DiveFilm HD Video

In this fantastic short video, underwater filmmaker Richard Brooks presents a glimpse of Palau's vibrant and beautiful underwater world. Micronesia has some of the world's most beautiful reefs and offers fantastic diving. Richard, underwater imager with Fish n' Fins in Palau, has the enviable opportunity to dive these waters and experience the marine life there on a regular basis. You can see more of his work in the Photoshop section of the Fish n' Fins website: http://fishnfins.com

Filmmaker Dr. Terry Maas's stunning striped marlin feeding frenzy short film, an award-winner shot entirely while freediving. Filmed off the coast of Baja California, this short film according to Terry "[a]nswers the questions about how these marlin use their bills to feed. This footage was taken in the Fall of 2008 while freediving." The original footage is available at: www. Oceanfootage.com . Learn more about Terry Maas and his work at http://FreeDive.net.

Based in Germany, filmmaker Christian Fries takes us on an unusual visit to Lysekil, Sweden's Havets Hus (House of the Sea). This wonderful short film was shot on the dSLR Canon EOS 5D Mark II. To learn more about Christian Fies and his work with Below the Surface, please check out his website: http://belowthesurface.de/

Filmmaker Rick Morris introduces us to the Census of Marine Life, a global network of researchers in more than 80 nations engaged in a 10-year scientific initiative to assess and explain the diversity, distribution, and abundance of life in the oceans. The world's first comprehensive Census of Marine Life - past, present, and future - will be released in 2010. For more information on the census, please visit the Census of Marine Life at http://coml.org . For more on filmmaker Rick Morris, please visit his website at http://eclipsetvproduction.com .

At the Bonaire Digital Shootout, Backscatter's Jim Decker and Russ Sanoian took the Canon EOS 5D Mark II underwater in an Aquatica housing to test out the DSLR's HD video capabilities. And what incredible results! This footage has no image manipulation, was converted to ProResHQ for editing in Final Cut Pro, and encoded to AppleTV HD specifications in Compressor. What you see is a 5Mbps 1280x720 H.264 encoding of the original 40Mbps 1920x1080 H.264 footage. Editing and music by Jim Decker. Enjoy! For more information, contact http://Backscatter.com

Filmmaker Mike Elliott, a master of macro, uses his art to bring us colorful Feather Duster and Christmas Tree Worms in ways we can't see with the human eye. These worms are a favorite of many underwater imagers because of their colors and their availability. Mike takes filming them to new levels! You can see more of Mike Elliott's video work at http://MuckDiver.com.

Award-winning filmmaker Shawn Heinrichs takes us to the rich waters off the coast of Isla Mujeres, Mexico where the grand masters of flash and slash, the Sailfish, gather and hunt collaboratively.

Simon Spear's award-winning celebration of our water planet home that we share with marine life great and small. This beautiful short film has won awards and accolades in film festivals all over the world. Among the achievements is the First Place Award in the Conservation Video category for the Our World Underwater/Wetpixel/DivePhotoGuide Competition. Simon discusses his film on his website www.viewfromtheblue.me.uk: "70% of our planet's surface is covered by water, and yet we call our planet Earth. Seems strange eh? For centuries we have believed that our oceans were an endless resource and we have harvested their bounty to their maximum potential. However over the last decade in particular we have begun to realize that this is not the case and that our oceans are just as fragile and prone to destruction as any other habitat. "Commercial fish stocks the world over are on the brink of collapse and at current rates will disappear by 2050 at the latest. Shark populations have been decimated as we continue to kill up to 100 million sharks a year. As a result many species are in imminent danger of extinction. Today we have only 5% remaining of our coral reefs that once carpeted most of our tropical seas. By 2050 it is believed that we will loose a further 95% of what little remains. We are in danger of turning our most incredible of natural wonders into a barren desert completely devoid of life. "With all these words of doom it perhaps seems strange then that this film attempts to celebrate our water planet by sharing some of the wonders that I have seen during the past 12 months or so. I truly hope that I can convey at least a small part of the wonder and amazement that I often feel while under the surface of our water planet. I have very little hope that it will be possible to save our oceans in their current state, but we must try with all our resolve, because if we loose this amazing resource, we may find that our species may also be on a very short path to extinction."

