Working 30 feet underwater much the same as on land, a Disney camera crew films thrilling sub marine action for "‘20,000 Leagues Under The Sea."
THIRTY FEET UNDERWATER in the CaribT bean, off Nassau, Bahamas, some eighty motion picture artists and technicians wearing safety diving gear recently completed what unquestionably was the most challenging assignment ever faced by a Hollywood motion picture troupe. Here on the ocean floor was filmed in Eastman Color with a CinemaScope lens the fabulous underwater se quences for Walt Disneys version of Jules Vernes "20,000 Leagues Under The Sea."
It would require a good size volume to relate in detail everything of interest connected with this unusual undertaking. So this must be but a brief resume which, along with the photos above, I hope will give the reader a comprehensive account of this greatest of underwater filming assignments.
During this assignment there was photographed more underwater footage than for any other motion picture on record. The scenes for the most part, were not the familiar undersea swimming shots of one or two people but embraced carefully-planned and enacted scenes that required painstaking rehearsals, and the use of props and set pieces laboriously brought to the ocean floor and erected by experienced divers trained as grips and prop men for this particular phase of the Disney production.
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