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A Step-by-Step Guide to Underwater Video by John Boyle
A Step-by-Step Guide to Underwater Video by John Boyle
John Boyle is unique among professional film-makers. Instead of coming up through the ranks of film technicians, learning his craft from practising masters, he started as an amateur, learning the hard way.
He was a successful lawyer based in Cornwall who loved diving and got hooked on moving images. So he started making amateur videos, and progressed to selling them.
However, you won't find him using Arriflex or Betacam or HDV, nor will you find his work at Wild-Screen, the wildlife film-makers' showcase. Instead, he wins prizes at the Antibes underwater photography and film festival.
What he does is possible for any of us to do. He uses equipment that is both available and attainable by amateurs, and when he modestly talks about how he goes about making his videos, it means something to any of us who are foolish enough to jump into the water with expensive albeit amateur video equipment. His book A Step-by-Step Guide to Underwater Video is exactly what it says it is.
Boyle is a generous man. He openly shares the valuable lessons he has learned, often at considerable cost to himself. He also gives plenty of credit to his young sidekick Fionn Howieson, something unheard of in the tough, competitive world of the professional film-maker.
Video is an instantly gratifying medium. By and large, if you can see something moving on the screen you have got a good shot.
But, as anyone knows who has sat through hours of blue fish images, that is not the same as making programmes. Boyle assumes that you have read the manual and addresses the problem of making watchable material.
He covers everything you need to know before hitting the water but also what to do with the shots later. He writes about how to get the shots but also how to link sequences to achieve an overall effect.
It's not cheap, but I hope lots of people buy and read this book so that next time, when someone puts on their underwater holiday video, I won't find my eyes rolling back inside my head after fewer than 20 minutes.
John Bantin
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A Step-by-Step Guide to Underwater Video by John Boyle (Circle Books 020 8332 2709). Hardback, 128pp, £25
A Step-by-Step Guide to Underwater Photography can be ordered through www.fourthelement.com
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