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the film was meant to be a kind of
experiential river that the viewer gets
immersed in and taken to all these
places around the world and witnessing
all these existential interactions with
water in places that they would never
normally see in terms of water we assume
that it's just there and it will be
there and our governments are in charge
of getting us fresh drinkable water all
the time but what we wanted to do with
this film was to kind of say wait wait a
minute let's think about what this large
growing population of humans leaning on
this finite resource is actually doing
edie was asked by National Geographic to
do a shoot on water in California
California has very complex water treaty
access agreements because they have very
little water of their own so when it
came back with those photographs we
looked at and said this is it this is
the subject there's something so
cinematic about water and the scope of
it was totally daunting like how do you
make a film about water perfect
in 2006 I made a film about Ed's work we
followed him through China as he kind of
documented photographically that
Industrial Revolution I went there
searching for well what does that look
like how does that transplanted
technology appear within China
manufactured landscapes was a good I
think environment for us all to work
together and then that became the
collaboration on watermark where ed was
from the beginning part of the
filmmaking team story also unfolded into
other places into Mexico with China to
look at the largest fish farms in the
world India to see the Kumbha Mela
festival
we're following many of the things that
I've established as a still photographer
looking for interesting points of view
looking at the human systems on scale
that are imposed upon that landscape
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when you think of Burtynsky stills
they're incredibly high-resolution
prints are like five by seven six by
eight feet and because of the resolution
you can be overwhelmed by the wide view
but then you can look in close and see
unbelievable potential narrative threads
in detail I worked with four by five
formats back in the day of film and 8 by
10 and now I've started working with a
Hasselblad with a 16 megapixel back the
richness of the aesthetic experience of
this film was very much dependent upon
the proper use of technology we had a
red epic camera a hand-assembled
prototype it was so new it hadn't even
been released yet and that shoots in 5k
so we had that as our main camera
when I went back to China I wanted to
bring some of the ideas of again
releasing myself from a fixed point
perspective that you know I'm on the
ground or I'm on a hilltop or I'm on a
rooftop and that's the best I can do in
China you can't rent a Cessna you can't
rent a helicopter you know there is no
Siller
aviation it's all either military or
commercial and then I looked at all
kinds of ways in which I might be able
to do that and at the end of the day I
thought okay they're now remote
helicopters that can be assembled on
location and they're strong enough to be
able to put an epic or a Hasselblad on
them so I can then be shooting from a
thousand feet looking through my
Hasselblad but offered us an ability to
do something that was not possible any
other way
it's really difficult when you arrive in
some of these environments that are so
huge in scale and often the subject is
just so vast it's really hard to find
one way of comprehensively trying to
tell that story what ended up happening
in production is that we kind of easily
fell into these areas of strength so ed
would spend one whole day getting one
shot and we would go off and find the
workers coming home from their shift
having dinner talking to them finding
people in little details the whole film
is a dialogue between scale and detail
in some way or particular and Universal
or the big view the the tiny view
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there's a tension that I feel when you
visit a lot of these sites that
represent really extreme environmental
degradation or people who are under
extreme water stress in different parts
of the world as someone who wants to be
an optimist and wants to find solutions
to things sometimes witnessing these
places can really take the wind at your
sails
the Colorado River Delta
where we filmed from the air originally
and it was like a science fiction
landscape it was surreal miles and miles
of white desert with these trees of the
ocean coming up trying to find the river
and the river isn't there I was just
looking at this place and thinking my
god the extent to which we change things
is pretty profound this film is about
allowing you to experience these places
and if it opens up your consciousness to
think about something that you might
take for granted turning on a tap having
a drink of water you know jumping in a
lake having a shower all these things
that we do here without thinking about
it if it changes your perspective on
that a little bit then it's it's done
something meaningful
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Oh
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