Pete Zuccarini recounts his journey from spearfishing in Key Biscayne to shooting major films like Life of Pi and Jurassic World, detailing the chaos of filming across the Amazon and the technical feat of a seven-day, one-take underwater sequence for Life of Pi. He praises directors Harmony Korine and Alejandro Landes while highlighting his environmental work on ocean acidification and plastic pollution. Reflecting on near-fatal shark encounters and air shortages, Zuccarini advises aspiring filmmakers that accessible tools like iPhones now lower barriers, urging creators to prioritize unique storytelling over immediate commercial success. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Underwater Photography Origins00:03:35
Thank you.
Pete Zuccherini is an underwater cinematographer and native Floridian who is known for shooting big budget feature movies, some of which include Pirates of the Caribbean, Life of Pi, The Hunger Games, Spider-Man, Suicide Squad, Jurassic World, Terminator Salvation, Spring Breakers, The Beach Bum, End of the Blue, as well as TV shows like Ballers on HBO, Breaking Bad, Bloodline.
He's filmed commercials for brands like Dior, Armani, Sandals Resorts, Bud Light.
Adidas, Levi's, ESA, and the U.S. Navy.
Today we met up with Pete at his home in Key Biscayne and he took us around Biscayne Bay where he grew up diving and flats fishing and where he first started doing underwater photography and film.
So I grew up on Key Biscayne which is connected by a bridge to Miami so it's really more a suburb of Miami than anything even though geologically if you look at a map it would look like the kind of the beginning of the Florida Keys.
Growing up in this area, this is kind of your first adventure, like Soldier's Key, Ragged One, Two, Three, Boca Chita Sands, Elliott, and then a few more islands onto North Key Largo.
You know, in our small boats, we would like two of us get in the water, one stay in the boat, and we would drift with our Hawaiian slings and spear some snapper and things in the channels.
And then after we'd catch a few fish, we would stop for lunch, and then when the tide would turn, we'd clean our fish and we'd have like A few heads and things left over, and we'd hang them off the boat.
And when the tide would turn back out, the water would get kind of funky and green, not so pleasant for diving.
Yeah.
And sharks would come in that patrol this area and out in the ocean.
And in our little boats, we'd have giant sharks coming up the back of the boat.
We didn't really have a purpose for them, we just liked seeing them.
So when we'd clean our fish, we'd hang the fish so the sharks would come by.
Right.
And then we would just take pictures and scream at them because it was exciting to see them.
It was definitely my early. exposure to being fascinated by sharks, you know, having a 14-foot boat and a 14-foot hammerhead nosing at the back of it trying to like, you know, bite off a mangrove snapper head.
That just transitioned into taking photos and jumping in the water?
So eventually, when I was, you know, about 11 years old, I used, I wanted to get an underwater camera, and my dad was like, well, you know, how are you going to do that?
Yeah.
So, my dad made a good deal for me, but it was maybe a better deal for him.
He said, I'll buy you a lawnmower and then you can make money so you can buy your own, you know, your underwater camera mowing people's lawns on the island.
So, and then for him to pay for the lawnmower, I had to mow our lawn basically for the rest of my life.
So, it was like a good deal for him too.
What kind of camera did you get?
I bought a Pentax K1000 and an Ike Light housing.
Okay.
And that was my first camera.
And I shot a lot with that, with a 28 millimeter lens.
And I learned a lot about underwater photography in those days.
The Lawnmower Deal00:06:50
Like, so how does someone like you get started in a world like this?
I mean, obviously, there's a point where anyone picks up a video camera, but like, to go from there to where you are, it's like you've reached the summit of what someone can achieve as a filmmaker.
Well, I don't know, but I mean, I'm sure there's some people out there, I know that there's some people out there doing some beautiful stuff with wildlife, which is where I started, that, you know, may or may not be interested in.
Narrative features, which is what I've been doing mostly the last few years.
But I think I've just been really blessed and focused on honing my craft of understanding how to tell stories with cameras underwater.
And it's really, you know, filmmaking is inherently a collaborative medium, so it's really about good communication with directors and directors of photography and performers to get it all together and make it.
Make something cool.
And you must film like, what, five to six movies a year, something like that?
Yeah, I do probably, on average, I do probably five or six movies a year, and one of them will be water, like, have a lot of water.
