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Archaeological mysteries lying off the coast of San Diego will
be seen as a historical first in Team Atlantis Productions’
(www.teamatlantis.com) “Mysterious Origins of La Jolla’s Sunken
City”. The show’s Writer/Producer, Michael Arbuthnot and
Director/Editor, David Faires take underwater
cinematography and storytelling to a new depth.
Not only is
Mike Arbuthnot the Writer/Producer, but he is rapidly becoming
one of the most recognizable archaeologists in the United
States. As a young professional archaeologist and former college
professor, Arbuthnot has been featured on ABC, Discovery Channel
and the Learning Channel. Most recently Arbuthnot conducted the
first archaeological survey of the famous shipwreck R.M.S.
Titanic with film maker and explorer James Cameron on Discovery
Channel’s televised event, Last Mysteries of the Titanic. He is
continuing to excite audiences and historians alike by blending
ancient history and archaeology with filmmaking.
Ancient
underwater artifacts discovered off San Diego’s coastline
Mysterious
artifacts were first found off La Jolla’s coast (north of San
Diego) in the early 1900s when children would return to shore
with small stone bowls. From the time scuba diving became
popular in the 1950s to current day, more than 2000 artifacts
dating as early as 5000 years old have been recovered and at
least 34 submerged sites have been recorded from locations as
deep as 30 meters. Some scientists have even speculated that La
Jolla is home to a sunken village! Despite the long history of
discoveries, surprisingly little is known about how the objects
were originally deposited. In the “Mysterious Origins of La
Jolla’s Sunken City”, Arbuthnot and Faires will explore several
hypotheses and reveal never before seen artifacts.
Latest
technology attempts to solve mysteries from the deep
Archaeologist Michael Arbuthnot gained access to the United
States Geological Survey (USGS) and Scripps Institute’s remote
sensing computerized depictions of the ocean floor off La Jolla.
These topographical images make it possible to reconstruct
ancient river channels and other submerged features that can be
used to predict the location of underwater sites that were
formally on land. These investigations led Team Atlantis
Productions to areas of high probability for containing
submerged artifacts off La Jolla’s sandy beaches.
The
Explorers hope to capture historical mysteries on High
Definition video
Once
Arbuthnot had his coordinates mapped and dive sites planned, he
brought in the expertise of Dave Faires to prepare the high
definition cameras needed to capture this hopeful event. Faires
is a “digital film explorer” with a rewarding career behind the
camera in Director and Director of Photography roles; as well as
running the film department and instructing future filmmakers at
the renowned Full Sail filmmaking school in Orlando, Florida.
Today, Faires focuses his efforts on bringing the latest and
greatest digital technologies to improve the workflow for
storytellers.
These two
explorers set out on their quest armed with a newly released JVC
HD-100U high definition camera courtesy of the local JVC
office. This camera was tasked to capture all of the boat’s
topside action and principal photography. Special underwater
housings held two of its younger siblings the JVC HD-10U to take
advantage of their small size. The cameras were white balanced
daylight since the main light source was sunlight. The
underwater cameras’ focus was set to automatic to allow the
divers to shoot and to search for artifacts simultaneously. The
underwater conditions proved to be the biggest challenge due to
heavy undercurrents and poor visibility. The divers had to stick
very close to the bottom to maintain some type of equilibrium
while on their quest for artifacts.
The lucky
break comes
The team of scientists head out for Day 2 of the exploration.
Not only had the divers battled being tossed about in the sea’s
big washing machine; but the small high definition camera’s
underwater housings had been fogging up due to dramatic water
temperature changes. Undaunted by nature or technology, the big
break finally came. Their success was aided by the help of a
small octopus. A diver was tracking it, when the octopus stopped
behind a round stone. This “stone” turned out to be a beautiful
stone bowl, which eventually led the team to discovering a total
of six artifacts in 20 feet of water. Arbuthnot speculates that
these ancient finds date to between 4,000 and 7,000 years ago!
The Sunken
City’s story unfolds in post production
Inspired
both with the artifact discoveries and the spectacular high
definition seascape scenes, Dave Faires returns from the sea to
begin post production. The workflow stayed HD on-line quality
throughout production into post production. Faires made the
editorial decision to use CineForm Prospect HD with Adobe
Premiere Pro, stating, “I’ve found that Prospect HD is the most
versatile and user-friendly software on the market for HD
editing. It’s also enabled us to quickly teach students basic HD
editing for professional projects with professional results.”
Faires would
have ideally chosen shooting in high definition resolution of
720p at 24 frames per second. Since he had to capture from two
cameras with different frame rates they standardized on 30
frames per second. They were also fortunate to have NASA and
USGS donate amazing footage and animations to the project. This
footage was only available on DV, but they seamlessly performed
an up-rez with Prospect HD to conform the final project in
720p30. Attention to color correction within Premiere Pro was
important to balance the low light underwater shots with the
bright seascape scenes. The high definition master will allow
them to repurpose in multiple formats for distribution: from
broadcast to web delivery and maintain the highest visual
quality for the given format.
A story to
be told and taught
Arbuthnot
the scientist and explorer, Faires the filmmaker and director,
plan to leverage this incredible journey of exploration and high
resolution production in the “Mysterious Origins of La Jolla’s
Sunken City”. They will share their knowledge with future
storytellers hungry to learn the ground breaking techniques and
workflows. Faires is developing training centers to put these
technologies into the hands of independent filmmakers. Faires
plans to use CineForm’s Prospect HD, and Prospect 2K in the
classroom when he launches his digital film workshops in Loreto
Bay, Mexico in 2007. For information see:
www.thedigitalfilmmaker.com.
The
Explorers continue their adventures
There are
great stories will be told and unique moments in time to share,
as the digital filmmakers press on. Dave Faires is presently
working on an upcoming documentary about baseball’s “Hall of
Famers”. It will include never before seen footage and poignant
memories of Ted Williams, Bobby Doerr and other legends from that
incredible era. You will see a compilation of archival footage
with amazing live interviews captured with the new Silicon
Imaging Digital Cinema 2K camera (2,048 x 1152) resolution.
Exciting new stories wait in an upcoming CineForm Customer
Showcase that will feature the groundbreaking Prospect 2K and
CineForm Intermediate direct to disk 2K workflow. |