Danish filmmaker Bent Jørgensen of Chilbal Filmproduktion shares an incredible Greenland fjord ice diving short film on "The Ikka Column Garden" in Greenland's Ikka Fjord. Camera by Bent Jørgensen, editing by Pernille Semler, music by Rasmus Lyberth, Tusaasara. Underwater beneath the ice in the Ikka Fjord located in southwest Greenland can be found tall, fragile columns formed from carbonate minerals and the remarkable Ikait mineral. Recent increases in water temperature in this area threaten the very existence of these rare and wondrous underwater geological structures. To learn more about Chilbal Film Productions please visit the website at www.chilbal.dk

Edward Snijders of Amsterdam, Netherlands presents two short films, one a fast-paced creative look at underwater images, and the second film a short preview of his award winning beauty, "Eau de Bretagne." This film garnered the prestigious Jury Award at the Antibes, France Festival Mondial de L'Image Sous-Marine. Original musical score by Roy Bemelmans. Edward is a founding organizer and moving force of the North Sea Film Festival for Underwater Movies, and is a tireless proponent of creative underwater short film appreciation. Please see more of his work on his website: www.submarines.nl

Dr. Stacy Kim is a Benthic Ecologist and diver who studies sea floor creatures in Antarctica waters that are below freezing. Her research team has developed a cool new ROV named SCINI (Submersible Capable of Under Ice Navigation and Imaging) for deployment beneath the ice to study depths below where divers can go. In this video, Stacy tells about diving the extreme cold water beneath Antarctic ice, and how SCINI makes possible even greater capabilities to explore and record the sea floor life in polar regions. Video includes wonderful underwater footage by Henry Kaiser of Stacy with SCINI diving beneath the Ross Sea ice near the Antarctic Base, McMurdo Station.

In this award-winning film by Champ Williams we meet voracious creatures with a taste for sea pens. Extraordinary time lapse imagery and exquisite lighting helped earn this film the Demitri Rebikoff Prize for Technical Excellence at the World Festival of Underwater Images in Antibes, France. Winner of awards and accolades all over the world, this film has been an audience favorite everywhere it has been screened. We hope you enjoy this podcast! To learn more about Champ Williams and his work, please visit his website, www.ChampWilliams.com. Originally from Arkansas, Champ followed his passion for cinematography to Southern California where he soon found his second love, the ocean. He honed his skills in the motion picture & undersea programs of Brooks Institute of Photo-graphy where he graduated in 2006. Champ also concurrently attended the marine biology program of California State University, Northridge. As an instructor, scientific, technical, & professional rescue diver, Champ's diving background is diverse; that diversity includes the use of closed circuit rebreathers and service on the Ventura County Sheriff's Underwater Search & Rescue Team. In 2007, Champ founded Nereus Entertainment LLC, located in Ventura, CA, to develop an alternative source for underwater cinema lighting. Recently receiving his tenth international award, Champ continues to progress his passion for cinema-tography and his love for the sea with unwavering enthusiasm. Champ Williams: for the capture of breathtaking underwater images for clients of all sizes.

Award-winning filmmaker Leandro Blanco does it again with this hauntingly beautiful masterpiece about the world of life under the sea, and the world above it that holds the power to understand and steward--or neglect and destroy. To learn more about Leandro and his filmmaking, please visit the Filmmakers Page at DiveFilm.com.

Underwater filmmakers Christian & Diana Fries take us on an ethereal night dive at a collection of reefs in the Egyptian Red Sea known as Abu Dabab. "Abu Dabab at Night" was an Official Selection at the 2008 San Diego UnderSea Film Exhibition. For more information on Christian & Diana, and to see more of their work, please visit their website: BelowTheSurface.de

Underwater filmmaker Mike Elliott takes us into the weird world of some of the tiniest visible crustaceans, the skeleton shrimp. Featuring some truly amazing footage of these minute critters as they go about their daily lives, meeting, greeting, fighting off larger critters, mating and caring for their even tinier young. Filmmaker Mike Elliott and his wife, underwater photographer Jody Elliott, are based in Monterey, California. Their diving takes them all over the world, and also right in their own waters off the coast of Northern California. Please visit Mike's website: http://muckdiver.com