I'm Ana Filippa Sural and I'm a marine biologist in the Azores.
I'm David Diley, I'm a filmmaker and underwater cinematographer.
My name is Maya Santangelo and I am the 2016 Australasian Rolex Scholar.
My name is Sean Heinrichs, I am a conservationist, cinematographer and photographer.
My name is Danny Copeland, I'm here on Santa Maria Island in the Azores with a team of
people to create a 360 virtual reality film about the mobular rays that you can find in
the waters around this island.
I chose 360 because this film is going to be shown to the delegates at the Sighties
Conference in South Africa, immersing them in like a 360 environment with these animals.
VR is possibly one of the best ways you can get someone to actually experience something
without having them actually be there and physically experience that experience.
And for many people who don't know, virtual reality is just coming on the scene as a new
medium, a way for people to actually experience what it's like to interact in various scenarios.
And in this case what we're going to be doing is taking people underwater with these giant
mobular rays and letting them swim and dance with these animals while our subject of our
story, this researcher Anna, goes down and explains why they're so vulnerable, why they're
so important that they need protection and what we can do about it.
So we're at this waterfall in an area called Maya and we're trying to get one of the, or
probably the opening scene for the entire film, it's going to be a time-lapse 360 shot
rather than just a normal time-lapse, sorry, rather than just a normal 360 shot.
So we're hoping that we're going to be able to capture the sunlight changing on this awesome
mountain side here, and also seeing clouds whizzing past as well.
So when someone's experiencing that on the VR headset, they can look around their scene
time passing by while staying clear to the centerville, so that's the hope, let's see
if it works.
So 360 VR films are basically kind of how they kind of sound.
When you're watching these films, you can look all around you, you're not just limited
to a simple sort of rectangular square like you normally are with a normal film, you can
actually look up, look down, look behind you and see this entire world around you.
You're kind of involved in this virtual world basically.
But with this 360 VR film, it is a real world, basically being transported to a different
place entirely.
So real.
This is just like padrinha, just fish everywhere, an array right here and one on top, wow, I
don't need to go diving anymore.
To capture this film in 360 VR, it's a little bit more complicated than a normal conventional
film.
We don't just use one camera to capture the action of a particular moment, we actually
use up to six, some systems even use even more.
So in this particular setup, what we have is we have six GoPro's sitting in a mount
all dotted around each other so that they are covering basically a whole spherical ball
of 360 space.
They've got a camera looking every single direction.
So you're working with six cameras and if you're filming a sequence, if even just one
of those cameras has an issue at any point, the whole shot is completely ruined, the whole
system crashes and you can't stitch any of that footage together.
You've got to make sure that every single camera has exactly the same settings as each
other, otherwise the footage is useless, you can't stitch it together or it just looks
really, really weird and odd when you actually put the headset on.
Another sort of set of challenges with filming this 360 stuff is that we're not just doing
this on land, the whole point of this shoot is that we're filming marine animals so we're
going underwater and that adds in a whole extra level of complications.
We have this underwater housing that you put all the cameras in and you can't access the
cameras at all once they're in the system.
So we only have this little remote control to kind of turn them all on.
So what we'll do is I'll set up the camera in the morning and we'll then go out to the
dive site and it'll probably be about an hour and a half or so before even at the place
where we can see these animals.
All the while the battery is slowly draining on the cameras and it means that we really
only have a tiny limited and small window to try and capture any footage, any usable
footage of these animals as and when they turn up.
Here we go, here we go, here we go.
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I'm Davey Daly, I'm an underwater, no, I'm usually better at this, I'm really struggling
to answer a question on who I am and what I do.
So I assembled a bit of a misfit team of talented individuals to make this project a reality.
First off we have Anna Sabral, who I think is just such an awesome person. She loves
these mobular rays and you can't help but pick up that same enthusiasm when you hang
around her. Always got a smile on her face. She knows so much about the animals that
we're here to capture. She's really good in the water, she's great out of the water,
she's intelligent, she's articulate, she's friendly. You feel like you want to do the
absolute best possible job you can to do justice to this wonderful person that's trying to
make her part of the world a better place and she's great.