So, five or six movies that have a water scene, and then one movie that has a significant water component.
So, like, in years past, say, A Pirates of the Caribbean has a lot of water, but then I might do.
Films like Into the Wild that have a water scene in them, or Motorcycle Diaries that has a water scene in it, but then come back to a film like In the Heart of the Sea or Life of Pi that has a significant water component to it, which would take up a big portion of my year.
Sometimes I might do a scene that only requires a day or two in a tank or the ocean, and other times it's two weeks, sometimes it's two months.
Or sometimes it's a year.
On Breaking Bad.
How much did you actually film of that?
Was it like a pool scene?
I just went into a pool and filmed that little.
Yeah, a little teddy bear floating around that became a little motif throughout that.
I happened, actually, I did that scene just because I happened to be in New Mexico where they were shooting when I was working on Terminator Salvation.
How chaotic is your life having to travel?
It seems like you don't stay in one spot for very long.
You have to go from.
From Florida to freaking Columbia to California?
Well, I'm based in Key Biscayne, Florida, which is an island connected to Miami through a causeway.
But it's a lot of travel for water work.
You know, usually do some ocean or river location and then go back to a studio to do close ups, pieces that you didn't get in the natural location, or maybe they want to do a performance with an actor that wasn't available to go through a rapid river or something.
Right.
So it's commonly like doing stunts first, working out the action in the wild place, and then coming back to a studio water body somewhere to do more controlled light and performance.
Right.
Out of all those movies you've done, what is your most memorable or craziest experience that you ever had?
I worked on a film called Diarios de Motocicleta, which is a story about Che Guevara.
That was set in the Amazonian Peru.
Walter Sales was the director.
Gabriel Garcia Bernal was the lead.
And I get a call from a friend of mine who's a producer saying, We've got the director insists that we swim at night across the part of the Amazon that Che Guevara actually swam across.
And all the locals that are helping them with their water safety are saying it's basically.
Impossible that it's, I'm not going to say haunted, but basically, those are the kind of language that was being used that it's just a death trap.
And they had some very unusual ideas about trying to like rope off the river, but there's like 20,000 pound trees floating down the river.
When the Amazon swells from a rain, it pulls part of the bank down into the water.
In fact, the week before we shot, it pulled half of our set homes into the water.
And I was tasked with figuring out how to get the actors swimming in this real part of the river section.
And it's kind of funny because I had just finished a wildlife.
Show about a mother alligator in a remote part of Florida, and I had a great herpetologist that had been working in this part of Peru, and I knew they'd come back from there.
So I got his guidance on a few things.
You know, we reviewed sort of checking for dragouts from crocodilians, and piranhas are not nocturnal, so we didn't have to worry about those.
So there was this little fish that was rumored to be able to swim up your urethra that is like a legendary, you know, painful and Damaging thing.
So then I had another friend who had been a bush doctor down in that area.
He had worked in like, you know, like Doctors Without Borders kind of program.
And he gave me some guidance on some type of snail that lays eggs that get on you when you're in the standing water.
And that if you let them sit on you for more than 24 hours, they'll like burrow in your skin and eat your cartilage.
But there was a solution for every one of these calamities.
And I went down there sort of armed with the whole quiver of.
Of protective measures.
And we got the scene of him swimming across the river and then swimming up onto this muddy bank, and all the lepers from the leper colony come down and pull him out of the mud.
It was a beautiful scene.
It was really a great experience.
And I was one of two Americans on the project.
There was a special effects department from Italy, there was a stunt team from France, there was like people from all over the world, and we were all living in this remote hotel.
In the Amazon area of Peru, about two hours boat ride from Iquitos.
And sometimes the biggest box office films are not necessarily the most phenomenal work experiences.
Fluid Amazon Sequences00:09:08
Sometimes they are.
Sometimes they're great experiences.
Like on Life of Pi, Aang Lee is like a true artur.
I mean, everything has to be as he imagines it.
There was a scene where the main character.
Pi has to, they're crossing a big ocean crossing with their family and their whole zoo in the hold, all the animals, and he goes out for like a starlight walk on the deck.
And he goes out on deck, and at first it's like very invigorating.
He goes, a spray is hitting him in the face, and he starts looking out the open ocean, and then he looks forward and he sees that this is a really heavy duty storm surge, like this.
