A very happy “ Shark Week ” to all who celebrate! It’s wild that this marquee Discovery summer event seems to increase in size every year, spawning a massive 21 separate programs for its 2024 slate — which is, naturally, hosted by John Cena . This got the IndieWire Craft team thinking about how documentarians capture footage of nature’s most infamous cartilaginous fish, so we reached out to some “ Shark Week ” cinematographers with the same questions we ask both documentary and scripted DPs about how they craft the look of their projects. You likely won’t be surprised to learn that the logistical constraints of getting up close to sharks are numerous and inform what these DPs arm themselves with, camera-wise.
Andy Casagrande, who shot this year’s “Air Jaws,” stressed the unpredictable nature of the animal subjects as being core to a lot of decision-making. Particularly with respect to Great Whites, Casagrande told IndieWire that breaching — a hunting tactic wherein a Great White will launch all 1,500 to 2,400 pounds of itself out of the water to leap onto prey that it’s chasing — can happen as fast and as unpredictably as a lightning strike. To catch the spectacular nature of those moments requires super high-speed slow-motion cameras.
The ability to cache pre-record, a feature that allows a camera to continuously capture a short amount of footage even before an operator presses the record button, is also crucial to not missing the most dramatic mo.
