IMAGING
//
S H O O T E R
96
|
FALL 2012
By the early 1990s I was getting work as director of
photography on a lot of low-budget features. Some were
pretty bad, and others portrayed sharks or other marine
creatures in a light I was not comfortable with. So I had a
conversation with myself and concluded I didn’t want to do
any more jobs that didn’t allow me to work with wildlife or
be underwater — those were my two parameters.
SF
//
It seems you are the go-to guy when it comes to
filming aquatic hazards, including marine life perceived
to be dangerous. How did that develop?
Pz
//
Aside from the sharks in Bimini, the first call to solve a
potentially hazardous marine problem came on The Motorcycle
Diaries, a film depicting revolutionary Che Guevara as a
teenager bumming around South America. There was a shot in
which the actor was to swim across the Amazon River in Peru
at night, but local lore suggested there were tiny fish in the river
that could swim up your urethra and eat your brain. Crocodiles
and piranha were also in the river, so they called me — the
crazy kid. But I was never really crazy. I learned that a wetsuit
would keep the parasitic fish out and that piranha weren’t
nocturnal, and we stayed away from the drag-outs where the
crocodiles were. I managed the risk and got the shot. That has
been a guiding principle throughout my career.
SF
//
That shot must have been in the days of 35mm film.
With an actor swimming at night and you having to nail
the exposure and make sure water drops didn’t land on
the dome and obscure his face, there must have been
myriad issues that could have killed the job for you.
Pz
//
Yes, and we were in a location where they could not
easily FedEx the unprocessed film and get “rushes” back
the next day. I had to nail it, and I think that’s a big part
of why I continue to get a lot of work. There is so much
riding on these scenes that the guy who is deemed the
most trustworthy gets the job. On a shoot like Pirates of
the Caribbean, where my job is to follow Captain Jack
Sparrow from underwater to topside, I don’t want to be the
cameraman who forces the director to tell Johnny Depp he
has to reshoot a take because a big drop of water covered his
face during the whole topside sequence.
With digital the “rushes” are immediate. The director
could always see the action live on a remote monitor, but
with film there was ambiguity that goes away with digital
confirmation. Even today with all the digital technology,
feature-film cinematography is a team effort that requires
credible, predictable performance in an often difficult
lighting scenario with the many physical challenges that
come with bringing cameras and talent together underwater.
SF
//
Do you have much influence in the storylines you
shoot these days?
Pz
//
To an extent, I am able to influence by educating
directors about possibilities. For example, I’ll have an art
director come to a meeting armed with 14 images she’s
clipped from magazines as concepts. A dozen are macro
shots with exquisite color, but the subjects are inch-long
shrimps, and my job is to light an underwater set the size
of a submarine. We have to mold expectations to physical
reality of being underwater.
I am also very sensitive about portraying marine life in
realistic and respectful ways. Many production designers are
well educated and have done their homework, and that really
makes the process easier.
SF
//
Alert Diver features issues of dive safety. Have you
ever gotten yourself in trouble on a movie set due to a
dive-related injury?
Pz
//
Sharks and other “dangerous” marine animals have
never been an issue for me, but I have experienced dive-
related challenges. While working with Bob Talbot on the
IMAX film Ocean Men: Extreme Dive, we had to do mixed-
gas dives to 300 feet to get the shots of Pipin Ferreras and
Umberto Pelizzari on their ultradeep freedives. We quickly
learned a healthy respect for the effects of nitrogen narcosis.
We called it “meter lock” when assistants were confounded
by simple tasks such as confirming light-meter readings.
Sometimes they would perform miserably at depth tasks that
were second nature in shallow water. Before filming we always
discuss possible hazards and how to get the shot safely.
On the science-fiction film Jumper I had to show a guy
being swept underneath a frozen river. We could pull him
rapidly with a cable to simulate the current, but we had to do it
laterally since he was breathing compressed air, as we couldn’t
risk an embolism with quick depth changes. Sometimes we
simply can’t use compressed air for either the talent or me, and
that’s where my freediving skills help. On Ocean Men we had
to show Pelizzari during his final ascent to the surface. The
challenge was getting a massive 300-pound IMAX camera to
track straight up to the surface alongside him. The solution was
to make the camera neutrally buoyant at 60 feet using a weight
pack that could be jettisoned. My assistant took the camera
down on scuba, and as Pelizzari swam up from the depths
I swam down on a breath-hold dive, grabbed the camera,
released the weights and swam the now positively buoyant
IMAX camera to the surface along with Pelizzari. I hope it
sounds easier than it really was; those days were physically
exhausting. I never mix days of scuba diving with arduous
freediving. I know better and so does our dive-safety crew.