Shooting UNDERWATER. Need advice on bringing back skin tones.

[Jokūbas Miškinis]

Hello everyone!

I'm planning on shooting underwater scene for music video for the first time and need advice on reaching certain look I imagine.
Idea is to reduce blue colour tone to a minimum or even make underwater scene look as white as possible to make it stylised, but still maintain natural skin tone of an actor. 
Production budget is minimal, so we forced to shoot it in swimming pool (maximum 5 meters deep). Considering that my plan is to light the scene by making huge exposure difference between the top key light and the background, so I can expose for key light and make background look dark. I also understand that I should consider using negative fill to reduce light bouncing from bottom of the pool tiles.
I'm thinking on cranking camera's white balance up to match water tone and then light actor with slightly warmer light to bring back skin tones. Would that work? Is there is something I'm not aware of?
I would be glad to hear advice on this ?

Adding still from a movie "We The Animals" (2018) as a reference of what I imagine. It's just that I'm probably going for brighter picture.

[Aapo Lettinen]

hanging (clean!) black molton on the side wall of the pool and covering the bottom with it is pretty common way to control the spill in underwater pool stuff and to hide the background. Then backlighting with something punchy and can arrange a little bit of fill if needed. then crushing shadows in grading to make the background molton surface to fall into complete darkness without any detail visible even on a too bright monitor.

I think, because the pool is so shallow, that you could maybe use even LED tubes, for example Titan or Helios tubes, with the waterproof pouches for fill light to make it easier to manage the fill.

Be extra careful with set safety and have dedicated safety divers for both you and the actor. And of course, tie down everything mains powered above the surface like hmi's, monitors etc. so that they can't fall into the pool

Edited February 18, 2023 by aapo lettinen