The Cousteau's of the 21st Century Article

FRONT COVER

Guy and Anita, Cinematographers: “The Cousteau’s of the 21st Century”

'Offering unique, exceptional underwater images, Guy and Anita Chaumette are recognized for their underwater film productions. They explain the way they work'.

ARTICLE ABOVE

Interview with Guy and Anita Chaumette, Documentary Filmmakers.

“If you think one year ahead, plant some rice.

If you think ten years ahead, plant a tree.

But if you want to think one hundred years ahead, educate people!”. This is the phrase which Guy and Anita Chaumette, Producers of ‘The Reef’ wisely express.

Q/ Your documentary films continue to be incredibly succesful at Film Festivals worldwide. Did you expect to have this kind of success?

Guy Chaumette/ ‘Talking With Fishes’ has won numerous awards all over the world. Even though that’s what we were hoping for, it’s still pretty impressive! Its great to get the confirmation, although the extent of it is still a little surprising! The latest Award we received was in Estonia. We were invited to the Film Festival as Guests of Honour. People were asking for our autographs; It was quite strange! We went to present the ‘World Premiere’ of ‘the Perfect Reef’. In parallel, Talking With Fishes took part in the Film Festival competition and was Awarded with the ‘Special Prize of the Jury!’

Q/ Is all this success bringing new opportunities for you?

Anita Chaumette/ A lot of people are contacting us to enquire whether we will come and show our films to an audience. This weekend, we were in England, presenting some films. It’s always a little unnerving, when we show our films on Cinema-size screen, but its so rewarding when people come up to us afterwards, with eyes shining, to ask us questions about what they have seen. It’s such a pleasure to see that our films are moving people emotionally.

Q/ With all this success, could we say that Liquid Motion Film has found its position in the world of documentary filmmaking?

Guy Chaumette/ Not so long ago, it was us looking to make contact with people, whereas now, people in the industry are approaching us and contacting us directly. Our company is definitely getting more notoriety and it’s starting to be more well known. It all comes down to how passionate you are.

Q/ How did this vocation come about?

GC/ I started out as a Photographer, then turned towards professional scuba diving. I liked what I was doing, but I was never any good at selling my work! So I turned towards scuba diving. Very soon, I was diving the worlds coral reefs, working as a dive instructor and of course I took my camera gear with me!. Then I met my wife and to cut a long story short, we decided to make underwater films.

Q/ What attracted you to documentary?

AC/ For years, traditional documentaries that we’ve been watching on TV haven’t even approached the films that Cousteau used to make. His films are old now, but they’re still such interesting stories. He really explored and tried to understand things better; more profoundly. Nowadays, the underwater films are beautiful, but the story is always missing.

GC/ in the 60s, when I watched Cousteau on TV, I used to dream of going on the Calypso. Today, we’re just trying to bring the adventure back underwater. Documentaries of recent times just show fishes passing from left to right, right to left with a nice musical score and everyone falls asleep! We’re trying to bring a completely new kind of underwater film, which is more interesting and exciting.

Q/ Does filming underwater bring extra difficulties?

Underwater filmmaking looks like it’s quite easy when you watch it. But underwater we can’t hide and all the fish move faster than we do. All the equipment, the bubbles and even simple movement creates a lot of noise and disrupts the filming. The difficulty which you need to overcome is to be accepted by the marine life and to become a part of their environment.

Q/ How do you work on a film set?

GC/ We begin by making footage, look at what we’ve filmed and then complete the script based around this. Once the script is complete, we return on ‘set’ to film the missing shots. The Actors are completely undisciplined! If we miss a shot, we can’t say “ok, lets do another take”. Getting the perfect footage takes an enormous amount of time.

Q/ What makes you different to the others?

AC/ Other underwater films are often interesting and beautifully shot, but we’re really exploring relationships with marine life and developing a new understanding of the fish in a way that really moves people emotionally. That’s what we’re trying to do.

GC/ The special thing about our films is that we manage to make them on a very low budget. In contrast with the ‘big budget’ productions, we have smaller, user-friendly digital gear, which allows us to film from more interesting, original angles, resulting in unique shots. When we go on location, we stay the time necessary to get the shots we want. This gives us an edge, allowing us to film behaviour never documented before.

Q/ Once home, with all your footage, what happens next?

GC/First we correct the colour, because a scene has often being filmed at different times, under different conditions and we need to show a certain homogeneity. Then we work on the sound effects. When a fish waves its tail, for example, its impossible to capture the right sound. So we add sound to the footage, which makes it more dynamic and realistic. Then we edit the films on computers. We do everything, from the research, the filming and editing to the marketing – everything except the music.

The Chaumette ‘Trilogy’

The documentary series ‘The Reef’ is a trilogy of three films. “At the beginning, we were planning on making just one film" explains Guy Chaumette. "Then we realized that, in terms of budget, it would be better to make a series of films”.

Two of the Episodes, ‘Talking With Fishes” and “The Perfect Reef” are now complete and have already received great recognition and Awards from numerous Film festivals worldwide. “Talking With Fishes’ portrays astonishing relationships between man and marine life, clarifies the misunderstood behaviour of the animals and ‘fills in the missing gaps’ about Marine Life. This unique film explores the questions of whether fish have feelings and whether they are intelligent and documents their reaction and changing attitude as man makes contact with them. Can fish communicate? “We managed to create a strategy with the fish, by imitating the behaviour of certain species” says Guy.

The search for 'The Perfect Reef' is a dream search, inspired by the reefs imminent disappearance. The islands of paradise at the heart of the coral reef and the beauty of the coral encrusted caves astounds us, but we tend to not think about how the reefs were actually formed and why they’re now in danger of disappearing. “More and more divers are coming to see the reefs, yet very few are aware of all this. We just want to raise awareness and try and help to save this special underwater world" says Anita.

'The Circle of Life' is the second film in the trilogy, yet the last to be complete. But it is already quite famous, thanks to a short extract, which has touched the hearts of many. It’s the story of a comical little fish called a ‘Yellowhead Jawfish’. The astonishing aspect is that it’s the male which nurtures the eggs. "Fish have many different ways of looking after their eggs, but this particular fish keeps them in his mouth, right until they hatch" says Guy. “I spent months and months observing thsi fish and managed to get some incredible footage. The hatching of the eggs from the males mouth has never been filmed before. To get this on film, you have to be there at the exact right time – it involves hours and hours of waiting.”

This short film extract follows the life of the tiny fish, from the conception of his nuptual nest, to the invitation and arrival of the female, right up to the hatching of the eggs. These exceptional images have already been recognized with great success, which is a good sign. As for the rest of the film……