The story of an award winning amateur documentary film by Barry McKnight and Roger Cowland as it appeared in the January 2004 issue of CAMERA magazine…
It would be nice to say that our award winning video “Lady Elliot - Cinderella Island” was carefully planned, but it wasn’t. The whole project came about through one of those strange quirks of fate - when what begins as a disaster turns out to be a blessing in disguise. On this occasion we were at Hervey Bay, in Queensland, filming soldier crabs when it was suggested to us that we visit the nearby Lady Elliot Island. It seemed like a good idea, as we had with us our newly purchased EWA Marine underwater housings to try out. Our camera equipment consisted of two Sony TRV 900 camcorders, two Sony TRV 120 Digital 8 camcorders, plus wide angle and telephoto lenses, accessory lights and tripods. The digital 8 camcorders came with us due to their excellent 25x optical zooms, which when used in conjunction with a 2x converter, gave us 50x - an absolute godsend when shooting wildlife. Another reason was their night vision feature, absent in the 900s. To get to the island, which is a tiny coral cay at the southern end of the Great Barrier Reef, took only 30 minutes flying direct from the Hervey Bay airport. On arrival we just had time to test one of the underwater housings before light rain set in. Putting an expensive Sony 900 into the underwater housing for the first time was a little nerve wracking, as the housing was basically a large heavy duty vinyl bag with no external controls. It was set on auto focus and switched to recording mode as it was placed into the water. Once in the water one just points the camera in the general direction of marine activity and hopes!. The housing did the job, but left a lot to be desired in terms of viewing accuracy and ease of handling in choppy seas. It probably sounds a wasteful way of shooting, but after viewing the captured footage we intended selecting only the best scenes and recycling the tape. Our first attempt at underwater shooting was rather jerky, and sometimes we missed the intended subject entirely. This was not the result that we had been hoping for. That night a violent thunderstorm hit the island and our room was flooded! It had not been a very good day for us at all and we were now looking forward to returning to the mainland the next day. When we reported the flooding to the resort manager he was dismayed at what had happened and quickly had us moved to another room. He also offered us an extra night free of charge - an offer that we gratefully accepted. The next day turned out to be bright and sunny. Our moods also brightened with the change in the weather, so we decided to try out the underwater housings again. This time, however, we decided to attach the wide angle conversion lenses to the cameras, hoping that by doing so they would smooth the movement more, and, together with a realignment of the cameras give us a better chance of getting the subject into the camera’s field of vision. This time the results were much better. As it was October the nesting season was in full swing, with the island reported to be the home of around 100,000 birds during the summer breeding season. Never before had we seen so many, and such a varied collection of birds, in the one place. It would be a virtual Paradise for bird lovers! As with any wildlife photography there is very little planning of shots as the subjects often don’t hang around long enough for you to get that exposure just right, or set up the camera at just the right angle. You just quickly grab what you can and rely on the cameras auto functions to deliver the shot. If your aim is to shoot quality video then the use of a tripod is absolutely essential, especially with a telephoto lens attached. However, this brings its own problems as birds and animals usually freak out at the sight of a tripod, perhaps thinking it to be some new kind of three legged predator. A friend of ours has solved the problem by wearing a very large hat with camouflage netting hanging from the hat’s edges so that it covers himself and the tripod, with a hole in the net for the lens to peer through. This may well succeed in fooling a few birds, but it just might be a health hazard when encountering a stray human or two who may do a little freaking out themselves when confronted by such a strange apparition. Our extra day, and better weather, did however, enable us to get some satisfactory footage which we edited into a short film called “Island of Birds”.. Before we left the island we had heard talk about the big sea turtles returning to breed on the island during the summer months, so we organised a return visit for the first week in February. Now, as seasoned travellers we know that the reality often falls short of one’s expectations and we didn’t really expect to see any turtles, but the very afternoon of our arrival back on the island, a turtle’s nest began hatching just outside our beach side unit. This caused alarm in the resort as a daylight hatching puts the little turtles at risk from numerous predators as they race to enter the water. Word of the hatching quickly spread and a hotel staff member arrived carrying a bucket. Putting it down beside the hatching nest, she carefully began scooping up the little turtles and placed them in the bucket for release later that night, while the hotel guests quickly rounded up any strays that had wandered off. We obtained some great footage of the recovery of the baby turtles, but now we wanted to film them being released and running into the sea that night. This posed a significant challenge as the hatchlings are programmed by nature to run towards the brightest spot, which at night would be the far off horizon. Consequently flash photography and any other lights were banned as it would confuse the baby turtles. Fortunately we had our Sony Digital 8 cameras which were equipped with infra-red night vision. We planned that one of us would shoot them running down the beach, with the other positioned to film them as they entered the water. It worked fine until they reached the water, where they stopped and then began to move back towards our cameras, and not out to sea. We knew that they couldn’t see the infra-red beam but on investigation it was discovered that they were homing in on the tiny light within the viewfinder. End of filming for that night! The next night, when there were hatchlings to release, we planned a different strategy. With permission from a staff member one of us would stand as far out in the water as possible with the camera accessory light switched on to attract the baby turtles, and the other camera. in infra-red mode, would record the race down the beach to the water. When they were in the water the light would be turned off to allow them to swim out to sea. Thankfully there was only a gentle swell in the water that night, and our plan worked quite well giving us some good footage. Later on, and further along the beach, we encountered two huge adult turtles that had dragged themselves up the beach to lay their eggs. Again with the stealth of the infra-red light cameras we were able to get some great shots of them laying and covering up their eggs. We now had quite a bit of turtle footage, but, as yet, no really good underwater footage of fish. What we lacked most of all were close ups. This was solved by waiting for a low tide in the lagoon, and then, with the cameras in their housings, we plunged into what we thought was a suitable area with the most coral and fish activity. Again, we hoped that the camera’s automatic focusing would home in on anything that came within range. Though the fish were disturbed at first, they soon got used to the cameras and us, and returned to doing what fish do. When we emerged some time later with wrinkled skin like dried prunes due to the lengthy emersion in the water, we felt that we had succeeded in getting some nice footage of coral, colourful fish and some very strange sea creatures. The next day while waiting for the plane to arrive and return us to Hervey Bay, we wandered into the island’s small museum. It was here that we discovered that the island had a very tragic past, with numerous shipwrecks, suspected murders and suicides, which resulted in it having a resident ghost. Not only that, but the island itself was devastated when guano mining stripped it of all its vegetation and left it bare. If all this wasn’t enough the final indignity came when a cyclone caused flooding so severe that the tiny island disappeared completely for a short time. It took a lot of hard work by very many people to restore the island and make it into the wildlife haven, and tourist Mecca that it is today. We now had a story to tell, and the task of putting it all together… The first thing, and most vital on our return to Sydney, was to log all the material into our database. After again viewing what we had a script was written to encompass all the best footage and to establish a narrative flow to tell the story of the unique island. Editing was done in Premiere 5.1 and special effects handled by Photoshop. The greatest difficulty came in getting someone to do the narration. It was surprising how people that you think could easily handle such a task, proved to be hopelessly inadequate. The news readers and on camera reporters on television make it seem so easy, but believe me it isn’t. In the end, despite the difficulties, I, Barry, decided to do it myself. It premiered at Sydney’s Northside Camcorder Club’s Video of the Year night in 2002 where it won the first prize for Best Documentary. Among the International Awards that it has won, the most prestigious was the Photographic Society of America’s Gold Medal award for Best Photography at the Cotswold International Film and Video Festival in England in 2003. It beat a field of 100 entries from 20 countries and is only the second time the award has been won by Australians.
