Note: Our latest IMAX film, DEEP SEA 3D, opens in IMAX theaters worldwide this month. The following story, however, is from more than a decade earlier and is about our first experience with the big camera during the filming of INTO THE DEEP.

The Sea in 3D

Howard Hall

©Mark Conlin

Conditions at Santa Cruz Island were almost unbelievably mild for January in California. Bob Cranston and I had just returned from a reconnaissance dive at the south end of the Island. The reef at 65 feet was covered with anemones, soft corals, and a spectacular carpet of brittle stars. It was devastatingly beautiful. There was also a 1/4 knot current. That's not enough current to inhibit your average intermediate level sport diver, but it was marginal for what I had in mind.

On the deck of the M/V Conception, a very tired crew of four technicians were busy loading my camera. Ok, it's not actually my camera. The brand new, three million dollar IMAX 3D camera is a one-of-a-kind and it definitely belongs to IMAX. But as director of the first underwater IMAX 3D film, I had begun to feel a bit proprietary about the camera we called "The Beast". The technical crew was tired because they had been spending 20 hours a day maintaining and debugging the camera. It was just now beginning to work reliably.

Describing the underwater IMAX 3D camera as big is simple understatement. Loaded with film, the camera, without the housing, weighs 345 pounds. With the underwater housing, the system weighs 1,300 pounds. That's with the flat housing port. The 32-inch diameter dome port adds an additional 300 pounds of weight.

The camera is loaded with 5,000 feet of 70mm film. The film alone weighs 50 pounds. The running time for this 50-pound load of film is all of seven minutes. Cost of film, processing and printing of this seven-minute load is nearly $20,000. The spectacular film and processing costs in this format tends to cause a uniquely uncomfortable tremor in a cameraman's finger when trying to decide if the time is right to pull the trigger.

Actually, the IMAX 3D camera is two cameras in one. There are two perfectly synchronized film transport movements that expose two 2,500 foot rolls of film behind two perfectly matched lenses mounted 2 1/2 inches apart (the average separation of human eyes). The precise registration of these two images is controlled within the camera by computer hardware and software. In the IMAX 3D theater, two 70mm films are projected against an enormous 70-foot by 100-foot screen. You wear glasses that allow each eye to see one of the films and this produces the illusion of 3 dimensions. The spectacular images seem normal in size and appear at the same distance from your eye as the subject was from the camera lens. In the IMAX 3D theater you can reach out and put your hand in the mouth of a moray eel and watch the teeth close on your fingers. If you suggest this to the person seated next to you and then well time a jab in the ribs, you can elicit a truly remarkable reaction. However, it's a good idea to make sure that person is smaller than you, and unarmed.

"Whaddaya think?" I asked Bob as we watched the technical crew working on the camera.

"It's doable", he said.

"Ya, I think so," I said.

Michele Hall climbed aboard a moment later and said she had seen an octopus on a rock about thirty yards away. An octopus crawling over a brittle star-garnished reef would be wonderful in 3D. She gave us directions to the rock and I was sure I knew the spot.

Thirty minutes later, Bob and I were strapping on our gear for another dive. John Robirds, Roger Wood, and the Conception crew had the camera hooked to the wench and were ready to launch. Mark Conlin asked what gear I wanted and I told him I wanted lights, the tripod, and all the extra weight.

Setting up a shot with a 1,500 pound camera system is complicated and time consuming. To extend our bottom times, Bob and I dived with a pair of mixed-gas rebreathers that I had purchased several years ago and modified for underwater film work (with a grant from the National Geographic Society). The rebreathers allowed us almost unlimited bottom time at depths shallower than 70 feet. But gas mixtures and volumes on rebreathers must be carefully monitored and adjusted during ascent and descent. Doing this while dragging a 1,300-pound camera around is problematic. So Bob and I usually descended first and waited on the bottom while our dive assistants, Mark Conlin and Mark Thurlow, brought the camera down. The one hundred pound tripod and extra weight had been previously lowered over the side on a rope, along with the surface powered movie lights.

When Bob and I hit the bottom, the first thing we noticed was that the current had picked up. It was now running at well more than half a knot. I turned to look at Bob and saw that he was already shaking his head. I agreed. There was too much current. I yelled a few expletives into my rebreather mouthpiece and clenched my fist. Damn, a half day lost.
Superficially, the situation might seem like no big deal. Bob and I swim up, we move the boat, and we dive somewhere else. But the reality of large-format filmmaking is that every move is laboriously time consuming. Not only would we have to move the boat, but also we would have to scout another site, make a plan, stern anchor the boat in such a way that we could reach the site with a camera that is as easy to move underwater as a full size refrigerator, and then get all that gear in the water again. It was a half-day's work at best.

I gave Bob the "up" signal and we pushed off the bottom just in time to see the IMAX 3D camera drift behind the boat. Bad news. Our launch and recovery team had been very efficient. The camera was in the water and had been disconnected from its tether. We were committed. I looked over at Bob and shrugged as I settled back to the bottom. Well, I thought, we wanted to see how "The Beast" handled in a current since we planned to use it at Cocos Island in June. I guess we'd find out now.