Giant swells washing over the bow, and he sees people getting washed over the deck, and he realizes they're in an emergency.
So he has to run back into the boat and go down three flights of stairs.
And when he gets back to where he came from, the last companionway that he walks through is underwater.
And Aang, because the film has so many fantastical elements, you know, very painterly elements, a lot of things that are animated and sort of surreal and hyper real, because there's so much fantasy in the film, he wanted the photography to be super real, meaning that even though they're going to paint in all of these glorious things, the actual actor and the camera will have a very accurate photographic relationship.
So there won't be just cuts or.
Or computer generated dissolves.
He wanted the actor to run down three flights of stairs, go underwater, come back, and go back underwater in one take, which was about a minute long, but it's a 3D camera in an underwater housing that weighed about 200 pounds.
So going down three flights of stairs at full speed with a teenager and then diving underwater and coming out is very technically challenging.
If you watch the film, it looks very fluid and seamless, like someone was running with a GoPro that was smooth.
It's a 200 pound 3D native rig.
How long did it take to get that shot?
Well, we started off looking at the set and realized it was impossible to move the camera through without supporting the sheer weight of the camera with some type of system from above.
So we had to, well, it took about seven days to get the shot, if you include having to redesign the set.
Because we had to, I'd run down the stairs with the camera suspended on a sliding track and a bungee, and then as I took my step off the last flight of stairs, the stairs would fly away.
The grips rigged it phenomenally.
And then the next set, it swung away.
And then the final step, I have to go full speed.
And we had just worked through all the move.
Then that camera has to get pulled underwater, floated back up, and pulled back underwater.
Because to have a buoyant 200 pound camera and a camera that can sink, that creates its own sets of challenges.
So we had just walked through the whole process, and we get a note that Aang wants to try it right now.
And we had just done it with baby steps.
So, you know, we did a take, and of course, he was like, faster, faster.
And then on the third take, it was, I said, We can go a lot faster, but it's a 200 pound camera.
It's like a wrecking ball.
If he slips or anything, this camera's just going to mow him down.
It's just, it's too much inertia, even though we have it supported.
And the stunt coordinator had been working with Sudaj, the actor, said he can do it.
You know, he's very confident.
He's moving down the steps great.
So he went full speed.
I went full speed, dove in after him.
The feet disappear in the bubbles.
He pops back up.
And we thought we had a pretty good pass, our third take, after working it out for seven days.
And I came up and I said, What did Aang think?
And they said, I don't know.
I said, What do you mean you don't know?
They said, He left the studio.
He went over back to the other stage to work with First Unit.
And we later found out that, you know, we got it, but the movie was so focused on getting what he had in his mind and moving on to the next thing that he just, like, wandered over back to his other set and kept working.
Later, no, I mean, we got it.
He watched it, then he just went.
But it was very anticlimactic for our team because we've been working so hard.
We literally rebuilt the whole set around our grip process so that we could move the camera through this space.
And then, yeah, knowing that you got it was him moving on to the next shot, which is not unusual with sort of auteur directors that are just laser focused on.
On illustrating their vision.
You also did Spring Breakers and the Beach Pump with Harmony Korean.
What was it like working with him?
We're very fortunate to have a filmmaker like Harmony because he's one of those filmmakers that I couldn't say, I didn't ask him this directly, but he has,
you know, edgy stories he wants to tell, you know, that deal with sex and drugs and growing up and things that are awkward for people to deal with that are right on the, you know, things that are not legal, things that a lot of people.
And studios shy away from.
Harmony is fearless.
He takes it on the way he sees it.
And just to be around filmmakers like that is fantastic because so much of our industry can, you know, is at risk for getting watered down, you know, for commercial success.
I think he just makes the film as he wants to make it.
And I feel really lucky to have been part of a couple of his projects.
How close do you guys work together?
Like, how close do you guys communicate when you're shooting?
I don't know how much of the movie you actually shot.
Oh, I didn't do very much for either of his films, just quick scenes.
A two on one sex scene in a swimming pool and a conversation in a swimming pool.
It's a handful of swimming pool scenes that I did in Spring Breakers that had dialogue and some, you know, a sex scene with James Franco and Vanessa Hudgens.
