Low Tide

A film about a place that only exists for about three hours a day, made for a magazine that wanted to run it as a standalone rather than a trailer for an article.

Approach

The tide in the Golfe du Morbihan moves faster than it looks. There is a window either side of the turn when the water is flat enough to hold a reflection and still shallow enough to walk, and that window is the whole film. Everything was scheduled against a published tide table rather than a call sheet — the longer version of how we work is on the about page.

One camera, one lens, no tripod after the first morning. Handheld gave the frame a small amount of drift that matched the water, and once that read on the monitor there was no argument for locking it off.

The fourth morning was the only one with cloud, and it produced most of the final cut.

On location

Two of us, wellingtons, and a hard stop when the water came back. What we carried:

• One body, one 55mm, one variable ND

• A tide table taped to the back of the matte box

• Two batteries, because the third would have meant staying too long

The order of the mornings mattered more than the shot list:

1. Scout on foot at low water, no camera

2. Shoot the turn, both directions

3. Leave before the channel closes

Scheduling

The call times came out of the tide table rather than the other way round. The windows array below is what the schedule was actually built from:

// Every morning was scheduled against the tide, not a call sheet.
// The usable window is 90 minutes either side of low water.
const lowWater = ["06:12", "07:04", "07:51", "08:39"]

const windows = lowWater.map((time, i) => {
  const [h, m] = time.split(":").map(Number)
  const centre = h * 60 + m
  return { morning: i + 1, from: centre - 90, to: centre + 90 }
})

// Every morning was scheduled against the tide, not a call sheet.
// The usable window is 90 minutes either side of low water.
const lowWater = ["06:12", "07:04", "07:51", "08:39"]

const windows = lowWater.map((time, i) => {
  const [h, m] = time.split(":").map(Number)
  const centre = h * 60 + m
  return { morning: i + 1, from: centre - 90, to: centre + 90 }
})

// Every morning was scheduled against the tide, not a call sheet.
// The usable window is 90 minutes either side of low water.
const lowWater = ["06:12", "07:04", "07:51", "08:39"]

const windows = lowWater.map((time, i) => {
  const [h, m] = time.split(":").map(Number)
  const centre = h * 60 + m
  return { morning: i + 1, from: centre - 90, to: centre + 90 }
})

The four mornings, for the record:

A frame from the fourth morning, before the grade:

Watch

The finished film, and a short behind-the-scenes cut:

Delivery

A four-minute film and a sixty-second cut for social. The grade keeps the greys cold and resists the temptation to warm the horizon, which was the one note that came back on the first pass and the one we argued to keep.