Conlin and Thurlow reached the bottom a few yards in front of Bob and I, and immediately dug their fins into the sand to stop their drift. Bob and I moved to meet them. When we grabbed the handholds on the sides of the camera and took some of the strain from Conlin, he looked at me with an expression that said, "Are you nuts?" I looked back and shrugged as if to say, "What, is there something wrong?" as if I hadn't noticed the current. Then I looked over at Mark Thurlow and held up three fingers, which was the signal for "tripod". He immediately set off across the bottom toward the tripod fifty feet away.

It took all four of us about ten minutes to successfully guide the bridge plate on the bottom of the camera into the tripod mounting plate. Then Thurlow went back to where the tripod had been and retrieved three 25-pound bags of lead shot that we would attach to the tripod legs. Meanwhile, Mark Conlin had mounted the movie lights and 5-inch video viewfinder to the top of the camera. During this time the current had picked up to a full knot.

Twenty minutes into the dive we had the system completely assembled. Now all that remained was for us to swim over to the reef and take a few very expensive snap shots of some fascinating animal behavior. That's, of course, assuming we could move at all. Even with the heavy tripod and the extra 75 pounds of lead, the camera still wanted to tip over on the tripod and tumble down current if more than two of us let go of it at one time. The idea of moving into the current was laughable. Moving down current didn't seem like a good idea. I didn't want to get any further from the boat (and our safety lines) than necessary. Besides, the reef with all the interesting marine life on it was about thirty yards across current. I decided we would try that direction.

Bob and I took off our fins and attached them to the lanyard on the back of the camera. Then we lifted the huge refrigerator-sized camera and put a leg of the tripod on each of our shoulders. This took a lot of effort since, even without the extra lead weights that Thurlow carried attached to a lift bag, the system now had a dead weight of about 75 pounds. But the heavy weight allowed us to get a firm grip on the bottom as we attempted to walk across the sand to the reef. It was an efficient way to move across a flat ocean floor and a good plan. We took three steps before the current blew the camera over and we began to tumble across the bottom.

We got control of the camera after only a few bounces across the ocean floor. With our heels dug into the sand, we all stopped for a five-minute rest. The water was exceptionally clear. In the distance I could see the kelp forest leaning over with the current and I could see the reef that I wanted desperately to photograph. I now knew that we had absolutely no chance of getting there, but I decided to give it one more try only because the experience might later prove valuable in the currents of Cocos. Without making eye contact with any of my crew, I signaled to lift the camera again. They all knew we weren't going to make it, but they often forgive my occasional moments of madness in consideration of the pressure a director is under when trying to perform in the face of tight shooting schedules, dwindling funds, and unlucky weather conditions. Thurlow gave me the finger.

We lifted the camera again and this time got it only waist high before the current blew it over on top of Bob and it began to tumble across the bottom. That was it. Time to go. I gave the abort signal (a hand signal identical to the one Thurlow had given me), followed by the thumbs up ascend signal. Of course, just swimming up was easier said than done.

A controlled ascent carrying the huge camera was going to be tricky. Decompression was no problem for Bob and I. We could have stayed for another two hours without needing to make a stop, but Conlin and Thurlow would be approaching their no-decompression limits by the time we got everything ready for ascent. Normally, they would have delivered the camera and ascended until Bob and I were finished filming. But this dive had required their staying with the camera the entire time.

Mark Thurlow dragged himself across the bottom and up stream to where we had left the safety line. When he returned, he clipped the safety line onto the heavy tripod along with the 75 pounds of lead. Then Bob and I disconnected the camera from the tripod and we all grabbed the safety line as the camera immediately tried to float away with the current.

Holding the camera with one hand and the safety line with the other, we slowly ascended as the current threatened to dislocate our shoulders. The four of us took ten minutes of precautionary decompression at fifteen feet, then finally released the line. The boat crew was ready with a rope to retrieve the camera as soon as we hit the surface.

When I climbed back on board the technical crew approached me apprehensively. They had checked the footage counter and noticed that I hadn't rolled any film through the camera. The four of them had been up until 4:00 am every morning for the last four nights trying to solve various hardware and software problems within the camera that had caused persistent problems. I could tell they were worried that something was dreadfully wrong. Having enjoyed such a fine morning myself, I sympathized and immediately addressed their concerns.

"I think it's a complete melt down this time guys," I said, trying to look hopelessly disappointed. No one said anything. They just looked down at the deck with stricken looks on their tired faces.

"When I turned the camera on it made a terrible grinding sound like maybe there was something loose fouling the ($3 million) movement. Bob thought he actually saw some smoke through the front port," I said.

Bob was climbing up on the swim step behind me and normally would have joined in with a few lies of his own. But seeing the look on the technicians' faces and hearing their pathetic groans, he couldn't bring himself to do it. These guys had worked harder than anybody else on board. I even began to feel a bit guilty myself.

Epilogue: Ok, I know this is not a very good ending to my story, but the flight attendant just came on the public address system and said that we are passing through 10,000 feet on approach to Tokyo Narita International airport and all electronic devices must be turned off and stowed at this time. That includes this notebook computer. Why am I going to Tokyo? Well, when you're shooting in the IMAX 3D format, you can't just hold the film up to the light to see how it turned out. I needed to go to the nearest IMAX Solido or IMAX 3D theater to see the footage I had just shot. Well, there are two IMAX Solido theaters: one in Paris and another in Tokyo. And since it's cherry blossom season in Japan...