And once, I mean, I feel very fortunate as a niche water specialist, my scene, even if it's a small scene for the film, is usually super important or they wouldn't be.
Spending time putting people underwater, bringing in my team.
So, in that moment, the director is working with me one-on-one to work through how to optimize the water for the shot, and it's very rewarding.
It's my favorite part of the job, really, is getting to meet these super talented directors.
His vision is very pure in the sense that he aligns himself with producers that allow him to make the film that he intends to make.
And that's really refreshing.
I just came off of a film from a filmmaker you probably won't have heard of, but you probably will in the future, named Alejandro Landes, a Colombian filmmaker who made a film called Monos, which is teenage Colombian revolutionaries holding an American woman who's like an engineer hostage in Colombia and taking orders from their revolutionary sort of adult supervision.
And it's sort of a Lord of the Flies meets very difficult political scenarios that exist in countries like Colombia that still have ongoing battles between extremists from both sides.
And I think when you see this film, they got this Mika Levy, who's like super talented.
DJ musician to do the score.
I don't know if you've ever heard of a film called Under the Skin.
It's a film that she did that.
The sound design and music, it takes it into.
It doesn't feel like a story set in any particular time period.
It's very much a fable.
Really?
Really wonderful.
And the locations are just stunning.
These mountaintops where you're up above the clouds and they found.
And then there's a rapid river flowing through a really dense Colombian rainforest.
For us, it's really phenomenal locations to set this story.
Another thing about, and you mentioned the soundtrack, like when it comes to Harmony's films, the soundtracks, like some of the segments are like music videos.
Oh, yeah.
It's like multiple music videos.
No, Spring Breakers was really innovative that way.
Mangrove Testing Grounds00:06:06
Super cool.
When I first started, you know, many years ago now, I did all documentaries.
And I did wildlife programs on sharks and alligators and ecosystems.
And then I got into some shooting of commercials and IMAX films and then movies.
Now, because I really, you know, because I'm a water person, I love the ocean, I love everything that lives in the ocean.
A year doesn't go by that I don't contribute to someone's documentary story that's taking on issues ranging from acidification of the ocean, from too much CO2, to too much plastic entering the ocean.
I mean, there's always marine mammal captivity.
There's so many issues that are important to me.
Grown up in the sea, and most underwater filmmakers or underwater camera people have a lot of concern and almost sadness seeing how quickly things have changed.
And everyone feels responsible to contribute to that.
If you have skills in media, then you want to devote a certain amount of your year. to really using that to get the message out of things that, you know, media for change, you know, really that can help change things for the better.
I always have used the mangroves as sort of like a I mean, from a practical standpoint, it's kind of like a good testing ground for like when I'm looking at new cameras and lenses and equipment.
It's always been sort of like a like a meditative space for me, mangroves.
It's like a default place I go to be when I'm not sure what I'm going to be doing next.
In a way, it's like my nursery ground.
They always talk about the mangroves as a nursery ground for fish because there's baby snapper and lobster and grouper and all those little things in there.
But I grew up snorkeling around the mangroves.
And if I have any kind of underwater homing instinct, It's to the mangroves.
Really?
Yeah, like I grew up learning, like, and the spookiest thing you ever see when you're a child is swimming underneath the roots in the darkness and a light shaft revealing like a giant snapper face with teeth.
So, like, my earliest childhood memories of like dealing with the mystery and unknown of being underwater is being in that sort of dark, light shaft lit environment of the mangroves where you never knew which face would appear.
And it's gotten even more interesting now because when I was a kid, you know, there were only 200 American. Crocodiles.
Crocodiles need to have like a beach that's undisturbed to feel confident nesting and laying eggs.
Okay.
So they created that down at the Turkey Point power plant, and as a result, the crocodiles have come back.
You know, I don't know how dangerous they would be for people.
Obviously, I would give them respect because, you know, a big crocodile is a big crocodile.
Yeah, I mean, it's a crocodile.
Right.
So they're moving both.
directions.
They're coming my way and your way on the west coast of Florida as well.
I'm sure you're going to start seeing crocodiles up where you live at some point.
And there could be a crocodile here.
You know, when you shoot for a really long time, you do tend to like, you know, maybe depending on your definition, but you maybe do too much of it.
Especially if you're doing it full, it starts as a hobby and becomes a profession.
