Luke Tipple catches up with cinematographer, shark expert and star of Air Jaws: Top Guns, Andy Casagrande.
On this episode of Shark Week: The Podcast, cinematographer and Shark Week legend Andy Casagrande joins host Luke Tipple as they dive into the world of Great White Sharks. Andy discusses being part of Discovery show Air Jaws: Top Guns, and the search to find the biggest breaching great white shark ever. Andy explains the remarkable hunting methods of great whites near Shark Island in South Africa and talks about his remarkable journey from cameraman to Shark Week host.
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Find episode transcripts here: https://shark-weeks-daily-bite.simplecast.com/episodes/s3-ep6-filming-sharks-as-a-career
For more about sharks, head to SharkWeek.com
[00:00:00] Luke: Just over three miles off the coast of South Africa lies Seal Island, home to over 60,000 fur seals. And, in these waters surrounding the islands, great white sharks truly put their skills to the test. Seal island is the home of Air Jaws.
[Music]
[00:00:20] Luke: Welcome to Shark Week: The Podcast! I'm Luke Tipple, marine biologist, and a frequent voice on my favorite things, oceans and sharks. I'm stoked to bring the magic of Shark Week, right to your ears. Sharks have been a big part of my life for over 20 years now, studying them and diving with them all around the world.
[00:00:38] Luke: I guess that's given me some of the street cred to participate in many Shark Week documentaries throughout the years, and, now, to be your host. So whether you've never seen Shark Week before, or you've been a diehard fan over the 30 plus years it's been around, this podcast is for you.
[00:00:58] Luke: On today's podcast, I'm delighted to welcome cinematographer, shark specialist and star of the Shark Week documentary Air Jaws: Top Guns. This is Andy Brandy Casagrande. Welcome to the show, buddy.
[00:01:11] Andy: Woohoo. What's up, man. I'm stoked to be here. Thanks for having me.
[00:1:13] Luke: Yeah, you're welcome. Where are you right now?
[00:01:15] Andy: Uh, right now I'm in one of the Sharkiest places on the planet, Stockholm, Sweden, which, obviously, is not Sharky at all.
[00:01:24] Luke: I was gonna say, keep your toes out of the hot Springs there, mate.
[00:01:26] Andy: Exactly!
[00:01:27] Luke: Well, for those few of you listening, who perhaps don't know who ABC is, let's just give them a brief history of your involvement in Shark Week, mate.
[00:01:35] Luke: How did it start and where are you at?
[00:01:37] Andy: It's kind of funny how it started. Actually, I got a call back in 2010 to be a cameraman for an episode in South Africa, where they were gonna try to get people closer than ever before inside the bite of a great white shark. The show was actually called Into the Shark Bite.
[00:01:55] Andy: So they hired me. They booked me a few months in advance and then literally like 24 hours before I'm flying out to South Africa, they're like “hey, Andy, do you mind actually being on camera for this show and being a host of the show?” So I joked “Like what happened? Did the other host die?” And there wasn't a whole lot of laughter on the other end and they're like “no, we just, we’d really we'd love for you to be on camera.”
[00:02:16] Andy: “Do you have any experience being on camera?” And I joked about dirty videos with girls in high school and they also didn't laugh. And then they said, “okay, well, will you do it?” I said, “yes, I will do it.” I went to South Africa and I worked on a show Into the Shark Bite with Mark Addison. And that's how it all began.
[00:02:31] Andy: The show rated really well. It was a fun show. We were using GoPro cameras and, anyway, we got really sort of iconic original footage. And then from there, I went on to shoot another, now, 120-plus Shark Week films. And, you know, I’ve been all over the world for Discovery, all types of big sharks, small sharks.
[00:02:50] Andy: Great whites are my specialty, but, yeah, I'm pretty much addicted to sharks and I love it.
[00:02:56] Luke: So, before that, before that call, that took you out and started this whole, you know, Shark Week legacy that you're leaving behind, what were you doing before that? I mean, you were obviously shooting, but was it more land stuff?
[00:03:05] Luke: Was it shark stuff? Just different networks. Like what, what was your career path before that?
[00:03:10] Andy: Before that I was actually doing a lot of top side filming, filming lion films, polar bear films, working on a lot of natural history, blue chips, so to speak. Wildlife documentaries, but my passion was always sharks.
