VISUALS WERE KEY
strain. And when you go underwater, it’s quiet and you see the raft is bobbing against the sunlight shaft. It’s like heaven is coming from below. If he’s going to die, I started to read the deep shots as that was what was waiting for him, sort of a relief.”
The film was mostly shot in water tanks, using what DeMarco fondly refers to as oldfashioned Hollywood tools, such as wave machines and water cannons, but key scenes were captured on the open sea near Bermuda, with real fish — and real sharks.
“There’s one shot where you see small fish and creatures collecting under the raft,” Zuccarini says. “The raft had been at sea just long enough that it had started to become part of the drift ecology. It’s becoming part of the chain, being absorbed by this great life force of the ocean. But after those herring-like fish show up, that’s going to draw jacks and tuna and things, then, of course, the bigger predators.
“So if you’re part of the food chain, you’re really at risk of really becoming part of the food chain.”
DeMarco, meanwhile, looked for ways to balance the narrative tension with rich visuals to enhance the viewer’s sense of place.
“There are some little interstitial things we did, some kind of Terrence Malick-neorealistic moments,” he says. “The sails flapping, the wool [of a sail] telltale undulating in the wind, the sun flaring into the lens as the boat comes about. The camera slowly pans down the foresail to a little piece of Bob, kind of makes a mistake and tilts too low and finally racks to Bob in a big, profile close-up in the right of frame. It’s a very imperfect, human move.
“It’s one of those elusive things; the camera captured the emotion of the scene.”