You're shooting all the time.
So, yeah.
Like, I'd love to jump in the water with nothing in my hand.
Yeah, and I do do that.
And some of my best experiences have been doing that.
But the balance, it's always a balancing, like how much of what you're doing that you enjoy doing.
In the last year and a half, I was shooting like five days a week for 14 months straight for a great project, but someone else's project.
So when I had some time off, I was sort of torn between just not touching a camera because I had a camera in my hand so much or just craving like doing some photography that got me invested in, you know, in some of my own.
Like full creative freedom.
Yeah, just to have creative freedom and do my own thing because I'm, you know, I'm very loyal.
As a crew person, I serve the art tour.
If there's a director, I don't do anything but think about how to make that movie better when I'm on it.
Nothing's for me.
It's all for making the movie better.
And if you don't have that attitude, it's so hard to make great stuff with collaborative projects like that.
You've got to be all in.
It's a 12-team.
Yeah, it's got to be all about the movie or the director's vision.
Anything else, you know, you shouldn't have the job.
I mean, in my mind.
Right.
So, when I get a day, a week off, even the weekends, you're kind of still thinking about what you could do next week to make the week go better.
So, like, now that I've had a few weeks off, I went to Columbia with my family.
I brought a camera, and then there's a few times I was really glad I had it.
You know, like, just like coming around a corner of mangroves and there was a giant waterfall.
Yeah.
And I was like, ah, this is nice.
Dolphins and Sharks00:15:15
I'm never going to be here again.
It's nice to capture it.
Yeah.
Experience it too.
But I was just going to show you a picture.
Like years ago, when I was doing a film on humpback whales in Tahiti, like you said, like, you know, sometimes you need to have that experience.
Also, it's good for you as a filmmaker to see things a little differently without the equipment.
Right, right.
And I told my still photographer, Tim Calver, who was with me, I was like, I don't know if people really understand the scale of a whale.
And he was like, Of course, everybody knows how big whales are.
This whale was hanging out, waiting for her baby, she was nursing.
She was in like 60 feet of water.
The baby was at the surface, just going up and down.
She was very chill.
She was already kind of accustomed to us being around.
We weren't bothering her.
And I did that picture.
Tim shot that of me just like taking in the mom of the whale, mom waiting for the baby.
How deep are you right now?
Maybe like between 60 and 70 feet.
But it's good for scale because there's no forced perspective.
I'm just right in front of the whale and you can see exactly how big a whale is compared to a human.
Let's see what the water feels like.
I haven't been in the water here in a while.
Yeah, it gets so warm.
I think that's one of the things about Florida, creating a lot of like lifelong water people in different places.
I mean, like, if you travel a lot in California and Hawaii, Or Tahiti, where people grow up in giant surf.
Right, right.
When you're from Florida and you surf, you get a lot of razzing like, is there even surf in Florida?
And, you know, arguably compared to those places, there isn't really.
But people like Kelly Slater, and, you know, there's a handful of people we could list that have come out of Florida and gotten really into it.
And I think the warm water is a factor.
Yeah.
And maybe, like, people spend more time in the water when they're really little in Florida.
Yeah.
Because it's, like, easier.
Whereas like in California or Hawaii, it's so hardcore that only like the people who are really brought into it by super seasoned people get exposed to it.
Whereas in Florida, like many more people get into the water very young because it's so soothing.
This area, I've seen giant sharks out there on these flats.
Oh yeah.
Out here?
On these flats even.
Yeah.
Any size shark could be in these waters.
How did you meet Rick O'Berry and getting involved with the dolphin?
Well, interestingly, when I was a young child, Rick O'Berry was doing his first research projects at Mash to Point, which is right behind us here, or actually off in the distance there.
And after he left Sea Aquarium, he was sort of, I think, in his sort of formative years where he really realized he was headed towards a life of commitment to action.
To keep animals out of captivity, dolphins and whales and orcas.
Yeah, he was a sea aquarium dolphin trainer and handler and maintaining those tanks and things.
And then that led to working for Rico Browning, who was the head of all the marine operations and dolphin training and performances for the Flipper TV series many years ago.
And Rick, I think, was a.
Very fortunate to go along for the ride with Rico Browning, you know, who was very seasoned at dealing with filmmaking and wildlife.
And I think Rick sort of learned the ropes of that.
