One of many challenges of aggressive free diving is that solely different free divers can take care of free divers. Scuba divers must rise to the floor in a sluggish, managed approach, so if one thing goes fallacious throughout a free dive — as can simply occur when holding one’s breath for minutes whereas swimming towards meters of stress underwater — somebody in scuba gear can’t react rapidly sufficient. The pursuit of free diving makes it concurrently lonely and liberating and attracts collectively kindred spirits who can’t get sufficient of it.
That’s the dynamic explored within the new Netflix/A24 documentary “The Deepest Breath,” in regards to the tragic finish to the partnership between free diving record-holder Alessia Zecchini and security diver Stephen Keenan. The film combines archival footage of them with footage purpose-shot for the movie, however director Laura McGann seamlessly blends them by capturing the brand new footage how the topics she chronicles did: underwater cinematography shot by free divers.
“We might have [shot new footage] with scuba divers, however we simply wanted to maintain the surroundings as near how the archive was produced as doable,” McGann advised IndieWire.
The filmmakers carried out interviews, positioned the archive footage, and had a reduce of your entire movie edited earlier than capturing within the waters of Mexico, the Caribbean, and Egypt to fill within the gaps. “I storyboarded every scene utilizing the archive that we had, after which put in footage for the photographs that I knew we wanted to get,” McGann mentioned.
The fascinating problem of the reconstructed footage wasn’t simply that McGann and her staff had particular shot wants. It was the character of the footage that they had already. “There was some actually high-quality stuff, however then a variety of it [looked like] your mate filmed it,” McGann mentioned. “So we leaned into that. We saved the dealing with noise that was within the archive as a result of it’s genuine. It’s what’s there.”
Free diver and cinematographer Julie Gautier led the underwater images effort for the movie, balancing the documentary’s wants for authenticity and readability with discovering arresting imagery. “We needed to be out far sufficient that you might go down [deep] and never see the bottom [of the ocean floor] but in addition not see the floor,” McGann mentioned.
Gautier’s work was usually to movie that void in the course of the ocean, the place free divers give up to on their approach down. Then she’d must do it over and over, all at between 20 or 30 meters — that’s, between 65 to 100 toes under the floor.
“Security was clearly our primary precedence always,” McGann mentioned. “So she was free diving with a lot of safeties. Then we had some divers and I’d be on the floor of the water beside the boat with like a noodle; they made me cling onto a noodle as if I used to be going to sink. However then they’d pop down. They’d get the shot. They’d come again up. They’d present me, on the floor. So I’d say, ‘Oh, that’s actually good, guys. Are you able to simply try this yet another time, simply barely totally different?’”
McGann mentioned that the expertise of getting a crew who might pop down and get impossible-looking photographs, then tweak them to convey a nuance of feeling, was otherworldly. “It was like having a pod of dolphins on our crew. They have been like, ‘I’ve bought this.’ They usually’d simply go down and get it. The ability set of the individuals on our staff was simply world-class and nearly out-of-this-world class,” McGann mentioned.
Considered one of McGann’s favourite spots the place the archival supplies intersect with new footage is the story “The Deepest Breath” tells of Keenan’s rescue of famend free diver Alexey Molchanov in Greece. There was loads of archive footage of Molchanov’s AIDA 2013 world document try, however in telling Keenan’s story, McGann wanted to seize the uncertainty and the dedication {that a} security free diver must do their job. A part of what’s exceptional about Keenan, and a part of how the Netflix documentary creates suspense, is the flexibility to be in a spot of serenity and stillness whilst time, and air, runs out.
McGann, Gautier, and the movie’s underwater cinematography staff have been in a position to craft what McGann calls a “speck of mud” shot, “the place you’ve bought this extensive, expansive ocean and then you definately’ve bought the diver within the center ready. I felt like that second of having the ability to see the place Stephen was in the place there’s nothing happening round him and what does he do? It’s the last word check of character,” McGann mentioned.
Pairing a picture that captures the depth of the check with some archive supplies of Keenan tongue-in-cheek kissing his biceps afterward was, for McGann, the right marriage of archive and reconstructed footage; it’s additionally a fairly nice encapsulation of Keenan. “It’s actually the beginning of him taking off in his life as properly. He’s lastly discovered his spot and he’s [since] been celebrated for being only a good man,” McGann mentioned.
“The Deepest Breath” streams on Netflix starting Friday, July 21.
