On the Edge

Is it still possible to be cutting edge in an age when nearly everything has been seen before? Apparently: Two very different directors have just delivered two very different nature films that raise the bar for large-format filmmaking.

The subject of Jon Long’s “Extreme,” showing at Edwards Imax theaters in Irvine and Ontario, is man living on the edge and pushing technology for his own enjoyment. Sounds hedonistic, but the way the story is told, it’s almost spiritual. The characters in “Extreme,” produced by the Imax Corp., are athletes who pursue rock climbing, tow-in surfing, snowboarding, windsurfing, ice climbing and skiing under extreme conditions.

In director Howard Hall’s “Island of the Sharks” (also from Imax and scheduled to open at the California Science Center in Los Angeles on June 25), we also get close to the edge, but what’s observed and chronicled is the purely natural phenomenon of marine life captured for the giant screen. In his follow-up to the 3-D “Into the Deep,” one of the most successful large-format films of all times, Hall’s 2-D “Island of the Sharks” captures underwater activity never seen before. Surely the centerpiece of the film is the violent, frenzied “bait ball” sequence in which entire schools of thousands of fish are devoured by relentless predators.

Hall, a seven-time Emmy winner, also discovers a never-before-seen creature, the Mantis shrimp; uses “Phantom Menace”-like breathing gear that had previously been restricted to the military; and ends up the focus of an article in a Navy medical journal.

The difference between the two films is that Long’s athletes are self-determined seekers of over-the-top experiences. Yet these men and women are so intently given to their tasks that their bodies and motions seem at one with the natural wonders that engulf them, not unlike the creatures in “Sharks.” Enhancing these ties, Long uses techniques popular in contemporary independent filmmaking--grainy black-and-white and time-lapse photography--to immerse viewers in the environment.

Speaking by phone from his Extreme Productions office in Calgary, Canada, Long, a self-described ski bum with 10 years of experience making adventure-sports documentaries for ESPN2 and as a former partner in Real Action Pictures, says, “I sort of scripted these ideas prior to making the film. I wanted the black-and-white stuff (shot in 16 millimeter and blown up to 70 millimeter) to be metaphors for the ocean and for the mountains. Also I wanted to use them for a dream-like feeling. It takes you away for a moment from the pristineness of the Imax format.

“In using time-lapse sequences, I was going for a feeling of timelessness, a dream-like feeling.”

Long, a featured skier in many of Real Action Pictures’ productions, made his directorial debut in 1988 with “Hot Wheels” and continued for 14 more low-budget films and videos, including such popular skiing, snowboarding and surfing titles as “Stayin’ Alive” and “The Young and the Restless.” “Snowboarding movies are such a small niche market that using those kinds of titles is not really an issue,” says Long.

With a budget of $5 million, it was clear that “Extreme” must target a much wider audience. “Part of the message of the film is not the level of sport achievement but simply the act of participating. I think the athletes make that point. Whether you are a beginner or whether you are the best, the feeling can be the same,” says Long.

Long and his camera crew leaned out of helicopters, dangled by cable over deep mountain crevasses and even strapped on the heavy Imax camera and went snowboarding side by side with the athletes to capture a wealth of adventure from snowy peaks in Alaska to the churning surf off of Oahu’s Waimea Bay. Among the spectacular moments chronicled in the film: Lynn Hill and Nancy Feagin pull their way up a thin crack in the sheer rock face of Utah’s Indian Creek, Catherine Mulvhill scales a frozen waterfall on the Delphine Glacier and world windsurfing champion Bjorn Dunkerbeck catches some major air.

“As far as the surfing, that was a unique situation,” Long says, noting they captured on film some of the biggest waves seen on Oahu in decades. “We really got lucky. We planned to go to Hawaii in hopes of getting three or four days of big enough waves to shoot some tow-in surfing. But the kind of waves we got that day [35- to 40-footers with up to 90-foot faces] you’d usually have to wait 30 years for,” Long says.” Tow-in surfing, also called power surfing, is a two-person sport in which a skier is towed out by someone using a Jet Ski to find the largest waves.

Long’s crew combed the island and found one spot where it was still possible to surf--the waves were just too high in most other locations--and came back with some of the most amazing surfing footage ever captured on film. One surfer even comments, “It’s not about surfing, it’s about survival.

Based in San Diego, where he heads Howard Hall productions with his producer-wife Michele, Hall also is a dedicated surfer, just back from a surfing vacation in Costa Rica and Panama.

A scuba diver since high school, Hall worked for 10 years as a diving instructor and as a cinematographer. In fact, the couple met when Michele--also an Emmy Award winner and an award-winning underwater photographer--registered for a diving class and was assigned to Howard for instruction.

As a team, the Halls began producing wildlife films for clients including PBS and National Geographic. Their first production, “Seasons of the Sea,” featured the marine life of Southern California.

The couple’s first large-format experience came when Howard was recruited as director of underwater photography on the Oscar-nominated “The Living Sea.” “They needed somebody with extensive underwater experience, and I was sort of the flavor of the month,” Hall says.

Hall took over the reins as director at the urging of Imax co-founder Graeme Ferguson, who was eager to get the first Imax 3-D camera out of the factory and into the field. “I thought it was ambitious to go from this prototype camera that had never been used and put it right into production,” says Hall. “It’s a real monster. With the housing, the camera weighs 1,500 pounds. It takes two divers if you want to move it at all and sometimes you have to mount propulsion equipment on the camera.”

Because of strong currents at the remote Cocos Island in the Pacific Ocean, 300 miles off the coast of Costa Rica, where “Sharks” was filmed, Hall nixed the use of 3-D. There were other considerations as well.

“Imax 3-D works extremely well for looking at small things in great detail, as we explored in ‘Into The Deep,’ ” Hall notes. “It is not as effective when you are looking at very large things. I felt that big scenes in ‘Island of the Sharks’ would not be satisfying in 3-D.”

Hall left room in his documentary for the unexpected. Among these are the sequence in which a Mantis shrimp attacks a blue-spotted jawfish and another of a flounder feeding on rainbow wrasses.

“That whole sequence was shot on a single role of film in one dive, and it came out perfect. If we had planned it, that scene probably would have taken us a week to shoot,” Hall says.

Already in pre-production of their next film, to focus on Fiji and the marine life of the South Pacific, the Halls have two goals with their current project. “We would like our films to give people a feeling of empathy for marine animals. We hope that seeing our films will develop a sense of value for the animals.”

And Hall and crew, who worked without shark cages or defensive weapons, would like the public to know that sharks are not the killers their reputation would lead us to believe. “The only way humans get attacked is if the shark makes a mistake. If you are in areas where there is a smell of bait or there is a lot of food in the water, a shark might bite you. If you are downstream from a lot of bait, a shark may come up the chum line looking for food and bite you by mistake,” says Hall.

During the filming, the only time Hall and crew felt in danger was while filming the “bait ball” sequences. “These schools of fish are extremely dense and move relatively fast. So if you are a cameraman and become engulfed by the school, then you have the problem of sharks swimming through this ball of bait and biting.”

In these cases, which Hall says “did happen occasionally,” the safety procedure was “stop filming and swim as fast as you can.”

BE THERE

“Extreme” is playing at Edwards Imax Theaters in Irvine and Ontario: Edwards 21 Megaplex/Imax 3-D Cinemas, Irvine Spectrum, 65 Fortune, Irvine, (714) 450-4900; Edwards Imax Ontario, 4900 E. 4th St., Ontario, (909) 476-1500. “Island of the Sharks” opens June 25 at California Science Center Imax Theater, 700 State Drive, L.A. (213) 744-2014.