But then as time went on, I think he kind of saw a darker side to what animals that are performing for our entertainment really exist there is, you know, animals that are doing work for food and not always happily the way they might have.
Because dolphins look like they're smiling all the time, which is sort of a curse to the way their face is shaped compared to how we view that.
But Rick was very committed to that.
And actually, the way I met him was really quite close to here.
A cove away from here, I was making my first documentary called About Biscayne Bay, about the bay that we're sitting in right now.
And I was doing a film about the history of Biscayne Bay and the current state of ecology.
And I was filming some rays and some schools of fish about half a mile from here.
And all of a sudden, there's a dolphin in my lens, right up against me, looking at me right into my lens.
And I'm in murky water, so it was a little stunning.
Actually, it was a little scary because this big animal with his eyeball right up to me.
And then he left and he came back with a sea turtle underneath his neck.
And he was like guiding it along.
And then he like pulled it, pushed it up to my lens, and kind of spun it around right in front of my lens.
And then he stared at me, like, what do you think of that?
And I was like, what's going on here?
Like, this is amazing.
I can't believe I'm getting this footage.
Like, I thought I was having this breakthrough moment with dolphins.
And so I stayed in this cove for like three days, and the dolphins were letting me film them every day.
And I was like, this is crazy.
And then all of a sudden, someone, you know, started talking to me and they made a phone call.
And it turned out these dolphins had like escaped from Ocean Reef Club.
And maybe Rick O'Berry had something to do about it.
I'm not really sure.
So they were like trained dolphins?
They were like dolphins that had been in captivity that were like out in the wild, and I just stumbled into them.
I had encountered them, no one really knew where they were.
And then when someone talked to me about what I was doing, they called someone who knew about it, and all of a sudden, like the world descended upon my little Biscayne Bay documentary.
Rick Trout showed up, Rick O'Berry showed up, like five different dolphin activists showed up, and then the people from Ocean Reef showed up, and then they hired a big like Old school dolphin capture team that they imported from Mobile, Alabama, that had big nets and lobster boats.
And I was in the middle of it all.
And I was in my 20s, so I was kind of fearless at that time.
And I wasn't afraid of legal things at that point in my life without having children or any response, ownership of anything.
And at one point, I had the dolphins behind my boat, and we were tossing them fish to lure them away from the capture boats.
And I was on the nightly news.
It was kind of a crazy thing.
Anyway, Rick and I chatted, and then he invited me down to go film with him when he released some.
Dolphins that were sort of like a.
I think they had done some military work of some kind.
I'm not sure their background, but I filmed him releasing some dolphins down near Key West, I think.
Right.
And it was like clandestine, totally probably illegal, I guess, because he was ducking for cover at every turn.
And then it was, right or wrong, it was very exciting for me.
And some of that footage ended up.
Getting licensed and used in The Cove, which is the movie about the Japanese Taiji Cove, Killing Cove.
And in the backstory of Rick O'Berry and how he came to be an activist to try and stop The Killing Cove, they used some of that footage from that first clandestine mission I went on with him.
Movies like The Cove and Blood Dolphin, that shit is so terrible.
It makes your blood boil watching it.
It's just so sick.
That was probably about 10 years ago to today.
Has anything changed with that?
Yeah.
I mean, yes and no.
So, Rick O'Berry and his son Lincoln, they're very much going after every single dolphin in captivity, basically.
So, they pretty much pride themselves on having a database of almost every dolphin, where it is and where it came from, and what are the challenges to try and get it free.
And some of them, yeah.
And he's at a point in his life where he doesn't give a fuck.
He'll make enemies.
He'll cross.
He's like a vigilante.
Yeah, he is a vigilante.
And, you know, he has a reputation that some people, you know, don't care for him, even on the activist side, because he's not afraid to cross boundaries and hurt people's feelings.
He's, you know, he's.
He is, yeah, definitely kind of a vigilante.
And there's dolphins he can't save, like dolphins that are damaged or dolphins that are in.
Like he was trying to get these dolphins out of Egypt, and there became a lot of dangerous elements to it that were life threatening for the people, the activists on the ground, and he had to pull out.
There's things he tries for that are frustrating death threats, lawsuits all the time.
I mean, that's a tough road to hoe, to be a full time activist.
