This Mistake Nearly Cost Me a $20,000 Film Job

As filmmakers and cinematographers at some point throughout our career we’ve all no doubt encountered a situation that could have completely ruined a shoot and lost us an important client. It’s unfortunately one of those things you likely have to experience and overcome to learn from. But trust me, don’t do that, learn right now from my mistake.

So, this is a pretty big mistake that I made almost four years ago, and was something that nearly cost me at the time what was a pretty large and important job. I’ve had to learn this lesson the hard way, and I’m sharing it so that you don’t have to.

The story starts a number of years ago on a job where I was the Director of photography, and it was just me travelling with the client who was directing the film. It was during the beginning of the pandemic, so we had to keep our team down to a skeleton crew. We were out on the outer coral sea, documenting coral reefs following a bleaching event for a documentary film, and we had lined up private charters and everything we needed to capture our shots.

As it was pandemic times, we didn’t leave much to chance and we both got to the film location on the great barrier reef a few days in advance, just to ensure that all our gear and everything arrived on time. As we had about 3 days to spare, we ended up jumping on another boat and heading out to The Great Barrier Reef on a standard customer trip, just to capture a few extra shots, and to check that we had everything in order for our film. We had some pretty technical scientific equipment and 3D techniques that we wanted to test out and ensure everything was in order ahead of our expedition.

Anyways, the gear I brought with me was to that date what I’d used on all my films, equipment I was super comfortable with and had a lot of experience using, which at the time was 2 camera bodies, a range of lenses, underwater lights, an underwater housing, drones, gimbals, and some audio equipment. A good 2 pelican cases worth of kit. 

Especially when it comes to underwater housings, I’ve never been one to use cheap equipment, and have always purchased high end aluminium housings, as there’s nothing more I’d hate than to have my camera flood on a shoot.

But on our first dive on this pre-shoot test dive, something I’d never thought possible before happened. My underwater camera started leaking from the front of my dome, not from my orings, and not from any seal that I can maintain, but from the front of the gap between the glass of the dome and the aluminium. What had happened was that the silicone that held the glass in place had somehow worn thin, and had created a gap large enough for water to enter the housing.

When we got back onboard the boat, the slightest knock on the front of my dome released the glass from the dome entirely, leaving me with an 8” hole in the front of my camera.

My worst fears had been realised. I was with the director on an important shoot, after spending thousands of dollars on travel, private charters, months in planning and mapping coral bleaching, and we’d finally made it to the reef ready to film, and my supposedly high end underwater housing had a hole in it.

It was not a good look, and director was understandably not impressed. No matter how many times I said that this housing is one of the top underwater housings available on the market, and that I insure all my equipment and take great care of it, and that this was absolutely not something I could have predicted, all the client saw was that her director of photography had a camera that didn’t work. It’s one of the worst situations a DP can find themselves in, and in hindsight, this was an event that I was unprepared for.

So there we were stuck out at sea, with no reception, no one to help us, with the clock ticking and with no camera to film with. Luckily this was a test shoot, but the real shoot was only 2.5 days away, and we had to spend the next 2 days at sea without reception, which severely limited our ability to troubleshoot.

Without too many better ideas, I tried something insane. I got some Sellys Roof and Gutter silicon grease that they had lying around the boat, and was used on the boats bathroom mirrors, and applied a layer of that around the outside of my dome, in an attempt to reseal the glass element of my dome back to the camera. And believe it or not, it worked. For one and half dives. Where it started leaking again and we were back to square one.

After another day sitting with the director in disbelief we eventually got back to reception, and the first thing I did was call my insurance company, who pretty much confirmed that while the gear was covered, there was nothing they could do about the situation we were in. So we began calling everyone we knew in the area who had an underwater film camera that was possibly up to the spec we required, to see if we could rent their system out for a few days. Which of course, inevitably failed as with only 12 hours notice there was no way we could make it work, and while we had a range of connections in Sydney to rent from, it would take a few days to get the camera up to the reef.

 Having exhausted almost all our options, and with only hours to go until the shoot date, it became inevitable that we were going to have to postpone the shoot as we just didn’t have a working camera. The director and I spent all afternoon, mind you this was the afternoon before our private charter left first thing in the morning, calling and visiting every single camera store in the region looking for replacement domes that were compatible, or for any parts that could fix our problem and get my camera working. Of course, on such short notice, these last ditch efforts almost never work out.

 In our final hours, way after the close of business time, we did manage to find an underwater camera retailer who was still at work, and believed that he could jerry rig one of his non compatible dome ports onto my housing, and make it work.

 Luckily he was correct, and his system worked and we could get the job done. But this caused days of stress for both myself and the director, as we genuinely were preparing to cancel the shoot, costing us both reputation and thousands of dollars in losses. This is a situation you should never find yourself in. Not being prepared, and not having a spare underwater housing almost cost me one of the biggest clients and jobs of my year.

The lesson here is no matter what you shoot, to always have a spare. I was under the impression that as underwater housings cost up around $8,000 that there was no way I should be expected to bring a spare, and that assumption nearly cost me far more both financially and reputationally. It’s not a risk worth taking, if a piece of your kit is that critical to the job, bring a spare, and always have a back up available.

This is something I implemented literally the next day after getting home from that shoot. I already had spare camera bodies and lenses, but I ordered a spare housing.

For my Sony Kit, I have both an Isotta underwater housing, which in my mind are one of the best housings available on the market, and I also have a back up sea frogs housing. This back up housing is not something I would like to rely on full time, but I have done a bunch of testing with it, and the housing seems to function well enough as a back up option. I know plenty of hobbiests who use it, and seem to have no issues, and for it’s $1000 price tag, it’s an extremely cheap back up option that will get the job done if my primary Isotta system fails. I’ve never had to use it, and I hope I never will, but it still comes with me on every shoot that uses my Sony rig.

For my RED kit, I obviously don’t own 2 $30,000 underwater housings, but for jobs that use the RED I will always also travel with my 4K Sony system as well. This kit, while it’s not a RED is still up to IMAX and Netflix specs, and can definitely get the job done in the extremely unlikely, and heartbreaking event that there’s an issue with my RED.

For important projects, always have a spare with you, as there is nothing worse than being on location with the director and crew with a camera that doesn’t work. It’s not worth the risk, and at the end of the day it is your fault and responsibility.