Few people have the chance to experience first-hand, meeting up eye to eye with great white sharks, viewing the lightning-fast reaction of a mantis shrimp striking its prey, or gazing in wonder as an enormous school of jacks swims past in blue ocean water.
That's where an intrepid group of local underwater videographers comes in, organizing each year the San Diego Undersea Film Exhibition, scheduled this year Oct. 18 and 19 at the San Diego Natural History Museum Theater in Balboa Park.
It's the third year of the event, started after a group of dive enthusiasts sought a public outlet to share their work – made easier with the advent of lightweight, relatively inexpensive digital video cameras, underwater housings and personal computers equipped with editing software.
The locations of the more than 30 films range from the exotic – Fiji, Galapagos Islands and Indonesia, to the local – La Jolla Shores, Channel Islands and Lake Tahoe. Many of the participants agreed to allow up to one-minute of their works to be included in this report.
Seasoned pros to amateurs
The works were selected based on recommendations from three jurists, including professionals such as Howard and Michele Hall, noted professional underwater cinematographers from San Diego.
Most of the participants are goaded on by event organizers, who include former Diving Locker owner Chuck Nicklin, who has been involved in diving and underwater imagery for decades. He's worked on such feature films as "The Abyss," and "The Deep," as well as documentaries, and led dive trips around the world.
With encouragement from Nicklin and others, a group of avid divers and videographers began meeting regularly, initially at his diving shop. Eventually, the idea of a film exhibition evolved.
"So many divers were shooting video but had no outlet for their results," Nicklin said.
"We knew some amazing images were being produced because we were seeing them every month at our meetings," said Mary Lynn Price, another one of the event organizers. "The films just keep getting more incredible and the great thing is that anyone can enter their work."
The entries were limited to a maximum length of five minutes to allow as many people to possible to participate, and to help keep the evening's program moving.
"Many of the divers have enough for a good five-minute piece, but may never be able to spend enough time in the water to produce a good half-hour," Nicklin said.
Some of the contributors are professional photographers and writers such as San Diegan Eric Hanauer, whose piece on Cuba was the result of an opportunity to travel to that communist country. It also provided the impetus for Hanauer to accelerate his own digital video learning curve, he said.
A segment on black sea bass, once hunted to near extinction, is presented by Bob Keet, a Los Angeles-area news videographer. The gigantic fishes are now staging a comeback off Catalina Island.
The Emmy-award winning newsman originally produced it for a segment on the evening news for KTTV, the Fox affiliate in the nation's No. 2 broadcast market.
"I've been a diver for 22 years," Keet said. "I've never seen a black sea bass, always heard of others who saw them once I got back to the boat."
A captain friend took him to a sure-fire spot, and the resulting package is scheduled to be shown to attendees on the evening of Oct. 19.
Keet has been trying to capture underwater sea life on videotape for the last 15 years, beginning with low-quality VHS tape and cameras.
"I can remember being so frustrated," he said. "You couldn't edit it and not have a glitch between scenes. I'd create a project but be unable to make copies for everyone because the quality was so bad."
Now, the cameras and the housings that guard them from the ruinous results of salt water are "basically bullet-proof," he said.
The diver and videographer is partial to Gates housings manufactured in San Diego and developed by longtime designer Elwyn Gates.
The works scheduled for screening also include those from people who have worked part time in the profession while pursuing other careers, such as Fred Heiman of Los Gatos.
Recently retired from the high-tech field, he's been shooting and producing wildlife films for educational purposes since 1995. Some of his work has been shown on the Discovery Channel and National Geographic Television.
His contribution, "Bubbles In The South Pacific," is a segment from a children's series that features an animated 3D character.
Judging from the excerpt provided, the digital filmmaker has spent hours modeling and animating the cartoon characters, which must then be layered into the undersea footage.
