Further Research and Concept Art

Further research has pulled up Green Lake in Styria, which seems almost custom made for this project.

"Green Lake (Grüner See) in Styria, Austria, is an amazing place. For half of the year, it’s an underwater village with fish swimming through the branches of trees, a floor covered in grass, benches and bridges.

For the other half, it is over ground. In the frozen winter months the area is almost completely dry and is a favorite site for hikers. As the temperature begins to rise in spring, the ice and snow on the mountaintops begins to melt and runs down into the basin of land below. The waters are at their highest in June when it becomes a mecca for divers keen to explore the rare phenomenon."

[Source] http://sci-universe.tumblr.com/

I also have taken the opportunity this week to scout out locations. As I had several very loose ideas I've been wandering around Bournemouth and Poole with a camera hunting for inspiration. Mostly I have taken photos of swans. I did however find an underpass, which had interesting lighting, unfortunately it was far too busy for any worth while photographs on that particular day. Another building I found was a nautical themed bar in Poole. The inside of this bar could easily be the inside of a fishing boat, and I am definitely considering sinking the ship.

It was recommended to me that I consider both place and object together. I like the idea of creating a narrative, adding atmosphere to the scene. I'm considering perhaps a mobile phone, ringing giving off a pulsing light. Perhaps, as it gets closer to the camera, you can see the face of someones mother in the Caller ID. This calls in to question, who was on the boat, and is their mother waiting for them unawares that they have met their watery end?

Aquarium Live Stream

The live stream web cam is a particularly good link for aquarium reference. It provides a continuous stream of live footage from the National Aquarium. It's quite large tank, so it provides a good sense of depth and colour drop off. There are also good water ripple effects as the water is relatively shallow.

http://m.ustream.tv/channel/apl-btr1

Saturation Test + Lighting Research

Aside from collecting primary (footage from the oceanarium) and secondary (watching copious amounts of sea based movies) references, I have been putting together a saturation test, based on the numbers that I found in my research.

This is obviously very rough, based on a series of photographs taken on my mobile phone. However I feel that the colour saturation, contrast and blur levels are certainly helping to produce a sense of depth. With more work, this will certainly aid me in my task of making a realistic under water scene.

I'm not planning on using a bottle of squash as my digital element however! I have been generating a few ideas. 

Initially I was considering taking a environmental stance, and shooting a rubbish heap as an under water "garbage island." Combined with this I would model a tin can that could drop into shot. However, as a tin can does not emit light, this may not be suitable. Alternatively, I would considering an explosive device being dropped into the scene. These are sometimes used for fishing, emits light and is very destructive to the environment and other species of animals in the area.

Another idea I had, was to shoot inside, and turn a room into an internal shot for a ship wreck. This will be heavily reliant on finding the correct kind of room to shoot in. Some location scouting will certainly be required for this one, but I've had a few suggestions, and I will check them out and take photographs for reference.


Light References

Titanic	Titanic
The Boat That Rocked	The Boat That Rocked

As the project progresses I'll upload more references and images that inspire me. 

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."