And going after a lot of these dolphinariums, these dolphin zoos, they're run by giant corporations with lots of power and influence.
You know, those are tough people to go against.
Right.
Shooting documentaries and shooting movies are so, that's so, such a different, such a different world.
A lot of times when I'm underwater and I'm shooting stuff, even with a GoPro, I kind of get lost.
Like when I'm trying to film something or chase a fish, like I'll get lost in the shot that I'm trying to get.
Yeah.
I'll forget about my surroundings.
Yeah.
When I was in the Cayman Islands shooting, you don't want to make a kill fee.
Right.
Like a what?
Kilfee.
A killfee?
Yeah.
What's that?
You know, those people who keep like, they're doing a selfie and they fall off the cliff.
And then they die.
There's like a whole series of, like, there's like 20 something deaths a year now.
Is that a thing?
Yeah, it's totally a thing.
Oh my God.
So when you brought that up, I thought, well, you're talking about there's all these people who die doing selfies, but you're talking about just getting so caught up in the shot that other things are happening around that, you know, that maybe you needed more eyes in your head.
Right.
Like I've heard a guy who did a war documentary, he was like in the middle of a firefight.
Oh, yeah.
And he just like completely was not even worried about his safety, bullets fell.
He was only worried about getting shot.
And he realized afterwards, like, holy fuck, what was I doing?
No, when I first started in this business, my first like five years of Underwater filmmaking were like 20 shark films in a row.
So, when sharks, you know, for the most part, don't really bite people.
I mean, you hear of the bites and they're super sensationalized because it's terrifying to think of something, an animal, biting us and maiming us or killing us.
But the truth is, like, so few people are bitten by sharks that statistically it's not really a thing.
It's just scary to think about.
But when you're working with sharks, you're asked to swim close to sharks, like, While they're doing feeding behaviors, your odds go up, right, of maybe having a bad encounter.
And so, in the years that I've been working, I've seen some terrible things happen.
I've seen some accidents happen.
And I've had a couple of close calls.
But to speak to your question of being caught up in the moment, I was doing a scene in Into the Blue, which was like an underwater treasure story with Paul Walker and Jessica Alba.
It was a teenage thrill movie, it was a fun movie.
Not a huge box office success, but a lot of water people can appreciate it because there was a lot of time hunting for things underwater, and it was fun if you like being underwater.
And there was a scene where we were filming these sharks like mauling this guy.
And we had a guy in chainmail in a feeding scenario where sharks were ramming into him, and it was pretty chaotic.
And I have really good safety divers around me that are watching so the shark doesn't get overly curious about my rig or my camera.
And they might be, you know, redirecting a shark or like just like getting me to become aware of a shark just so I know where it's coming from.
And at one point I was like, they were pulling me backwards away from the scene.
I was like, I'm like, I'm getting a great shot.
Why are they pulling me backwards?
And then when we came up from the dive, they were like, man, I can't believe how you just stayed composed on the scene while that shark was like dragging you away.
And I had like a chainmail legs and arms.
The booties over my chainmail, and the shark bit my heel and bit like the hard parts of the booty and was like tugging me away from the scene.
But I never felt it really.
I just felt pressure because the sharks do, you know, for that type of shark works.
So they thought I was being super cool.
I probably, if I had looked back, might not have been so cool because it was, you know, there were substantial sharks.
But so yeah, I was maybe overly caught up in the moment.
But yeah, what happened to me was I was on the Cayman Wall.
Scuba diving through like the caves down there, and there's like these caves you swim through, and it's a while before you can find an opening.
Yeah, I am familiar with them.
And I wasn't paying attention to my air at all the whole time.
I had a guy with me, like guiding me, and he was like checking my air.
Yeah, and some of those caves exit deep.
Yeah, and we're like deep, we're probably 100 feet down, yeah, maybe 90 feet down, and all of a sudden, I'm out of air.
Oh my goodness, and I'm looking at my gauge, I got no air, and I look at the guy that's like 10 feet in front of me, I'm like that, and he had to give me his octopus.
And I started shooting up to the surface and grabbing by my ankle.
So I didn't shoot up.
You probably saved your life.
I would have probably died or got the bends really bad.
You might be paralyzed right now.
That was like, I mean, that was my worst experience of that.
