Deep trouble

Shot on weekends and holidays, Open Water employs not a single cheesy special effect or computer generated image.

Instead, actors Blanchard Ryan and Daniel Travis spent more than 120 hours in the water 20 miles offshore amid all kinds of sea life, including the real-life sharks that give the film its chilling authenticity.

Based on a true story, Open Water reminds us how much fun it is to be frightened by our most primal fears, namely what we think may linger just below the sea's surface.

Like the film's principal characters Susan and Daniel, the people who created Open Water are certified open water scuba divers, and they too are a couple. Unlike Susan and Daniel, filmmakers Laura Lau and Chris Kentis are married and have a daughter; the tension between the couple in the film, according to Lau, "has nothing to do with our marriage!"

Lau and Kentis are very much a filmmaking team.

Though their duties often overlap, Lau produced Open Water and photographed the film with Kentis, who wrote, directed and edited the film, and was responsible for all in-the-water and underwater photography.

According to actress Blanchard Ryan, the team dynamic Lau and Kentis brought to Open Water was an important part of making the film.

"Working with a couple, it made us feel better, because it was a risky film on many levels: the nudity, the sharks, being in the ocean, having to carry a film when you're two actors no one knows. We trusted them and knew they weren't going to clash like other teams, and that was a comfortable feeling for us."

Open Water was inspired by a true story that circulated in dive magazines and newsletters a few years ago.

"It actually happened off the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, but I wasn't interested in capturing the real people involved," explains Kentis. "I did no research on them. I didn't want to represent their relationship or their lives. We changed the names, we invented our own characters because their personal lives had nothing to do with the story I wanted to tell, and also out of respect for them.

"What I was really interested in is the fact that this could and did happen, the terror of being alone at sea, what that was like - and I thought it was a great cautionary tale."

Says Chris Kentis: "As human beings, we blunder off into an exotic locale, cement over the place and serve each other drinks. We go with arrogance into these places, forgetting we're just animals in the chain."

The food chain and our place in it is a recurring theme in Open Water, and the manipulation of the food chain played an important part in its production. To create the drama inherent in the dilemma of a stranded couple slowly becoming food, Kentis and Lau shot most of the film in the open ocean off of the Bahamas.

Shark experts and the filmmakers would manipulate the sharks' movements by throwing chunks of bloody tuna into the water, often near the actors.

Says Kentis: "We would throw bait in the water to get the sharks to move. But once too many pieces are in the water, the sharks get really worked up, and then the actors would have to get out of the water.

"But Laura would still be shooting on her platform, which dipped in and out of the water as the sharks frenzied below. Sometimes she would shoot with her legs dangling in the water."

Safety was the primary concern while working with the sharks. Actors Blanchard Ryan and Daniel Travis wore protective chain mail under their wetsuits, which would have prevented dismemberment but not bruising. Luckily, neither actor was bitten by a shark, though on the first day of shooting a barracuda bit Ryan.

"It was bleeding a lot," says Ryan. "I was like, did you get it?' Because if I'm gonna get bit, at least let it be usable footage."

"Daniel was much less afraid of the sharks, but I was terrified," says actress Blanchard Ryan.

"The first day we shot, Chris jumps in the water, Daniel jumps in the water, they're swimming around, the sharks are eating the tuna, they're not bothering them.

"I was thinking, I'm being a Nancy. I need to get in the water!' But it was just terrifying."

"Working in the water with real sharks was the key to the movie for me," adds Kentis.

"It seems like in most movies today, everything is done with CGI computer generated imaging, and personally I don't get the same sense of danger that I did with movies from the 70s and 80s, when you saw stunt men doing these amazing things. You'd say, Oh my god, someone was in that car!' when it was wrecked.

"It was important to work with real sharks, to get the way their tails flap around like big rats in the water as opposed to the usual Hollywood fin gliding smoothly on the surface."