FEATURE
Imagine being confined to a hospital bed. Now imagine soothing underwater imagery of a coral reef floating across your bedroom walls. HARRY BRUMPTON talks to a local company creating “virtual décor” for American hospitals.
THE AMAZING
WORLD OF
D
Film producer Lucy Trippet.
“Wrangling” creatures in the studio. diversity and species count in the southern hemisphere. Filming there is great because you see much larger numbers of creatures and you get a much greater diversity of species. I guess you could say you get a lot more bang for your buck,” Lucy said. “You can’t move for all the big or small, interesting, exciting and bizarre creatures absolutely everywhere. On a dive in New Guinea you’ll
26 STRADDIE ISLAND NEWS — 10 YEARS OF LIVING IN SIN
PHOTOS: PLANKTON PRODUCTIONS
unwich-based film production company, Plankton Productions, has a long history of providing material to television, in the very specialised field of underwater nature footage. It is a market that sits well with the Straddie lifestyle, says film producer Lucy Trippett. “I mainly do the production coordination, logistics, research and I’m also an underwater photographer,” Lucy told SIN. “My partner Dave [Hannan] is an underwater cinematographer. We do all the editing in the studio here,” she said from their Dunwich “bunker”. Dave gained international acclaim for his tropical coral reef images in his video Coral Sea Dreaming — An Evolving Balance, released in 1992. Last year, Plankton released an updated version, Coral Sea Dreaming — Awaken, a high definition film that took seven years to shoot. With decades of experience and an extensive library of marine footage, Plankton boasts clients from around the globe. Their footage is used in planetariums, was part of a package of images used to promote the London Olympics, is used in advertising and, now, is helping to heal the sick. “We’re just starting this new business selling imagery to hospitals in America,” Lucy said. “They’ve found that the use of relaxing underwater imagery can reduce the need for drugs.” Nearer to home, Plankton recently curated an outdoor projection of their underwater images onto the rock face of the South Gorge, Point Lookout. Though well known to locals in her role as captain for the Dunwich Volunteer Marine Rescue, Lucy and Dave travel often for their work. In recent years the pair has spent a lot of time filming in waters surrounding Papua New Guinea (PNG). “It’s part of the Coral Triangle, an area that covers parts of Indonesia, the Philippines and PNG. This area has the highest
get up to 20 interesting subjects per dive, whereas in more southern areas you might get 10 if you are lucky. “It’s just the way the region evolved; the warm and constrained ocean currents and shallow water led to a breeding and evolutionary boom. “Which is not to negate the diving down south — Tasmania has some of the best diving on the planet — but up north you don’t have to wear a dry suit!” Dry suit or not, Lucy says there are challenges to the art of underwater filming. “You’ve got to be organised,” she explains. “Filming at sea you are prey to the environmental conditions. It takes a lot longer to capture underwater sequences compared with on land, because you only have an hour and a half each dive. So you might do four or five dives a day but your time on each dive is limited. “It’s also a lot harder to “wrangle” creatures underwater — that’s where you manipulate creatures to behave in a certain way in order to get a film sequence. Like trying to get hermit crabs to change their shell or a shrimp to predate on a starfish. The strangest request we’ve had was from Discovery Channel. They wanted us to get a King crab to crush a glass bottle, with another crab inside, to show the power of the giant crab. It took two weeks and WE popped a bottle of champagne when I finally got the crab to do it.” This type of specialised wrangling is done in a studio, with the creatures in tanks or small pools and the camera mounted on a remotely operated optical bench. “Filming marine creatures is rarely glamorous; we’ve spent years filming coral spawning in a bucket in someone’s garage,” Lucy said. “Though diving at sunset in New Guinea certainly makes up for it.” It’s this combination of knowledge and technology that allows a little company off the edge of the east coast to sit at the cutting edge of the commercial film industry. SPRING 2011
PHOTO:PLANKTON PRODUCTIONS
For more info visit www.planktonproductions.com.au SPRING 2011
10 YEARS OF LIVING IN SIN — STRADDIE ISLAND NEWS 27