Services”, the company the provides dockside services. That company had given the okay for the truck to be loaded on the boat. G and G had a situation where there was a $32.50 payable, and it wasn’t due to them so the party to whom it was due had given the okay — and they still wouldn’t take it.
Rage is the only word to describe the feeling.
A SUPREME COURT DECISION THAT CHANGES THE SCRIPT
Well last week we got the news that the Supreme court, in a 5-4 decision, has supported the US Navy, reversing a lower court decision in its case against environmental groups in California who had previously won a decision at the appellate court level. This is disappointing to environmentalists everywhere but for the moment our attention is on what it means for our film. Since this is a topic we deal with, and in fact we were about to shoot the LA scenes which are centered on the Navy/Sonar issue, rewrites may need to happen.
Hmmm.
The good news is — it came out in time for us to put on the brakes and make sure our story makes sense in light of this new reality. In truth, it does not affect the broad outlines of the story; however, it does affect certain key aspects. For example, in the story the Navy is conducting exercises in the Bahamas in part because of the ban in California. Also, Hawk’s position, when he confronts the Navy Commander on this is buttressed in the original script by the fact that the California ban, is in place. Had the Supreme Court upheld the California Ban (as many predicted it would), his position would have been even stronger. Now … with the decision going the other way … a re-think is in order.
While this situation of “breaking news” affecting a film-in-progress is a little unusual, the mental gymnastics to accomodate a slightly altered reality are not. We go through this all the time in our regular process of creating and refining a story — the only difference is the “let’s alter the assumptions” consideration is fictional and under control of the writers, whereas in this situation the altered assumptions are imposed on us from the “real world”.
It’s an interesting challenge. We are going to move with “all deliberate haste” to factor this new reality into the story in such a way that it does no harm, and may in fact help the story we are telling. It will take a few weeks to assess the impact and adjust the script and scenes. Slight delay, but the important thing is to get it right.
Here is one of the articles on the Supreme Court Ruling:
Supreme Court on sonar: Navy trumps whales
Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, November 13, 2008
(11-12) 19:00 PST — Threats to national security are more important than possible harm to whales and dolphins, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday in lightening restrictions on the Navy’s use of sonar in anti-submarine training off Southern California despite its potential effects on undersea creatures.
The ruling, the first of the court’s 2008-09 term, accepted the Navy’s arguments that the limitations would hinder vital exercises in the use of sonar to detect enemy submarines. The restrictions, imposed by lower courts, would have required the Navy to reduce or halt underwater sonar pulses when marine mammals might be nearby.
“Forcing the Navy to deploy an inadequately trained anti-submarine force jeopardizes the safety of the fleet,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. The resulting damage to the Navy and the public interest, he said, outweighs the injury that environmental groups that challenged the use of sonar might suffer from “harm to an unknown number of marine mammals that they study and observe.”
The ruling - endorsed by six of the nine justices, and in part by a seventh - overturned decisions by a federal judge in Los Angeles and the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco restricting sonar use during training exercises scheduled to end next month.
The court kept its ruling relatively narrow, however, and did not address the legality of an order by President Bush in January seeking to remove all legal restrictions on sonar by exempting the Navy from environmental laws. The judge in Los Angeles ruled that the order was invalid.
The case was also limited by the Navy’s decision to challenge only two of the six restrictions on sonar use that the lower courts imposed. One unchallenged restriction, which remains in effect, bans the Navy from using sonar within 12 miles of the coast.
“It’s gratifying that the court did not accept the Navy’s expansive claims of executive power,” said Richard Kendall, an attorney who represented the Natural Resources Defense Council and other environmental groups in seeking to maintain the restrictions.
Joel Reynolds, a lawyer with the same organization, said the ruling would have little effect on the Navy’s one remaining anti-submarine exercise off Southern California. He also noted that the Navy is preparing an environmental impact report for future anti-submarine training, which he said had been the plaintiffs’ main goal all along.
After 10 years of litigation, he said, “we have seen significant progress.”
Navy officials declared victory.
“This case was vital to our Navy and our nation’s security,” said Navy Secretary Donald Winter. “We can now continue to train our sailors effectively, under realistic combat conditions, and certify our crews ‘combat ready’ while continuing to be good stewards of the marine environment.”
The Navy has used sonar for 40 years in anti-submarine training off the Channel Islands and nearby coastal areas. Environmentalists say scientific studies show that sonar pulses damage the hearing organs of whales and dolphins, can interfere with their ability to navigate, mate and find food, and have caused whales to strand themselves on shore.
The Navy says its voluntary safeguards protect marine mammals. Those safeguards include the posting of lookouts and requirements to reduce sonar when vulnerable creatures are nearby.
But U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper of Los Angeles said in an August 2007 ruling that the protections were “woefully ineffectual and inadequate” and would leave nearly 30 species at risk, including five species of endangered whales. She also said the Navy had failed to show that a mandatory buffer zone on sonar use and other restrictions would disrupt training.
Cooper’s injunction was modified by the appeals court to allow commanders to reduce buffer zones at crucial times in training. The injunction has been in effect since March, affecting several exercises in a series that began in January 2007.
The Supreme Court said Wednesday that Cooper and the appeals court had given too little weight to the Navy’s concerns.
Roberts’ opinion quoted top Navy officials as saying sonar training under realistic conditions would be hindered by the two restrictions they challenged: a requirement that sonar be shut off whenever a marine mammal is spotted within 2,200 yards, and a requirement to reduce sonic pulses by 75 percent during conditions in which underwater sound travels farther than usual.
Judges must defer to those expert assessments, the chief justice said, especially because the Navy has conducted sonar training for four decades “with no documented episode of harm to a marine mammal.”
Dissenting Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, joined by Justice David Souter, said Cooper had properly used her authority under the environmental law after finding that unrestricted sonar use could harm thousands of creatures. Instead of conducting an environmental study as the law required, or asking Congress to change the law, Ginsburg said, the Navy undermined the law with a “self-serving resort to an office in the White House” for an exemption.
Ruling on whales and sonar
How the Supreme Court voted Wednesday in a ruling loosening restrictions on the Navy’s use of sonar in anti-submarine training off the Southern California coast:
– Majority: Chief Justice John Roberts, Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.
– Concurrence: Justice John Paul Stevens.
– Partial dissent: Justice Stephen Breyer. He agreed with the majority that national security concerns outweigh possible harm to whales and dolphins from sonar use, but said buffer zones imposed by lower courts, with exceptions for critical points in the training exercises, should remain in place while the Navy completes an environmental study.
– Dissent: Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter, who said the restrictions were validly based on evidence of potential harm to thousands of marine mammals.
The full opinions in the case, Winter vs. Natural Resources Defense Council, 07-1239, can be read at links.sfgate.com/ZFJA.