Anna is one of the nicest people I've ever met. She's put a lot of hard work into starting
her project meant to catalog Azores and I really hope she gets to continue it and gets
to continue documenting the population here. It's one of the only reliable places in the
world where you can see the mobulas. So the fact that she's putting in the hard work to
document them and learn more about them is pretty important.
I started a photo ID program for the mobulas in the Azores to see if we could use tourist
photos to ID individuals. So basically try and understand if we have the same rays coming
back every year and then in the long term I hope if it works that the photo ID will
allow us to see if there's any connection between this region and other places in the
world and also inside the region if there are any movements of the rays between different
places.
I think she's one of the most accommodating people I've ever met. She's made all this
kind of project really happen and she's also extremely supportive in so many different
ways.
It's different, it's fun but I never thought I would be involved in being part of the story
so it has been fun till now. I'm still getting used to it.
We also have Sean Heinrichs who is an underwater filmmaker and conservationist. I've worked
with Sean in a professional sense for many different years but funnily enough we've never
actually met in person. Our relationship has been entirely through emails and through Skype
calls and online communications so to actually have him come out on the shoot has been a
real kind of privilege.
He's a pretty important role in the world of marine conservation and he's really making
a difference in a lot of different fields. So to see him come along and add that energy
and passion to the team was pretty valuable. We had a very fast-paced, very exciting week
I think because he was there. It definitely added something to the team.
Sean's great. Sean is very genuine, he's very sincere, he's got just a ton of energy. He
really injected energy into the production when he was here. Plus a lot of expertise
as well. Just a really nice guy, very funny, very, very funny. I got on with Sean really
well so I like Sean a lot.
So with Danny now I'm excited to be here because we get to actually go and carve a new frontier.
We get to actually create an entire experience around these animals that people have never
seen before. And the vision for that is basically people protect what they love. So if we can
actually get them to understand what these animals are about, interact with them in a
very real sense wearing these VR goggles and get a sense that these are charismatic, beautiful
animals that dance and play and are curious and intelligent, then we might just have an
opportunity to inspire these delegates to vote in favour of protection of these animals.
Then we have Maya Santangelo, who is a Rolex scholar like I was last year. And I brought
Maya onto the shoot to basically serve as an extra pair of hands to help along with
everyone.
She's just got this great energy and positivity. Plus she's been helping me out a little bit
with the behind the scenes film and what's really impressed me about her is her obsessive
attention to detail. She will notice things in shots that maybe other people haven't
noticed or she'll notice continuity errors and things that we need to bear in mind. If
a shot's not working out properly, she will have an immediate suggestion of a possible
other way of doing it.
So if it's someone who's not come from a film production background to just know this stuff
and for it to be so natural is really, really impressive. And I've spent a lot of time with
Maya and she's just a great person to be around.
Just past 7am, which doesn't sound too bad, but it is when you have to wake up at 4 or
5, mostly because Dave's alarm went off. We're at the waterfall at Maya trying to get a nice
sunrise time lapse to start virtual reality film, something that if it pulls off, it should
be pretty visually stunning.
I don't mind getting up early, but there have been some late nights, so the lack of sleep
is starting to kick into all of us. I think there's a good chance we're going to find
Danny asleep by a rock over there in a couple of hours, hopefully with a nice time lapse
in the camera.
This is not just a road trip for her. This is an opportunity for her to really open her
horizons and create a future for herself, not only just in conservation, but also in research
and science and media. So it's a real pleasure to see someone who's up and coming sort of
fueling that next generation.
So I've been quite lucky. I've been able to experience film shoots before, but this one
is quite different. It's actually got a conservation story and goal behind it. So getting to be
a part of that is pretty special. It's everything from developing the story, doing the research
behind it, and figuring out the best way you can communicate it to hopefully make some
change.
And finally, we have David Diley, who I brought onto the shoot for several different reasons
really. David has got an awful lot more experience than me in underwater video production. So
in many ways he's been a bit of a guiding hand on this kind of shoot. Whilst I've definitely
been kind of leading it, David's always kind of been there to be like, hey, Danny, maybe
try doing this instead. Have you considered doing that? And for that, he's been invaluable
on this kind of shoot.
