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“I want to put as much bite into the image as possible so I will usually shoot without using any 85s and have HMIs instead which are a daylight-bal- anced light source. With underwater stuff, most people expect the light source to be from above and there- fore for it to punch through the water. HMIs punch through a lot more than the Tungsten.
“If we are shooting in the Red Sea, for instance, I will have a stop on 50 Daylight of between t4 and t5.6, which means we can use the fine low grain film stocks. There’s a tremendous light reading underwa- ter, much more so than people would appreciate.
“If I’m working in a studio and want to do slow-mo, I would probably move to the 250 Daylight, but, of course, those are also very fine grain these days so there’s always enough stop underwater for us to work with.”
You’d think that Valentine would by now have pretty much fulfilled all his ambitions. But there’s one left, to direct his first feature film. He’s co- written a project about pioneering Louis Boutan who around the turn of the 20th Century was “more or less the first person to take photographs underwater.
“My film will reveal the techniques he devised combined with a love story involving himself, his girlfriend and the sea.” Sounds just a bit autobio- graphical. ■ QUENTIN FALK
Shackleton and Castaway were originated on Fujicolor Motion Picture Negative
“If I’m inside
a shipwreck, perhaps 100ft down in the Red Sea, away from our boat and the production people, I can record digitally everything we’re doing.”
MIKE VALENTINE BSC