Under Water Environment: Research

The problem of the day, is how to create a realistic under water landscape. I have ten weeks to create an environment that is believable and realistic. There are a number of things to consider when approaching this problem, and so my initial task is the same as starting any project: research and idea development.

First of all I turned to Blue Planet, and spent my evening abusing my Netflix account and gathering as much visual information as I could. There are some great shots in this show, and realism, which can often be exaggerated in film and TV. Of course there is nothing wrong with exaggerating a natural effect to give an image more pizazz but I like to understand the science before moving forwards.

This lead me to researching underwater photography, which gave me an idea of how certain effects occur. For example, the god rays, those streaky rays that look really cool, occur when sunlight shines through calm water near the surface. When oceans are rough, the light diffuses creating a glow. Therefore if I would like to use this effect, I need to consider a composition that is set in calm water, such as a lake.

Understanding colour drop off, contrast and light levels will also be important when colour matching, integrating elements and creating my final colour grade.

The following figures are approximate figures for the percentage drop off in colour saturation over 1 meter.

Colour	approx drop off
Red	40%
Orange	30%
Yellow	10%
Green	5%
Blue	0%
Purple	10%

Similarly, light also drops off faster in water than in air. This is because water is denser than air, and so the inverse square law no longer applies. This varies depending on the depth of the water and the clarity of the water.

Because I want this shot to feel dynamic without a camera move, I need to think long and hard about camera angles and composition. I'm currently considering a low camera angled upwards upon my environment. This should allow me to do some interesting things with silhouetting and vignetting. Any object moving in this environment will therefore also be dropping down from the surface to the floor rather than moving forwards, which I think will feel more natural, particularly if I go for a calm water body. However, this raises a number of issues. I will need to generate the surface of the water body, which could be quite problematic, particularly if I want an object to break the surface. I will also need to produce some sort of bubble effect, if an object comes from the surface, it will undoubtedly bring air with it, producing a bubble trail of sorts. I will need some plates of moving debris/particles, as bodies of water, whether they are fresh water or salt water, are teaming with life and are rarely clear. I am uncertain as to whether or not I should attempt to film this plate or create it using particle simulation. Perhaps a combination of the both would create more depth in the scene.

Tomorrow I'm heading out to the Oceanarium to get some first hand experience of the effects of light in water, as well as take reference photographs for the composition stage. I will also need to scout out a location to become the back plate of this dry to wet conversion and start running tests on the various water effects. This looks to be a busy few weeks.

Seal says "Goodbye."