He's been a really good addition to the team, not just in his amazing behind the scenes
footage that he's captured, but also the experience and the expertise he's been able to offer
Danny in making the production that much better.
It's interesting now that I finally get to meet David in person and work with him on
a production. Seeing that sort of serendipity come around and working together in the field
as teammates, seeing sort of his evolution from being sort of a new and aspiring filmmaker
to somebody who really has a system down, a methodology down, and a passion down about
how he wants to make art in his filmmaking, for me is really great to see.
It's always been a bucket list thing to come to the Azores for me. So for me, it's nice
to kind of come and be hopefully a steady and calm influence for him. The times when
things haven't necessarily gone especially according to plan, it's nice for me to understand
what he's going through and to be there and be supportive for him because it's reminded
me a little bit of myself when I was first started doing this.
So mantas and mobulas are really graceful creatures and I think what keeps me so interested
and intrigued by them is they're really mysterious. We know nothing about them and here is one
of the two only places in the world where we can see big schools of this race.
And this is my first time here and I've always wanted to come to this place. Having the opportunity
to join Danny on this VR project presents an opportunity for me to get in the water with
these animals honestly for the first time. I've been with other species of mobula rays
and manta rays all over the planet but this animal has been on my checklist and so to actually
spend time in these waters with these incredible animals alive has been one of my big dreams.
Now I can say the first time we dropped in the water I was a little bit nervous because
we drop in and you're on this sea mount and it's 40 meters down to the bottom. You can't
even see the bottom. You just send down this rope and then you basically hang in the blue
and hang in the blue and hang in the blue and initially we got pretty nervous that I for
myself had flown all the way around the planet and I'm going to hang in the blue for six
days and fly home and get nothing. Now the good news is these animals are curious and
intelligent creatures and with a little bit of wrangling they came right off the sea
mount and started swirling around us and performed this beautiful dance and at one point I was
in the water with David and we were filming this one animal and he just peeled off and
I was off the rope and he just came swimming towards me and he got to my lens and I thought
he would bank like a manta would do, fly up or fly down but he didn't. He just stuck
in my lens and he just stayed there and for three minutes straight, I know it's three
minutes because I have three minutes of video, he was glued to my lens staring right down
of my dome and you know I almost wonder if this animal was exhibiting some of the patterns
that mantas do which is a little bit of a self-awareness and that he could see his reflection
in my dome because I couldn't explain it any other way. He's looking in the dome and just
moving back and forth, back and forth for three minutes so I got this incredible footage
and for the films that we're making to show people how you can connect with these animals
is probably one of the most powerful things you can do.
In regards to highlights, the second day that we were here on the way out to one of the
dive sites we had this ginormous four metre wide all black oceanic giant manta turn up
at the surface and an all black manta raise unbelievably rare. So you can imagine our
surprise when on our very first day we went out on a glass calm day, first day on the
water and within about twenty minutes of leading the harbour I spot two little black fin tips
coming out of the water and we see this enormous black oceanic manta ray and it just turned
up and just hung around for an hour. So we all piled into the water and just got to have
this brilliant hour long experience with this massive really rare animal.
So that was a real special encounter and it hung around with us for over an hour. I got
normal photos, I got some video, the rest of the crew got some photos and video and I even
got the 360 camera out for our first test footage on this enormous and rare black oceanic
manta ray. So that was a definite highlight during the trip.
The virtual reality experience is unreal. It's definitely something else. Honestly,
the underwater segment that Danny showed me, I'm almost going to say that it's better
than diving. You're going to be hard pressed to find something better than diving to have
people experience the underwater world and that's it. Virtual reality, they found it.
Danny having the opportunity to show that to delegates that he can't just take on a
dive to show the mobulas, he found the answer. So if the product comes out as good as we
all think it's going to be, I think it's going to be a really important addition to the protection
of mobulas.
I think that the outcome that we were looking for is that the mobulas will be protected.
