Underwater technician details 'Whalefall' filming

Intense. Imagine being swallowed by a giant sperm whale with just one hour of oxygen left to survive. Well, that's the high stakes premise of the new thriller Whale Fall in theaters today. And this morning we are talking with local underwater camera technician Mark Casey. He's talking about, he's with Aqua Boogie and talking about the challenges of filming beneath the surface, the specialized gear, as you can see, that's needed for it, and also some of the incredible things that he has encountered underwater. So Mark, good morning. It's good to have you here. Good morning. Good to be here. Wow. Okay. You look at a film like this and you think to yourself, in order to shoot something like that, there has to be incredible equipment and incredible technicians that are making it happen. So let's start with that. What are some of the challenges that come with doing a project like Whale Fall? I think the main thing is time. it takes a lot of time rehearsals uh so the actors and even the camera gear will go through a lot of rehearsals before we even get the gear in the water okay so this is is this one of those things where it's like the acting is the easy part and this is very much this is the real show i think goes into filming it i think the acting is the hardest part because sometimes you're you're trying to remember to breathe and you're trying to remember lines or you're even trying to remember what you're supposed to be doing at that same time, interacting with whatever that thing is you're acting with in the water. Wow. Wow. Wow. How'd you get into this? I got into this because my professor at SCAD was a teacher at, um, he was teacher there and he was a professor also doing some things with National Geographic. He told me about the class. So, um, I took underwater cinematography classes and got certified in scuba diving, moved to Atlanta, and then just started telling people that's what I wanted to do. What was it about the class though that just made things click for you to you realizing that this is what I want to be doing? I think it was just a different way of telling a story. It wasn't your typical way of just being able to shoot something. It's a challenge. There's intense technology involved into it. And I get to work by myself quite a bit. That's true. Which if you, hey, that can be a perk. That can be a huge perk. So you brought some equipment with us today. Tell us what you brought and how this all works together. So this is an Alexa 35 camera. And a lot of times what we'll do is a production company will give us a call and we'll say, hey, what do you need? And we'll put a gear together. Commander Rentals is where we get a lot of our gear. And we'll get the camera. We'll do a prep. We'll take the camera and build it out, take it all the way down to the OEM version. And then we'll start doing some installs and some tests. One of the things is during a prep, I try to tell my film students is that prep is very important. You want to do as much things to it as you can before you get it in the water, before you're in front of actors. So you can work out any kinks and any issues you have ahead of time. This is a really heavy piece of equipment. I mean, you can tell just by look, this is a lot of bulk. Yes. So it's about 90 pounds sometimes, maybe 70, depending on the camera that you put in to the housing is made out of aluminum and then it has a paint coating on top to kind of protect it from the salt and environments whatever we're shooting in one of the things is making sure that you just go through and just check all your o-rings and seals to make sure that there's not going to be any water leaks okay and while you're putting this whoa okay what is this called this is a port which is allows you to be able to see out the front of the camera and we have two different types of ports you have the dome port and the flat port and the biggest difference is is that underwater a flat piece of glass will magnify the image versus this this takes in more light from the sides so it takes out that magnification but it throws off your focus okay so when you're doing camera work your focus you're focusing on a virtual image that's somewhere in this area of the of the dome wow so your focus may be two feet but when you put the flat port on it's more true to 10 feet is like nine okay but there's different reasons we may say instead of changing out a lens we'll throw the flat port on and that magnifies the lens by uh i think it's 20 or 30 25 percent and then we don't have to change the lens and it was a quick turnaround oh my gosh wow wow and wow so we we have just like seconds left have you had any wild encounters underwater shooting any close calls um anytime you were like am i gonna make it back up for air like anything scary i did have a time where i had to do an emergency ascent and i ruptured one of my eardrums and uh but that's a typical thing sometimes that happens mark wow yes so it's either a process of where you go through and they they relieve the pressure on your ear or you let it heal over time wow well it's obviously not stopping you from from going back under well you know i've heard of different stories where people have a lot more issues and been lucky and blessed enough not to have any real things what would you say to someone watching right now that's like okay this is the coolest thing i've ever seen i want to be underwater shooting just like mark is what's your advice i would say to become a very good scuba diver first and allow yourself enough time to be able to understand your gear equipment underwater your buoyancy is very important because you have to keep this steady and you learn buoyancy and then you learn how to make this float underwater and then you get comfortable with your gear so you have to be able to know your gear so you're not figuring things out underwater yeah fascinating incredible and you see the finished product of it and you're like wow this is this is something that's that's literally out of this world so Mark, thank you so much for bringing this in. Very cool to see it put together and to see how it works as well. We appreciate this. Thank you. Yeah, such a pleasure to meet you. Mark Casey with Aqua Boogie and Wellfall is in theaters tomorrow. But if you'd like to know more about Mark and about his work and the equipment and projects that he's been a part of, also Aqua Boogie, you can go to markcasey.com