American Cinematographer - September 2014 - 34

Cinematographer Jules O'Loughlin, ACS (bottom
and top right, wearing plaid shirt) operates a
Red Epic Fusion rig. He is flanked by
gaffer/key grip Aaron Walker (in beige jacket) and
1st AC/stereographer Manning Tillman.

used Fujinon 6.3-101mm f1.8 zooms and
recorded 4:2:2 at 23.98p to a single SR tape
for both eyes via tethered HDCam-SR VTRs,
which limited movement to their respective
decks, although independent cables
running to different parts of the vessel
allowed the crew to reposition the cameras
with minimal wrangling. A self-contained
ENG-style Sony PMW-TD300 was O'Loughlin's most maneuverable 3-D option, but its
fixed interocular meant keeping a distance
of at least 8' from the subject.
"Dry equipment" included an SI-2K
in a side-by-side configuration on a
Steadicam for specialty shots, and a singleeye Arri Alexa Classic. (The SI-2K recorded to
a 1 Beyond Wrangler Mini 3D using the
CineForm Raw codec, while the Alexa
footage was recorded in ProRes 4:4:4:4 to
SxS cards.) Several GoPro Dual Hero kits
were positioned about the vessel, including
34

September 2014

atop the crane hook that lowered the
Deepsea Challenger into the water. "The
GoPros were great because we could put
them in places where our full-sized 3-D rigs
didn't fit, but they were also limited by their
size, fixed interocular and image quality,"
O'Loughlin explains, noting that no GoPro
footage made it into the Imax version of the
film. "There's some in the TV release. On
television it's easier to get away with mixing
different cameras."
Submersible dives and recoveries
were also covered by aerial-unit director of
photography Ian Thorburn, ACS and underwater camera operators Simon Christidis,
ACS and Charlie Arneson. CPG manufactured a custom underwater housing for the
Epic Fusion, and a single-eye Canon EOS 5D
Mark II was used in an underwater rig for
additional coverage.
Operating with limited resources in
an unpredictable environment meant the
filmmakers couldn't afford to be precious
about technical perfection. Consequently,
the film contains more stereo post-conversion than initially planned. "We didn't plan
for any," says Cameron. "But then we
ended up converting about 20 percent of
the film, which I think is perfectly valid for a
documentary. The most important thing is
to get the shot."
After waiting out days of inclement
weather, on March 26, 2012 the Deepsea
Challenger was finally ready to make its 7mile descent to the bottom of the Mariana
American Cinematographer

Trench. For this journey, the filmmakers
needed a specialized 3-D camera system
that could operate at full ocean depth,
where the pressure reaches 16,500 pounds
per square inch. No system yet existed, so
Cameron, Pace, submersible co-designer
Ron Allum, electrical engineer Blake Henry
and imaging technical lead Adam Gobi
created one, turning the Deepsea Challenger into an integrated stereoscopic imaging platform.
"Our goal was to create a small,
lightweight camera no bigger than the size
of your fist," says Cameron. Henry designed
the camera electronics out of his lab in California, while Gobi led a development team
in Sydney, handling the imaging workflow,
optics and housing design. The product of
this research and development is the "minicam," a solid-state HD imager built around
a 1/2.3" 10-megapixel Aptina CMOS
sensor inside a 2-pound titanium housing.
During the dive, four external and
two internal imagers output a 24-frame 10bit 1080p signal over 1.5G HD-SDI singlemode fiber multiplexed with camera control
from the pilot sphere. Stereo pairs were
fixed at a 55mm interocular with convergence at 6'. Outside the submersible, clear
acrylic domes protected the mini-cam's Smount optics, a combination of Evetar and
Lensation lenses, the 35mm-equivalent of
which were approximately 28mm at f2.0.
Inside the cramped 43" pilot sphere, the
focal length was approximately 24mm at

American Cinematographer - September 2014

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