Balboa Park’s IMAX film “Deep Sea” offers a dynamic trip into the undersea communities of North American waters. The film takes the imagination captive with glimpses of little-seen and even less-understood animals, and underscores the message that we are all connected to and affected by the ecosystems we rarely experience.
San Diegans Howard and Michelle Hall directed and produced their latest release with an agenda: to show the fragile relationship between species and inspire stewardship of the oceans.
“It’s our hope that by seeing these animals and seeing that they have character and personalities that you’ll fall in love with them just like we have, and you’ll be more inclined to vote responsibly [for leaders who will protect ocean resources],” Michelle Hall said.
From the first frame, the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center dome explodes with action, waves crashing overhead as the camera leaves a sandy beach with a dive. The filmmakers never seem to forget that their audience will be surrounded by the ethereal images and take full advantage of the IMAX format.
The Halls carefully selected the waters near Hawaii, North Carolina, British Columbia and the Sea of Cortez for their exceptional inhabitants, traveling long distances for moments with the Humboldt squid, green sea turtles and wolf eel.
But the shapeless, faceless creatures truly steal the show with surprising displays of personality. If nothing else, their size and scale floating above viewers’ heads demand and inspire awe. Whether trailing behind a jellyfish propelling itself into the black, or watching a seemingly inanimate coral reef spawn new life, the voyeuristic lens is privy to a world of interesting and obscure behaviors.
Even scallops, shrimp and starfish perform for the camera, hunting with prowess or swiftly escaping from equally adept predators.
The Halls consciously filmed within reach of American shores because of the technical equipment used to film the aquatic adventure, including a 1,300-pound camera capable of capturing IMAX and 3-D images for the silver screen, though the latter is not visible on the IMAX dome.
“You can imagine what it’s like to shoot a 10-inch-long shrimp with a Volkswagen,” Howard Hall said of the sizable apparatus.
The camera also required a 75-pound tripod and a 100-pound lead anchor, which presented a unique set of challenges for the divers and filmmakers.
“Working in this format is extraordinarily more complicated than working in television,” Hall continued. “You can’t take the camera to your animals and to the behavior because the camera system is too big to do that, so you have to pick and choose your subject carefully and hope that they do what you want them to do in front of the camera.”
Only 9.5 hours of film was shot, despite 130 days in the water over the course of 14 months. Each roll of film produced three minutes of footage and cost a whopping $6,000, adding a necessary element of precision to each dive.
And though the sound effects and music are artificially imposed, the speed of the film is true to life, as is the one-frame strike of the powerful Mantis shrimp, capable of breaking aquarium glass when captive.
The film, now playing at the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center through Jan. 31, is a full-circle journey for the Halls, who watched their first underwater IMAX film, “Oceans,” in the top row of the San Diego theater decades ago. They have returned with a visually stunning product that is sure to please.
For information on the center’s IMAX movies and schedules, visit www.rhfleet.org or call (619) 238-1233.