Yeah, I've seen a few people get bent bad, and it's really bad.
If money wasn't an object, and you could shoot anything you wanted, and you have, I guess, if you had all the money in the world, you'd have to worry about ever working for money.
What would you shoot?
What's your favorite thing to shoot?
Dream Projects vs Reality00:05:52
Well, that's an interesting question, I think.
Would it be documentaries, or would it be feature films?
Oh, it would not be one thing only.
No.
I mean, there's definitely things I like about all the different films.
I mean, I certainly would put some time into doing documentaries to get the message out about certain sensitive wildlife situations that are close to my heart.
You know, right now, everybody, all the filmmakers are super focused on plastic going in the ocean, so that's not, you know, we can't ignore that at all.
But, you know, probably some stories locally.
I go after it.
I mean, all the things that I would do if I had all the money in the world, I'm kind of doing.
There's a couple of stories that I've wanted to tell, some films that I've wanted to make that I've been starting to shoot tests for on the side that are clearly my dream project.
That are there, it's a science fiction story that would take advantage of incredible wildlife things that I've learned how to film.
Some fantastic freediver friends of mine that I've developed a relationship with how to move through the water and get shots that are difficult to get.
Like, for example, William Truebridge, who's one of the top freedivers in the world, still probably holds the record for swimming with no equipment to depth.
He swims like 340 something feet with no fins, weight, mask, just a Speedo, and he swims 340 something feet.
Down and up.
And like a handful of freedivers and some of his friends that I've gotten to know, I have a science fiction story that would be centered around this group of divers in the water that I've been wanting to tell for a while.
That I'm starting to accumulate some pieces to do my sort of sizzle cell thing.
I'm hoping to hit up some of the many producers and directors that I've gotten relationships to.
Hopefully, you know, I'll get some support that I'm looking for.
And then if I don't, then I'll have to.
I'll have to only do it if I get to where you said, where I have all the money and I don't have to worry about it.
What advice would you have to a kid in today's world?
Coming up in media and filmmaking and with everything on the internet?
You know, when you started.
When you asked me that question before and I didn't have an answer right away and I thought about it a little bit and I've been asked that before because I'm doing something that I dreamed of doing and I'm doing it now and I'm making a living.
I'm supporting my wife and kids.
Well, I'm not necessarily supporting them, but I'm.
Able to contribute to a healthy household that I'm doing it for a living.
And I thought, I'm lucky.
I'm lucky I have this job.
But whenever people ask me about what someone that's getting into it now would do, it's so different.
When I started working in the industry, I had to find ways to be able to afford a roll of 16 millimeter film and process it.
I sometimes shot a roll of film, and even though you shouldn't sit on an exposed roll of film, I couldn't afford to get it processed right away.
Or I sent it to the lab, and I couldn't afford to get it out of the lab because I didn't have enough money to get it out of the lab.
The idea that you can go out with your iPhone or, you know, if you have more of a budget to go out with these DSLRs or mirrorless systems now that are making images with more resolution than film did back when we were working, it's phenomenal.
Like, so many people can just go make a film now.
We had so many obstacles financially to making a film then.
And if you chose to do it the sort of guerrilla low budget route, you know, you were shooting on.
You know, three quarter UMatic cassettes.
I mean, we had the quality was so much less and the gear was so much heavier.
And even to get decent, it was like now everyone can make a film and they have social media, they have YouTube channels.
There's so many great avenues and outlets, you know, for showing your work that I'm not sure I'm equipped to guide somebody in terms of how to make a career out of it.
But I do feel like I am in touch with a few basic principles, which is, you know, don't lose sight of like the reasons you're making films.
The story that you're telling is your unique vision and how you get there.
There are many different paths, but I feel like a lot of people make the mistake of trying to like immediately work on commercial projects and learn the ropes of commercial filmmaking when and then a few years go by and all of a sudden they have a commercial.
Films that make Money.
So, like, you can make a film that goes on social media, doesn't necessarily have a clear path to making money.
So, if you're making a film that's, you know, already has a distribution, or like now, I would think you would want to make films and get them out there and, you know, learn your craft, your storytelling craft, with feedback from your peers through social media, or like to me, it's no time is better than. now to be able to make films because the equipment is just phenomenal.
You can make films for free.
There's so many different routes to getting to where you're trying to go.