Deepwater Rising

DP Harry Rabin and Kessler Crane Go to the Gulf

One of the Kessler shooters, Harry Rabin, sent us an update on his project Deepwater Rising about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico for the National Science Foundation and NOAA.  Harry has been shooting the Ocean floor at 5000ft below and off the South coast of Louisiana in Bay Jimmy which is ground zero.  These are the marshlands affected by spill. Harry took out the Kessler 12′ jib, called the Kessler Crane with the Hercules head and the Cineslider,which was used to shoot the Alvin Deep submersible Submarine and the Sentry AUV.

According to Harry, the most challenging aspect of shooting with the Hercules and the KC-12 was the fact that they were on very unstable ground. “We had to lay 4×8′ x 3/4 sheets of plywood as a base on top of the oil soaked marsh grass.”

Harry says this was the first time anyone ever brought a jib to the site.  ”The jib was critical to making the last shot of our two month shoot a success.  The portability and reliability of the Kessler gear was KEY to making this particular shoot in the series successful. ”  Harry went on to say that what they captured using the Jib and the Cineslider looked more like aerials. “No one has shot the effects the oil has had on the marsh lands to date. We got a first and we got incredible film!”

One of the first rules of film production is, of course, Murphy’s law:  what can go wrong will go wrong.  This is especially true on an oil drenched barrier island in the Gulf.  ”We had a BIG problem being that the gaffer forgot the battery cable! Fortunately we had the charger and the AC cable and with these extra parts and Kessler’s  brilliant engineering using common parts rather than proprietary cable components, we were able to splice the ends of two separate cables together to make a BATTERY cable! This saved the shoot and probably over $20,000.00 if we had to reorg and comeback another day…”