Blue Water, White Death [DVD]

Description

Blue Water, White Death (Sous-titres français An Interview with Blue Water, White Death Filmmaker Valerie Taylor There are a few scary moments in the film, of course, but was there any one particular moment you recall when you really thought someone was going to get hurt? Yes, when we first left the cages, there were over 100 big potentially dangerous sharks around us all in a feeding pattern. I thought "this is madness , one of us could get bitten. I said to Peter you go out first and if you make it I will come out after you." "watching Peter leave the cage by himself was both fascinating and fearful". I think that was my most frightened moment. I guess no one likes to see a friend in what is a very dangerous situation. Surprisingly when I swam out and joined him there was no fear just a huge excitement. Jaws came out a few years after this, and of course Benchley was inspired by Blue Water, White Death . How did you feel about that and its portrayal of sharks as man-eating monsters? Jaws was a fictitious film about a pretend shark. It was the same as a gorilla destroying the building in King Kong . Just a story. I do not know why it affected people the way it did. People loved the gorilla and hated the shark. Universal had us going around the US doing TV and radio interviews talking about sharks and how sharks did not think or behave like the fictitious beast in Jaws . I guess it is the fear of the unknown. Sharks are not well understood. They live in an alien environment. Gorillas live in ours. We understand them better. Once you understand an animal it becomes less fearful. Do you have one particularly interesting memory from this adventure that’s etched in your mind? What was the greatest part of this whole adventure? Absolutely. Diving with the oceanic white tips in the open ocean while they were feeding on the whale. No one had ever done anything like this before and no one will ever do it again. It was the greatest, most exciting few weeks in my life. I would pay to do it again. Sheer unadulterated adventure. A trip back in time to a world unchanged in several million years. Blue Water, White Death was a gift which at the time I was unaware of. The greatest part of the whole adventure was, quite simply, the adventure. What do you hope people watching this film for the first time today will get out of it? The same as they did when it first came out. It has not dated. It is an exciting and true undertaking such as few people are ever lucky enough to experience. No one ever asked us to act a part. Jim Lipscomb, the above water cameraman, was incredible the way he followed us around carrying that big 35-mm Arriflex on his shoulder. We became used to him and his camera but he was always there recording everything we did. It is a great pity that all the outtakes are lost. There is a second story just in what never appeared in the final production. Did this expedition and your experience swimming with great whites change your life in any significant way? We had worked with Great Whites before. It was the Oceanic sharks that changed how I looked at dangerous sharks and it was the wonderful people I was so fortunate to be working with that gave us friendships that endure to this day that were most significant to me. However, I guess it was the original story about hunting for the biggest Great White that gave me these memories, so Great Whites have enriched my life. Also Ron's filming of these wonderful sharks opened the way for us to work on Jaws , Jaws 2 , and Orca . I guess swimming with Great Whites did make a big difference to the lives of both of us. We still work with Great Whites but we will never be able to dive with hundreds of big sharks feeding on a whale carcass again, nobody will. Thirty eight years ago, before the impact of computer technology we lived in a different world. Today Blue Water, White Death could probably be produced in a computer. Can you talk a bit about the filming technology of that time and how challenging it was to film underwater? I did not do any underwater filming. That was Ron Taylor, Stan Waterman and Peter Gimbel. They were shooting on 35-mm film in the Techniscope format which is very wide screen. I was just a female shark wrangler. I also did a lot of the underwater still photography. However watching the problems the underwater cinema-photographers had to overcome, I was always relieved when all the cameras worked and no great sequences were missed because of camera failure. It was not a filming job where any missed action could be repeated. Review: The first ever shark movie from 1971 - Before JAWS shocked moviegoers everywhere in 1975 there was this great documentary movie from 1971 that remains one of the best shark films of all time with great underwater shark footage. The movie features a cast of divers that includes Ron and Valerie Taylor who provided the real life shark footage shown in the original JAWS. Blue Water White Death follows a film crew on a 12,000 mile boat adventure led by legendary Peter Gimbel as they search the Indian ocean to capture a great white shark on camera for the first time. The movie gets a little slow and boring in the middle but the underwater footage is excellent and makes the film a must-see for every shark enthusiast. Folk singer Tom Chapin provides some peaceful folk songs from the boat with his guitar including the beautiful ballad "Chilly Winds" that brings a tranquil atmosphere throughout the film. This was the original shark movie of the 1970's that paved the way for all others that followed. If you swim in the sea, anywhere in the world, you do not do so without risk. The shark is an ancient, wide-ranging, ever-present threat. Sharks do not ordinarily feed on human beings, but as volumes will attest, they do attack. How and when and why is still unpredictable. All sharks, no matter what their size; should be treated with respect. The seas off our shore are aprowl with many killers. There are at least 500 species of sharks. Most are predators, born with a full set of teeth and the instinct to use them. Even a shark much smaller than a man has the ability to inflict fatal injuries. Every year, around 80 unprovoked shark attacks are reported worldwide. On average, there are 16 shark attacks per year in the United States, with one fatality every two years. According to the International Shark Attack File (ISAF), between 1958 and 2023 there were 2,900 confirmed shark attacks around the world, of which 633 were fatal. The 98 shark attacks in 2015 was the highest yearly total on record. According to the ISAF, the U.S. states in which the most attacks have occurred are Florida, Hawaii, California, Texas, and the Carolinas, though attacks have occurred in almost every coastal state. New Smyrna Beach Florida has experienced more shark attacks than any other spot in the world, while Australia has the highest number of fatal attacks in the world. Sharks do not seek out humans as prey and most attacks are believed to be cases of mistaken identity. Out of more than 500 shark species, only 3 are responsible for a double-digit number of fatal, unprovoked attacks on humans: the TIGER, BULL and the GREAT WHITE. A number of other species have also attacked without being provoked, and have on extremely rare occasions been responsible for a human death. This group includes the oceanic whitetip, shortfin mako, hammerhead, Galapagos, gray reef, blacktip, lemon, silky and blue sharks. These sharks are also large, powerful predators which can be provoked simply by being in the water at the wrong time and place, but they are considered less dangerous to humans than the previous group. Review: excellent - Classic documentary from 1971. No flash - real. Great photography and sound. And its wide screen!!! The 25 min. backstory is also very good. I found out about this from the JAWS, 30th anniversary edition backstory which is 2 hours long. (Blue Water White Death is not mentioned in the Jaws 25th anniversary ed. backstory which is 55 min.)