I'm really excited to have Santa Maria being the face of this. So to show what it is to
dive with mobulas, why it is important to protect them and just having Santa Maria being
the face of that, it means a lot, it's really important I think.
He's taking this brand new technology, this new experience and introducing what it's
like to dive with mobular rates to people who I would say almost certainly never even
been in the water with a mobular rate, many of which probably won't have ever even dived.
These are delegates from other countries that are voting on whether certain animal species
should be protected or not. And that's how ingenious the idea is. He's putting these
people in the water without them getting wet. I think I almost think that maybe even we
while we've been here, we've not maybe realised how important this is. I think we've not
necessarily considered it because we've been dealing with the production side of it, but
just taking it to societies and saying this is what it's like to be in amongst a load
of mobular rates and this is how magical it is. And if we don't afford these animals
some kind of protection, other people aren't going to be able to experience that at some
point in the future maybe. So I just think what he's doing is brilliant.
I think it's important for everybody who's considered doing something different with
their life or when they wake up one day and they say, what's it about? Why am I doing
this? I'm not passionate, I'm not inspired. To realise that with just a little bit of
energy and you put that first foot in front of the others, you can create things out of
nothing. Literally this team was assembled almost overnight and the prerequisite was
passion and commitment. You need to be passionate about this issue and willing to make the
commitment to get here and make it a part. And as a result we assembled this little
squad and in just a few short weeks we're putting together four sets of media, a VR
film, an educational film, we're putting together a photo library and putting together
other content, all that's going to go to the front end of the conservation effort at the
Convention on International Trade. So what that says to me is that it doesn't take corporate
planning and all kinds of things to make something special happen. You just need passionate
people who are willing to get up their butts, get together, make the time, make the sacrifices
and make something like this happen. This is pretty much my first major film kind of
project and I kind of threw myself in the deep end a little bit by not just going with
a conventional film but making the whole thing that much more complicated and trying to do
360 VR with it. It's been a pretty big learning curve this whole process. So Denny's taken
on quite a challenge with this project. It's not just an exciting film that has a really
exciting conservation goal behind it, it's a whole other ball game with the VR technology.
So to see that from the beginning I've kind of been able to experience the emotional roller
coaster with him along the way and all the highs and lows of everything from getting
the gear to getting here and going through finding the mobulas in the water. It's a whole
another part of filmmaking that I don't think a lot of people get to appreciate. They don't
realise some of the effort and risk that goes into getting the best underwater footage
that you need to tell your story. And I think Denny's handled it quite well. It's so complex
this whole 360 VR experience media production is so complex. You know it's not like he's
just sticking a GoPro on the end of a pole and dangling it off the side of a boat, anybody
can do that. What he's doing is he's dealing with six cameras all running at the same time
and having to make sure that everything around you in that 360 degree environment is working
for the shot. So I think the way he's dealing with it and coping with it is really good.
It's very admirable actually. There have been quite a few moments on the shoot where I've
been thinking wow are we going to even really realistically pull this off when the animals
don't turn up for a while or the cameras are just having technical issue after technical
issue and I'm sitting there thinking I'm not sure we're going to have to do this. He's
done that journey. That first time filmmaker journey he's had downs and he's had ups and
he's coping with it well. It's been a bit of a baptism of fire but the good thing for
Danny which has helped is that he's got a good team around him. He's got people that
want him to succeed. I think it's an ingenious idea. I think he's done a great job on the
production. He's learned a lot. I think he's aged a lot as well. He's started growing
a beard. I don't think he could grow a beard before he came out here. All of a sudden he's
started growing a beard. There's some chest hairs there. I think he's made him a man this
shoot. It does that to you making films. It ages you. It's everything from his attention
to detail and his passion to make it the best it possibly can be. You can really tell in
his work ethic and how it comes out and there's no doubt that the final product is going to
be amazing. There's a lot of pressure on making sure that we can make this film happen because
the protection of these animals and the future conservation of these animals may very well
depend on it. Highlights would be, a particular highlight was the second day that we were
here flying my mouth. Nice. Let's do that again.
He ended up coming here instead. Sorry, what was the question?
It didn't break.
It didn't break.