[00:03:22] Andy: Specifically, great whites. And, I had lived in South Africa for three years. I started out working as a research cameraman for the White Shark Trust. And then, from there, I sort of built up my resume, so to speak, to be a diver, a second camera, first camera, and then the crazy guy swimming outside of the cage with great white sharks.
[00:03:42] Andy: I always found that it was interesting that people were so afraid of these animals, that… sure they can bite you in half and consume you if they want. But in reality, I noticed that there were way more dangerous people out there I was interacting with than the sharks and bottom line, I sort of built up a lot of experience in the water with great whites.
[00:04:01] Andy: And I started to learn about their personalities, their behaviors. And, I just, I guess I took it to a different level or a different perspective, where it wasn't about fear mongering and trying to freak people out. It was more like, come on! Like, if I was a great white shark, I wouldn't bite you, but I'd swim right next to you just to mess with you a little bit.
[00:04:19] Andy: So you'd be freaked out, even to the point where I jumped in, I think Luke, I remember meeting you way back in the day out at Guadalupe, where I was jumping in the water with my guitar playing songs to great white sharks.
[00:04:31] Luke: I remember that.
[00:04:32] Andy: Yeah, people thought like, okay, this guy's gonna be the next grizzly man.
[00:04:37] Andy: We all know how that ended. But I'm still here. So it worked out fine, but it all started with a passion for sharks and I actually never, ever planned to become a cameraman, a filmmaker. It all happened by mistake. I like to call it my greatest mistake, but I actually wanted to be a marine biologist, but that didn't work out.
[00:04:55] Andy: I'm not great at the science, but I was good at the cinema side of things. So, kind of, that's where it led me.
[00:05:01] Luke: Well, I'm interested in that because, you know, I've actually had several people ask me, you know, how can I do what you do or what the other people on Shark Week are doing? And everyone seems to have a different answer, ‘cause everyone's sort of journey is, you know, somewhat parallel at some level.
[00:05:16] Luke: But everyone seems to have this story of, well, I was gonna do something else, like go to business school or something and then I decided, screw it! I'm gonna go do what makes me happy. So when you say you didn't even plan to be a cameraman, what was the thing that took you towards that?
[00:05:29] Andy: So I was always into like taking photos.
[00:05:31] Andy: I was more of a photographer, like anyone else. I mean, nowadays everyone has an iPhone. They're all on Instagram. Look at me, the selfie. Like it, it's all like, you know, capturing imagery is about a part of your life. It's a way to document what you see and do. And, I was always trying to capture cool moments with the stills camera.
[00:05:49] Andy: But I sucked at it. I remember taking pictures of great whites and they were always blurry because, back then, we were shooting on slide film. And, in real film, I know I'm dating myself here, but, this was back when, like, the digital cameras weren't even around. And that is so weird to say, right? I actually remember when I first got my very first digital camera and I bought my first compact flashcard, which was a whopping I think it was 128 megabytes.
[00:06:17] Andy: And that was, like, massive. And I was, I still have the card actually, I still have that in my camera museum, but anyway, I was using my photography skills to help this research team. We were doing dorsal fin identification. Every great white shark has a unique pattern on the trailing edge of the dorsal.
[00:06:35] Andy: It's like a fingerprint or a fin print, but after taking enough bad photographs, I realized, man, I should go to video. At least with video, I'm getting 30 frames a second, maybe 24 frames. So I switched to video. And then from there I never looked back because, with video, you don't even have to be that good.
[00:06:51] Andy: Right? You just gotta hold the camera stable. Try to frame up the shot and then from there, I essentially started, kept chipping away at the cinematography side of things. And, like you just said there, when people contact you, how do they do what you do? How do they do what I do? I get those requests all the time as well.
[00:07:10] Andy: And I try to answer every single one because I think people are intimidated by a film school and you see these people on TV, like, wow! I mean, these guys must be at the top of their game. They must have gone to UCLA, they studied under Spielberg. It's not true, man. Like anyone could do anything they want!
[00:07:27] Andy: It's all about passion and, obviously, meeting the right people, surrounding yourself with people that are doing what you want to do. So when I get those questions, like you said, I tell 'em to reach out to the Bimini Shark Lab, reach out to Ocean's Research in South Africa, Miami, all these scientists that are on Shark Week.
