On the 8th of December 2001 the Russian project of underwater world series films' creation was continued.

The team of "Russian Underwater Expeditions" visited St. Jones coral reef, situated at the border of Egypt and Sudan. In winter/spring this year you can watch the documentary films about the red sea's inhabitants in the program "Dialogues about animals"

Our main aim was to show how coral reef lived -not from the naturalist's point of view but wider. The genre of a Chukchi song ("what I see I sing about") in popular science film shooting is rather acceptable, and we also used it. But this time we had another task: to reveal and show interconnection between living organisms of a reef. It is a quite different ecosystem, not only complex organized, but self-organized. We made a film using a deep science base, but at the same time popular and understandable to all viewers.

The underwater life, as a shooting object, shows a happy, complete freedom to a videoartist. Partly, it is because the world ocean's life is interesting for everybody. But not every person, who likes to look at it, is ready to surmount obstacles, bear discomfort and meet privations (it's not only high cost of plane tickets and hotels) for this meeting. And almost everybody with pleasure watches films about the underwater realm.

From another point of view, an ecological way complicates the whole task. What does it mean to show a coral reef in action? At first, it means to find and shoot one and better several representatives of animals' groups, which characterize them. And secondly, it means to shoot an animal in a usual life and its secret moments, not only how it sits or hides from an operator. It is rather easy to shoot how a predatory fish eats pray. But the relationship between predator and pray can be shot in habitat only well knowing how, when and under what conditions they make their natural actions. And this is the only way to shoot a living object not frightened it off.

Moreover, as our aim is to draw a videoportrait of some existences' community, it is necessary to show connection of this community with another one. Doing it and not giving attention to birds, wandering and something eating there - it's hardly professional. Unfortunately, on the red sea we failed in full measure to discover the outside ecological communications of coral reefs - partly, it was because of project's expensiveness, partly because of birds' fauna on the red sea proved to be very poor.

And there is one more interesting moment in underwater popular science video shooting. Sometimes, a camera adrift becomes an instrument of science knowledge. Let us suppose, an operator and an assistant, well equipped, swim above the seabed of the red sea looking for an exterior (I am not going to make a place more exact, because there are a lot of variants there). They see coral bushes not far away. What the coral is for- nobody knows, but it's beautiful. We have made a shooting. After that on the shore a science consultant, Doctor of Science of Biology, a leading specialist on corals looked through that material and told that it couldn't be defined by eye and it would be better to do it in Moscow. And in Moscow it cleared up that we have picked up some rear species by chance and it was rather unlikely to find it in that sea in natural conditions. As a matter of fact, there is a half-serious rule in science: it's easier to do impossible, if you don't know that it's impossible…

When we reached the red sea and began shooting, I unwittingly remembered my first dive on the coral reef of Guinea Gulf in 1985. In fact, "diving" and "reef" - I think it's sharply said. Then I hadn't got an aqualung and dived using apnea. And as I was not a good apneist, I dived on about 5 meters, not deeper. And a reef was a very little one, plain, situated near a Negro village.

I emphasize with proud that the organization of the shooting process was almost ideal. We dived 4 times a day, using 3 cameras and according to the strict regulations: every operator got a task, then in couples we set out in search, and in the evening during the gathering we summarized a shooting day and planned the next one. By the way, at the same time we mastered one of the accessories of underwater shooting which we haven't used before: a tripod. It's rather convenient to screw in it everything what you want and then you make shooting relaxed, more concentrating on the shooting object than on apparatus.

To generalize the work, it was done neatly, well organized and with gusto. We enjoyed much and it was interesting for everybody, every person succeeded in doing his own work. And it's well known if authors enjoy creation, views enjoy this result too.

By Ivan Zatevakhin

Underwater Club