Night shoot underwater in a swimming pool

[Eric Steelberg ASC]

I did a water spot with Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps and we had multiple GFIs and shock blocks with kinos and pars in the pool as well as 4 Dinos on the edge of the pool. The sensitivity was incredible. Lighting in the water is something that can be very safely done, but it requires equipment maintained and prepped to the highest standards. I definitely would not use anything that wasn't specifically modified for water use. It's just not worth it. Keep in mind that safety goes for things NEAR the water as well, not just lighting IN the water. Hydroflex has created some fantastic underwater lighting.

[thomas-english]

The main reason to use correctly rated kit, apart from the obvious safety issue... is insurance as phil said. I think filling in a risk assesment would be a little tricky to say the least!

 

basically unless you know exactly what your doing, don t do it. Keep all your lights well sandbagged topside and instruct everyone on set to be careful knocking bags over.

 

Obviously the field of electrocution is only for a few meters in fresh water. This is something I have pondered many times whilst rigging up underwater blondes... How far will this plasma actually go if I break this thing! ? Do you know any figures?

 

"unless you pour a fifty pound sack of salt into it".... so how far does it go off shore?..... argh.. this is when your so much more likely to break a light!!!

 

For your nightshoot, your pool lights are tungsten. So I would rent a 1.2HMI for the day put possibly a 1/4 blue and point it straight into the pool backlighting your character and not lighting up the back wall. I would then use your pool inbuilt lights as fill. plenty of ND and flag/block the ones in shot. Light becomes very diffused very quickly underwater. Your tungsten balanced on your film so you should get a nice blue moonlight coming into the pool. Balance out the HMI (shutting barn doors) so its not overpowering the shot. If your still lacking in light (fill) get a couple of blondes and point them into the pool behind the camera. Try and flag lights so they are not hitting the walls or back of the pool. (this lighting setup is totally a matter of opinion based on the fact that you don t have many resources, I would light this differently to a proper budget).

 

Light acts differently underwater... bouncing everywhere as it travels anywhere, its great.

 

Plastic bags/zip lock bags are fine for a lightmeter but test out how many stops you have lost by putting it in a bag. I used a cheap soft photographic camera underwater housing last time to put the light meter in and it cost me a tenner.

 

Get the lowest profile mask you can find, a freediving mask is good, or regular good goggles and a nose clip otherwise your eye will be so far from the viewfinder you won t see what your doing, play about until your comfortable.

 

You can rent underwater Kinoflos nowadays and they look great!

 

and have fun! I would come and give you a hand if you were in the UK

 

thomas

[Josh Silfen]

Hydroflex makes an underwater housing for the Minolta Spotmeter F. They are pretty expensive to buy, but you can rent them as well. I couldn't find one for rent anywhere in the Northeast, but I had one sent out from Hydroflex in LA. I think they may have a housing for the incident meter as well, but I don't really see how useful that would be since the exposure will obviously be affected by the distance from the camera to the subject. (The more water you shoot through, the more light you lose.) I think the easiest way to meter is to use the underwater spotmeter housing from the camera position and take a reading off a waterproof 18% gray card where the action is going to take place.

 

There are also old Sekonic Marine Meters (underwater light meters) that you can get for pretty cheap on eBay, but they are still photography style reflected meters and I'm not sure what the best technique would be for getting an accurate reading.

-Josh Silfen

[thomas-english]

Its always difficult to tell transmission loss underwater. You probably loose a stop per meter of red. probably an average of 1/2 a stop to 3/4 a stop per meter. This is how I have always calculated it. Don t confuse yourself too much though... part of them being far away is them fading away in underwater visability loss. Make your calculation 2 meters away at 1 stop loss if using an incident meter.

 

Use a wider lens and keep close to your subject. always underwater... it s very difficult to hold longer lenses underwater.

 

The light loss from surface to 1 inch below can be anything from 1 stop to 4 stop depending on the angle the light hits the water and off course how choppy it is. Keep your lights pointing straight down into the water from as higher an angle as possible and let them diffuse underwater.

