Note: I plan to write a book about the making of Denizens of the Deep. The working title for the book is Diving with Denizens. Unlike most books that are written after the fact, this one will be written as the adventure unfolds. During the next year, I will publish several of the first draft chapters from this unfinished work here on this website. As I write this Denizens, both the book and the IMAX 3D movie are unfinished stories.

Click here for a cast of characters

Diving with Denizens
Chapter One
September 16, 2004 Howard Hall

Loading up the Solmar V ©Michele Hall

The northern Baja Peninsula is sliding slowly beneath a long silver wing. I can see the Colorado River delta where the once great river now trickles into the Sea of Cortez. The sky is pale blue, hazy, and clear. It won’t be that way for long. Violence is moving northward to meet us.

We are on our way to begin production of an IMAX 3D film about biodiversity in our world’s oceans. This is the beginning of the adventure of a lifetime. Again. Making a wildlife film in the IMAX format is always complicated and challenging. Doing so underwater requires meticulous planning and a team of extraordinary divers. Making an underwater IMAX film in 3D adds to the challenge ten-fold. Out of the water, the IMAX 3D camera system weighs approximately 1,500 pounds. Capturing interesting images with this cumbersome monster is difficult. Capturing unique and interesting marine life behavior with the beast is, well, very hard indeed. But that is our assignment. My crew and I did it successfully once before in the IMAX 3D format. Perhaps we can do it again.

The first film was called INTO THE DEEP and it became one of the most successful 3D films ever made. The working title of our new film is DENIZENS OF THE DEEP. Few people seem to like this title besides me. But it’s been my experience that films evolve to fit the working titles and I suspect this presently unpopular title will stick. Time will tell.

As our Aero Mexico jet races toward Loreto Mexico carrying eight members of our Denizens crew, a 26-foot tractor trailer is rumbling southward over Baja’s Highway One. The truck is carrying literally tons of diving and filming equipment that we will load onto the liveaboard dive boat, Solmar V, in Santa Rosalia about half way down the eastern coast of the Baja Peninsula. Dave Forsyth rides shotgun with the Mexican truck driver and following behind in a chase car is Peter Kragh and Manuel Sanchez. The Solmar should be in Santa Rosalia by now having completed the 40 hour voyage from Cabo San Lucas. Michele talked to the boat crew just before our plane left San Diego and was told Solmar was a half-hour from port. Soon we will all come together in the small Baja fishing village to begin our pursuit of a monster squid that some call the red devil.

Loading up the Solmar V ©Michele Hall

This project has not enjoyed a flawless beginning. Dave and Peter’s truck saga is worthy of a stand-up comic routine. We had rented a 26-foot truck from a well known local vehicle rental company. After loading it to capacity, Dave hit the starter only to have it fail to run. Unfortunately, all our Customs permits, which took weeks to process and would allow us to take the film production gear into Mexico, listed this truck’s license, VIN, and registration numbers. Despite the potential customs problems, the decision was made to transfer the entire production package to a different truck while investigating the possibility of clearing the new truck through Customs. Hours later, after Dave was informed that the new truck would never clear, a truck repairman had replaced the solenoid on the original truck’s starter. Peter and Dave transferred the tons of equipment back. At ten pm that night, Dave and Peter were once again ready to roll. They got two miles down the road. All the electronics failed and when Dave pulled over and stopped the truck, it would not restart.

Late the next morning I met Dave at a truck repair shop where the truck had been towed at 3 am. He was bleary eyed from lack of sleep. We went to Denny’s for brunch. Dave almost fell asleep in his oatmeal. By the time we had finished brunch, the repair shop had replaced the starter in the truck. The mechanic explained that the starter had burned out and in the process had placed an enormous drain on the electrical system. Replacing the starter surely had eliminated the truck’s failure to start, as well as curing all the electrical anomalies. We were good to go.

Despite the frustratingly long night without sleep, Dave seemed in control and was enthusiastic to get started. Peter arrived at the repair shop after spending a few hours at home. They loaded up and were off. What seemed like a jinxed start to our adventure now seemed well healed. I went home to resume packing for the plane ride south.

