I have been wondering, why are we doing what we do ?
First of all, we need to be good divers, with exceptional buoyancy control, and with more than just a basic knowledge of the diving equipment, so we can make maintenance in the field if needed. We need to have control of our gasconsumption, so we can extend our time underwater, and we need a more intuitive feeling of remaining gas, cause we might not look at the gauge as often as the average diver.
If diving rebreathers we need to know about mixed gas diving, and how to setup and maintain a sophisticated machine, and then dive with it and monitor it at the same time as we operate, a complicated videocamera stuffed in a big housing with long arms and attached lights. We want to operate the camera on fully manual, so we need to know about: iris, shutterspeed, gain and white balance. But that is not enough, cause we want nice films, so we need to know about composing a nice picture, and then you got to have an idea of what will be interesting for the viewers to watch.
So we venture out for several days/weeks diving in to the deep, perhaps the water is cold and the visibility is poor, but now we are here, and we want the footage. Be prepared to dive alone, cause the underwater cameraman is the worst buddy you will ever find (so they say, and I am sure they are right).
Now, to edit the film, you need to know a great deal about computers, cause editing video is demanding on the hardware, so you cannot expect the "out of a box" computer to be ready to deal with the task of editing video. Then you need to learn how to use the editing software, which almost always has it's own user interface, so you end up with a feeling of searching and searching for a specific feature. Then you need to know about colo(u)r correction and filters an how they affect the film.
Now you are ready to edit your film, so hopefully you have an idea of what "makes a good film", cause otherwise you will end up spending an enormous amount of time making a film, that nobody ever want to see.
And when you finally is ready to output your film you need to know about the many different formats of video there is, cause otherwise nobody might be able to actually watch your film.
And if you hope to be able to sell you film, be prepared to spend the same amount of time altogether "knocking doors".
Oups - did I forget to mention that all of us, who do not have English as our native language, we need to be prepared for the fact, that every manual, piece of equipment and instruction will be in a different language than we speak daily.
Feel free to extend the list, but please also post something to keep motivate us doing what we do.
So why are we doing what we do ? B)