[Michael Collier]

What kind of sense does any of this make? do any of you want to be swimming near 2Kw of juice? I sure dont. I can understand if a light is made for underwater shooting, that means they designed it for such and it has been tested. This is a matter saftey. Can it be done? sure! is it a good idea is the question. Another good question is can it be done another way? And yes invariably it can be done another way.

 

I would avoid just sandbagging lights as well. If I had to shoot in a situation like that, I would look into rigging the lights up to the main structure in the roof (most have exposed metal trusses) and have a little assurance that nobody will die that day. GFIs are nice, but if you trust them so much, why dont you plug your toaster into one and throw it in a bathtub (with you in it) if your not comfortable with that idea, why would you throw someone else in with the assumption that theres a "minimum safe distance" to be maintained? Do you know how to calculate that based on the electrolyte level of the pool? Did you test the electrolyte level before shooting? Those GFIs come from a rental place. Has anyone here (be honest) gotten gear that wasnt properly working? Is there a standard method to test the GFIs, or do we assume they work?

 

I remember when I was learning to instruct rock climbing and my teacher holds up a climbing rope for us to see. He asks us would we trust our lives to it. Well it was 11mm climbing rope. It wasnt fraying so at first glance we said, yes this rope is safe. Then we inspected it with the feel test and found several spots where the rope was damaged. The lesson is that there are acceptable saftey precautions to be taken when electricity is around water, and if you wont trust your life to it, why should others?

 

If your still thinking it can be done safely, run the idea by the production insurers, see if they like the idea.

[timHealy]

This seems like a silly thread. Don't panic people. Shooting in a pool or near water can be done safely and it is done all the time. Where do you think they shot the storm sequences for "The Perfect Storm" for example? It was shot in a pool with actors on a soundstage surrounded by lights, electrical cable, wave tanks, effects fans and the like.

 

While operating tungsten with DC is a great idea while around water, AC using GFCI's do work. And they trip much faster than the typical fuses and breakers on generators, stage boxes, and gang boxes.

 

If you don't like the idea of shooting near water then by all means don't do it. But if you do, just get yourself experienced electricians, and as long as the production managers give them the extra gear they need to keep eveyone safe, then everyone will be fine. "experience" more often than not means a union crew in the US.

 

And if anyone still has doubts call these people and talk to them

 

http://www.ktec.org

 

and some helpful tips

http://www.hydroflex.com

http://www.hydroflex.com/site/helphints/helpful1.html

http://www.hydroflex.com/site/helphints/safelighting.html

 

Best

 

Tim

[Guest Todd Murchie]

I have been lighting underwater shoots since 1992. I have never used anything but an underwater light in an underwater environment. These types of lights are manufactured by Pace Technologies and Hydroflex and are available for rental at several equipment houses. They come in HMI, Tungsten and Kino flavours.

 

I agree with several of the other respondents - You should NOT use a non submersible lamp for a purpose which it is not intended. As a note; on one shoot we tested a GFI installed in a studio (and found it was not working properly) by thowing a redhead into a filled utility sink...it still worked although we had to retriee it by lifting it out with the cord. The use of proper GFI units is necessary and with all systems that I deploy there are 2 functioning GFI units for each submerged light. (add one more for a generator unit)

 

Depending on the number of lights you will use, the cost can be high and the speed of shooting will be slowed. I use 3 times longer than on land as a rule of thumb. These are just something for consideration.

 

Frequently you can get away with a GFI'd light from above and reflect it for fill. This is dependent on the size of the body of water. One of the most important factors to be aware of is the amount of debris in the water. Any particles in the water will interrupt the path of the light and the result will be like shooting in fog. (the greater the distance to the subject - the less you see them). I always suggest a good cleaning of a pool and clean the filters at least two days before shooting - if possible.

 

I know there is more but it is late here

 

I hope that this helps