Undersea, but not wet behind the ears

Peter Zuccarini

Underwater cinematographer; second unit director

Current film: “Into the Blue,” which opens Friday.

Previous credits: “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl,” “After the Sunset,” “New True Life Adventures: Sea of Sharks”

Into the blue -- with sharks: “In the preparation leading up to the movie, I met on different subjects every day with director John Stockwell and director of cinematography Shane Hurlbut,” with discussions “ranging from how many sharks would be in different shots, if they wanted to give away the fear factor early, what kind of lighting we would have for the night scenes. Once the film started, I would direct the second unit, direct the photography and deal with all the things that weren’t in the preparation.”

Dive time: “I would say for the dives into the airplane, which was the main [underwater] set, we had four dives in a range of an hour each and then decompression time as well. But that is not the only kind of diving that we did. We did some shallower diving with the actors, who were snorkeling in shallow water, where we might be in the water all day long.”

Behind the camera: “I would have another camera operator that would occasionally do things with the camera, but most of it I shoot myself because the underwater cinematography is a much more intimate setting -- everyone is within 10 feet of each other. [It’s] a bit more of a challenge having to communicate through water. A lot of the communication is hand signals.”

Crowd control: “You had 33 people in the underwater unit, including safety and props [and] the art director, but when you get right down to it, there are just a few people down there who can be in the setting.... The tricky part about it is that John and I had agreed that we would do these elaborate tracking moves so we could move the camera and reveal the space. That is a complicated thing when you have five or six divers in the water who are not supposed to be on camera.”

Easy does it: “The crew that I have working with me, this sort of core crew of assistants and safety divers, they work on a lot of different types of film productions. There is demand for filming sharks, so we have probably done 20 or more shark films over our career. We have spent a lot of time trying to get close to sharks with cameras....

“The sharks can be quite shy, and once we put ourselves in the scenario where the sharks can be comfortable, then you have to teach the actors how to move around the sharks without piquing their interest.”

Know thy shark: “Into the Blue” was shot in a location where tourists swim with sharks and the animals are not as fearful of humans as usual. “If you are swimming out in the middle of the coral reef and you see a shark, there is usually a distance they come in before they veer off. But in this location, they don’t veer off until they are a couple of feet from you. The instinct is to flail your hands, and quick motion of the hands or the fins is sort of stimulating to them in a way. If you get panicky and your hands flail real fast, the shark will immediately see that fast movement and run into it.”

Fiction versus documentary filmmaking: “When you are working with wildlife, you have to get to know their tendencies ... and then in clever ways intersect with them where they are going to do their most dramatic things.

“With dramatic features, it is more of a creative process where the director indicates, or the writer indicates, the scenario and then we work hard to get all the elements in place, and we have to anticipate what the ocean might throw at us. A lot of the job is knowing the ocean and the curves that it can throw at you.”

Swimming into a career: “I grew up very much like the kids that were in ‘Flipper.’ In fact, I grew up on Key Biscayne, which is where Flipper lived, and I spent my entire childhood in and on the water. Even before I could talk I was swimming off the beach with my snorkeling gear. I started taking pictures at a very early age in the water. I bought a camera I paid for from lawn mowing at 11. I bought my first underwater camera -- I started taking pictures of my friends. And I stayed with it for a very long time.”

Resides: “I live pretty much on location now. I have a place that I stay in Topanga Canyon and I have a house in Miami, but I am on location nine out of 12 months of the year.”

Union or guild: IATSE -- the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees -- and the Directors Guild of America.

Age: 39

Salary: “I make my living entirely as an underwater specialist. Some years I make as much as a regular director of photography, but I would say if you were asking that question for people who were pursuing [this career], I wouldn’t be very encouraging because there are only a handful making a decent living at this.”