I talked again with Dave that afternoon. He was still at the boarder and things had not gone well. Customs would not allow a US commercial truck to carry our gear south. We were told by the customs broker that we must hire a Mexican truck and diver or risk having our truck and equipment confiscated. This would cost an additional $3,800. Michele, my wife who is co-producing the film with Toni Myers (producer of the IMAX hit SPACE STATION 3D), was so angry she wanted to cancel the whole damn shoot. But it seemed we had no choice. And by fortunate coincidence, the customs broker who had informed us of the truck problem just happened to own a tractor truck and trailer that he would rent to us. Despite the anger and frustration we all felt, I agreed with Dave and Peter that we had little choice. The tractor trailer was hired along with a Mexican driver. The driver backed it up to our rental truck and Dave and Peter, once again, transferred all the equipment.

Then Dave climbed into the cab of the rental truck to move it out of the way. It failed to start.

Loading up the Solmar V ©Michele Hall

The rental truck had to be towed clear of the tractor trailer before it could begin its journey south. Perhaps the Gods were trying to tell us something about that rental. Perhaps we were not starting off under a dark cloud of bad luck after all.

I have good reason to hope our luck is not bad. Javier, a category four hurricane, is now moving northward toward Santa Rosalia. As I look out at the dry and barren desert of the Baja Peninsula, it’s hard to imagine the violence to come. There is every reason to hope that the storm will veer westward. That would be the normal track for this kind of eastern Pacific storm. But sometimes these hurricanes take an unexpected turn, veering northeast and devastating communities and harbors within the Sea of Cortez.

Normally, a book is written about something that has happened. And by the time you read these pages (and once the book is finished), this project will be history. The film we hope to make will be in IMAX theaters worldwide. It will be good or it will be bad. Or perhaps, things will go so terribly wrong the film and this book will never be finished. You have only to turn the page to see what happens next. I don’t have that luxury. For me, this is an unfinished story being written in real-time. As I write these words, I am acutely aware that time is rushing me forward into an adventure that could be wonderful or disastrous. The dives we have planned will be difficult and sometimes dangerous. Each dive will demand all our skills. Things can and will go wrong. Equipment can and will fail. I can and will make mistakes. I could and might completely fail. Catastrophe may be just around the corner.

People could die.

Catastrophe has stricken other wildlife films. Every time I look at the massive IMAX 3D underwater camera system, I think of Noel Archambault. He was a member of our crew in 1994 when we made INTO THE DEEP. Noel was a brilliant stereographer. No one new more about the IMAX 3D format than Noel. In June of 1998 Noel was flying high over the Galapagos Islands in a two-place ultralight with Pilot, Bill Raisner, They had an 85 pound IMAX 2D camera mounted above the wing of their aircraft for shooting aerial scenes that would be used in the IMAX 3D feature GALAPAGOS. The ultralight was equipped with floats for launching and landing on water. It took every ounce of power from the small 100 horsepower Rotax engine to lift the ultralight, Noel, Steve, the camera, and the camera batteries off the water. Apparently, they had removed every once of unnecessary weight from the aircraft.

No one knows what actually happened. Several days after the aircraft failed to return to the mother boat, a helicopter discovered the wreckage high on the slope of a dusty volcanic mountain. The aircraft was so heavily damaged that it is unlikely either Noel or Steve survived the impact.

I learned about the accident a few days after we had shipped our own ultralight to Costa Rica for filming similar aerial sequences for the IMAX feature ISLAND OF THE SHARKS. I received many urgent requests from members of the IMAX film community to abort our plan to use the ultralight. I did my best to convince them our plan was different. Our aircraft was more stable, we would never be so far inland that we could not glide to the water for landing, and we would not remove our emergency parachute.

I thought about Noel as looked down at the dry dusty Baja Peninsula. It is forbiddingly barren terrain not unlike the barren mountains of the Galapagos Islands.

As the director of this film, avoiding tragedy will be largely my responsibility. And I know I will be beginning this project with some very tough decisions. As I write this, I’m intensely aware that Hurricane Javier is coming my way with maximum sustained winds exceeding 140 miles per hour and gusts to 180 mph. It’s a category four hurricane and it’s moving north from the tip of Baja with a predicted track that leaves Santa Rosalia in its destructive path.