Following the success of ‘Go Sail’, ‘Go Climb’, ‘Go Ski’ and ‘Go Snowboard’ in May of 2007 Scubazoo were contracted by leading reference publisher Dorling Kindersley to produce an instructional and aspirational DVD for the newest title in their Go series… Go Scuba Dive.
The shoot
Director and Cameraman Roger Munns traveled with Scubazoo Photographer Matt Oldfield to the Sharm El Sheikh and then onward to Dahab to link up with Author Monty Halls, DK’s Stephanie Farrow and Lee Griffith and the models Mark, Charlie and Michelle of Poseidon divers.
Poseidon is located right next to the beach in Dahab and has a great variety of SCUBA diving equipment and instructors, from open water to advanced technical, making it a perfect base for filming a wide range of techniques and much of this rather equipment-orientated subject. Along with plenty of shore dives, Matt and Roger also managed to shoot a couple of dives at Canyons, close to Dahab’s famous Blue Hole, to cover cavern diving as well as get some general shots in the clear, blue water found in this area.
The next stop was Sharm El Sheik to embark the MV Tempest, a great liveaboard boat chartered through Tony Backhurst in the UK. As well as filming some more advanced open water techniques such as drift, wreck and night diving, the aim was to try and capture some of the incredible marine life that has made the Red Sea so famous. One particularly memorable dive was on the walls of Ras Mohammed with Monty using his rebreather to get close to huge schools of snapper and massive moray eels.
All in all the ‘Go Dive’ shoot went remarkably smoothly, much as a result of the patience and effort of the three models. Take a look at a the trailer for the video below.
The Edit
Roger Munns and Jonni Isaacs handled the edit with Roger mostly concentrating on the storyboard and offline edit while Jonni used his skills with Adobe After Effects to create instructional motion graphics to overlay on the footage. With DK based in London there was extensive use of FTP for previewing and approving the edit. With a shoot in Egypt, an edit suite in Malaysia, voice overs recorded in the UK by Monty and in Singapore for the US version this was truly an international production! The edit was completed in October 2007 with the book released in time to be dropped into stockings for Christmas.