By Myleene Klass
As host of CNN International’s film show ‘The Screening Room’ I’ve presented the programme from a helicopter over Hollywood, the summit of Sydney Harbour Bridge and atop the Acropolis, but this month the team had planned an even more enterprising adventure.
I’ve been literally throwing myself into my work at the famous “U-stage” at Pinewood Studios near London to experience what it’s like to film in under-water action scenes. I’ve been working with the team which trained Daniel Craig and Eva Green for their sub-aqua scenes in Casino Royale, and instructed Keira Knightley in her memorable under-water scenes in Atonement. So I’m going to look at those scenes completely differently now.
Mike Valentine is the Cinematographer of Diving Services UK. He’s a veteran of many, many underwater shoots. He tells me his responsibility is to take the audience under the water so that when you sit in the cinema and look around at the audience you want to see they're holding their breath with the actor!
The team usually has to accommodate anything that the screenwriters can come up with in their imagination – whatever the script demands, that’s what they have to try and film underwater. My script involved losing a necklace, diving in after the jewellery and being grabbed by a mysterious pair of hands – but there was a twist in the tale and the hands, which seemed terrifying at first, later turned out to be not all that they seemed.
I’ve been diving in the past but this was completely different because you are working with a diving buddy but at the same you have to remember that at the end of all this, you’re going to have to act, so when they take your regulator away, for example, you get to the point where you think ‘right, this is not just about me swimming, I’ve actually got to look like I’ve got a purpose and a focus too’, so that’s in the back of your mind.
It’s important to learn to trust your instructors when they take away your regulator, which is done to disperse the air bubbles around your mouth and avoid giving the game away when you have to act out your scene. You have to brush them away so we did a lot of brushing away of the bubbles. I’ve got long hair which wants to float up straight, but we have to make the most of the movement to show that we are under water. I need to remember to keep swishing it around - so I’m thinking hair commercial!
Again, when you’re diving usually, you’re not supposed to hold your breath especially on the ascent or the descent but in this case of course, you have to hold your breath so the best thing I think at the moment is just to relax into it, let the air out when you need it and hold two fingers to your mouth - the recognised sign for ‘I need my regulator back’. Well, that’s supposedly the sign; I thought that if I got into trouble it could turn into more of a grapple!
Another weird feeling is that when you’re in the bath or in the shower, you keep your eyes closed, but here you have to go against nature and force your eyes to stay open so I felt that I looked a bit like the Bride of Dracula at that moment.
After everything I’ve been through working in the water for five hours in a day, learning to hold my breath and act out a scene and trying to look relaxed while doing it and not float to the surface nor sink to the bottom (it was quite a task!) it felt like quite an achievement by the end.
This is a dream job because I get the opportunity to experience things I would never normally do in a million years. I’m not an actress and yet I’ve had the opportunity through ‘The Screening Room’ to work with stunt experts, people at the top of their field and experience the same process an actress or actor goes through. So when I next interview Daniel Craig or Keira Knightley, I’ll have a better understanding of what we’re talking about. So I gain both the knowledge and at the same time that wealth of experience while being able to enjoy the job.
You can watch my completed underwater film on ‘The Screening Room’s website (address below) and while you won’t see it in cinemas, my actual debut on the silver screen is just around the corner! I’ve made a cameo appearance in the new animated monster movie “Igor”, but I’ll tell you more about that next time. In the meantime I’m off to the Lido for Venice Film Festival. Arrivederci!
Myleene Klass hosts ‘The Screening Room’ on CNN International every month www.cnn.com/screeningroom “
