Shooting underwater VFX plates

Wildlife filming is about behaviour – I'm watching the animal, anticipating its movement and positioning the camera in the right place at the right moment. With VFX plates, the thinking changes. There may be no animal at all. There may not even be an obvious subject. Instead, I'm thinking about what the VFX team will need later. Where might the digital subject appear? What will the camera movement be? How much space needs to be available within the frame? What environmental details will help establish scale, depth and perspective? And perhaps most importantly: does the footage give the VFX team enough information for us to make the finished shot convincing together?

Underwater is never really static. Even when you're holding the camera still, the environment is moving around you. You're dealing with currents, changes in buoyancy, your own position in the water and the movement of the camera within that environment. After years of working underwater, you learn to anticipate those things rather than simply react to them. You start to understand how a current is going to affect a camera move, how a small change in your position can alter a composition, and how to make that movement work for the shot. For VFX plates, that becomes particularly important because the camera movement needs to be controlled and repeatable. The aim isn't necessarily to make the camera static. It's to make the movement intentional.

Underwater light has its own visual characteristics. Colour is absorbed with depth. Contrast changes. Sunlight filters through the surface. Particles catch the light. Shadows and caustics, the shifting patterns of light on the seabed, move with the surface above. All of those things become part of the photographic reference. If a digital creature is going to be placed into an underwater plate, it needs to feel as though it exists within the same physical environment. That means the VFX team needs more than a pretty background. They need the light, atmosphere, texture and movement of the real underwater world.

Underwater environments can be deceptive. Without familiar reference points, it can be surprisingly difficult to judge the size or distance of objects. A rock formation can look enormous from one angle and relatively small from another. A seabed can appear much closer or further away depending on visibility and water conditions. For VFX, establishing scale is critical. The relationship between the camera, the environment and whatever is eventually added digitally has to make physical sense.

After more than 20 years working as an underwater cinematographer, I understand the practical realities of filming beneath the surface: movement and buoyancy, light and visibility, wildlife behaviour and a constantly changing environment. Whether the camera is being used to capture a real animal, a human story, an environment or photographic plates for a visual-effects sequence, the fundamentals remain the same: understand the environment, control the camera, capture the detail, and give the story something real to build on. For productions using visual effects to extend or transform underwater environments, that photographic foundation can make all the difference.