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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
With its shocking realism, "Open Water" may be the perfect cross between "The Blair Witch Project" and "Jaws."
Jan 21, 2004 | If you haven't rented "Jaws" or watched the Discovery Channel's "Shark Week" for a while, you might have conveniently forgotten about our friends the sharks, with their razor-sharp teeth and their curious little quirks. Enjoy this blissful lapse while you can, because director Chris Kentis is about to refresh your memory. The heart-stopping realism of his movie "Open Water" has the most reserved crowds at Sundance gasping and cringing in horror. Based on a true story of a vacationing couple scuba diving and abandoned in the middle of the ocean, "Open Water" has a straightforward style that pulls the viewer, kicking and screaming, into the narrative.
Aptly described as "Jaws" meets "The Blair Witch Project," the film somehow brings the horrors of sharks alive without special effects or expensive mechanical beasts. Yes, that means that the actors were actually in the water with real sharks. No, I wouldn't do that in a million years either, so I was excited to meet these insane individuals to learn what it's like to be surrounded by sharks while your producer throws bloody chum at your head.
How did you first hear about the true story that was the basis for "Open Water"?
Chris Kentis, director: I was aware of the story for a number of years before I did this, just as a vacation scuba diver. I first heard about it in dive circles and newsletters, and it really sent a chill down my spine. I was horrified by it, but never really thought about it in any other way. But then with the advent of Dogma 95, Lars Von Trier, Thomas Vinterberg and of course "Blair Witch" and those things, it became clear that you really could make a movie on this [digital] format and people are open to seeing it. I thought this story would work well in this format -- they would complement each other as opposed to just shooting a story because it's all we can afford.
You two worked very closely on this film, which sounds like a trial for anyone, let alone a married couple. And I noticed the relationship and the clashes between the couple in the film were very realistic...
Laura Lau, producer: That has nothing to do with our marriage!
Well, you two are perfect together, of course.
Lau: Of course. We work really closely. We've been together a long time. We made a film before this ["Grind"], we made a short before that, and we've written a couple of scripts together. We have a lot of fun working together.
Kentis: We're really a filmmaking team. There's really no job that isn't interchangeable. I did some producing, and we shot the film together.
Blanchard Ryan, lead actress: Working with a couple, it made us feel better, because it was a risky film on many levels: the nudity, the sharks, being in the ocean, having to carry a film when you're two actors who no one knows. We trusted them and knew they weren't going to clash like other teams, and that was a comforting feeling for us.
Daniel Travis, lead actor: We'd often be doing a take, and Laura would say, "Are you sure you got this?" Everybody was making sure that everyone else was taken care of the whole time.
Did you do a lot of takes? Because being out at sea like that, it seems like it would be hard to get the right footage.
Travis: A lot of it was technical -- trying to match the color of water that day, or trying to match the sky that day, or trying to stay close to the boat.
Ryan: We'd be in the middle of a take and a wave would splash up into your face and we'd have to say, "Well, that was a great take but it ain't gonna make it into the movie."
Kentis: Also, they look like they're floating in the middle of the ocean, and they are -- we were about 18 miles out, in the Bahamas -- but the currents were wicked. So at first we tethered them to the boat. That kept them from getting swept off, but they had to really swim. In every single scene, they're kicking like crazy just to keep in position for the camera. So, to still perform and do all the emotional stuff they had to do
Lau: Everything was very tightly scripted, and when you guys got out there, it was hard. You had to remember your lines.
Ryan: The sky would change and we'd have to flip to another scene. So we had to have the whole script in our heads.
Travis: The jellyfish just showed up one day. So we jumped into that scene.
Lau: Actually, that's the scene we were shooting!
Kentis: It was one of the wonderful things that happened. The jellyfish were always in the script, but I thought we'd have to go out and search for them, and the day we decide to get the topside coverage of it, we went in the water and we were immediately surrounded by jellyfish.
Yay! What could be better?
Kentis: Yeah, what a stroke of luck, surrounded by jellyfish!
Ryan: We felt like Mother Nature was on our side. When we were doing one of the more intense scenes, it was just a normal, choppy day, and then all of a sudden, the water laid down like glass. It was completely calm and it suited the scene so well.
The water is doing so many different things during the movie, it seemed choreographed to fit the emotional mood.
Kentis: It was a conscious thing. We generally knew the mood we wanted and what we wanted the sky to look like.
How close did to you stick to the real story of what happened to these people?
Kentis: It actually happened off the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, but I wasn't interested in the real people involved. I did no research on them. I didn't want to represent their relationship or their lives. We changed the names, we invented our own characters, because that wasn't what I cared about, and also out of respect for the real people involved. That's why we left where it was set ambiguous on purpose, because we didn't want to lay that trip on anybody's tourist trade.
Ryan: Plus, there are great white sharks in the Great Barrier Reef. I would not have wanted to swim around with those.
Kentis:: They're not by the reef, really. They're out in the open ocean.
Ryan: Well, we were in the open ocean.
Kentis: That's true.
