ABOUT

Where do we all come from? The online commercial centers around a single dive on a single breath. Taking the viewer onto a journey back to a time when our lives had just begun. Told with ethereally beautiful underwater photography of a freediver exploring a kelp forest in the depths of the ocean. Bird's Eye View explores the primal relationship between man and the sea. It dares to shine a light on what viscerally attracts us to it by drawing a direct connection to instincts long lost along our path to becoming human.

The objective was to create an evocative film about the soul of free diving and to pull the target audience into an immersive underwater world, while presenting the signature REC45 cold water wetsuit. For us the eerie but beautiful underwater world inside California's kelp forest presented the perfect backdrop to present our definition of the unique sport and achieve set goals.

We tried to break into new grounds by utilizing the backdrop of kelp forests. Unfortunately the shoot depended on the conditions in the water. We ended up with subpar visibility on day 2 of 2. In post we could focus on the footage from day 1 only. Because of the bad conditions on day 2 we also had to do a pick up shoot for the entire "turning" sequence and rely on the help of some visual effects.

We shot the project with two cameras. The more sophisticated shots were taken over by Brooke Basse, as she's the more experienced free diver. Working as an industrial diver normally, she never operated an underwater camera on a commercial shoot before, yet took in my directions as good as anyone could have and ended up exceeding our best expectations.