[00:07:44] Andy: Doing what these people wanna do, they may not wanna be a scientist, but if you can be an assistant to a scientist, that's even better because you don't have all the pressure to write the paper and produce the data. You get to get down and dirty in the water with the sharks, have all the fun and then walk away, drink beer, and then let them write the paper.
[00:08:02] Andy: I mean, that's not exactly how it works. But yeah, I mean, I forget what the question even was, man, but…
[00:08:10] Luke: You’re good, man. You're good. It's good to hear your perspective on it. So, what was the first time that you saw a great white shark? I mean, you've obviously got a shark addiction.
[00:08:19] Luke: Were you shooting film or stills when you first saw them?
[00:08:22] Andy: So, to clarify, the very, very first time I ever saw a great white shark was on television. And now that we're all filmmakers and making films about sharks, it's very fitting and kind of like a self-fulfilling prophecy. I remember seeing a great white shark as a little kid on TV, and I actually thought it was fake because I, you know, although I didn't listen to everything my parents taught me or told me, I do remember them telling me that not everything you see on television is real.
[00:08:46] Andy: If you see Superman, jump off a bridge and fly… Please don't try that, Andy. It's not gonna work. Not everything you see on television is real. A lot of it is make believe. And I thought these great white sharks were make believe because they looked so ridiculously sea monster-ish. And so out of this world, like just these ultimate predators.
[00:09:06] Andy: How could they look like that? The more films I watched, the more books I read, the more… the internet, again, I'm dating myself, wasn't even around, but you'd go to the library. You’d pull the books off the shelf, you're looking at these animals. And then, I started to realize, oh my God, they're real.
[00:09:20] Andy: This passion basically brewed up as a little kid. And then the first time I saw my first real great white shark in real life, I was 22 years old in South Africa, in Gansbaai, which is a famous location where it used to be considered the great white shark capital of the world. Now, with the killer whales, the overfishing, pollution, climate change, all these mixtures, this margarita of effects down there, have really kind of pushed them into different areas.
[00:09:48] Andy: But I saw my first great white shark, I believe it was like September, I wanna say 11th, but that's my son's birthday. It was like September 13th 2002 off the coast of South Africa. And I remember like, I don't like to admit it, but I remember looking over the side of the boat, being a little bit afraid to look over the side of the boat, thinking that a great white shark's gonna breach like Deep Blue Sea-style, on Samuel Jackson and bite my head off because the, you know, now I can understand why people, when they see certain films and, especially Jaws, you watch this on television.
[00:10:25] Andy: If you don't see it firsthand, real life experience, you don't know what to expect. So I was a bit tentative looking over the side of the boat, and then I saw this shark. And, when I saw it, I noticed that it actually got a bit of a fright from the boat, from the engines. And I was like, wait a second, right off the bat.
[00:10:41] Andy: Immediately. These myths that I knew about these sharks was broken by the fact that like, what's up with this shark? It just got freaked out by the boat engine. And then the scientist I was working with laughed. He's like, yeah, man, they're really cautious, man. We're lucky if we get a dorsal shot of this guy.
[00:10:56] Andy: So, that was my intro to great whites over the side of the boat. It looked like a big shark, but it was very cautious. It didn't come in, smash the boat, bite the engines, try to sink us. But, that said, over the years, as I worked with more and more and more sharks, I started to learn about personality and that there are certain sharks that do act, not like jaws, but they are way more bold, way more confident.
[00:11:19] Andy: And that was the most fascinating thing to me that I learned, right off the bat, is that they have unique personalities. From there, I was addicted. I was like, wow! Like, these guys, they're like, they're superhero sharks. And from there I just never looked back.
[00:11:33] Luke: That's a pretty epic story. Deep Blue Sea, by the way, one of my favorite schlock shark films. I can't get enough of that film. When he turns on the oven with the dude inside it.
[00:11:41] Luke: I'm like, yep, that's a smart shark, good on you! But, let's talk about real sharks and real shark behavior and jumping sharks. There's a nice little tie-in there, so you're going back to South Africa. What, obviously you go there a lot, you've been there a lot, but what took you on this particular trip for Air Jaws: Top Guns.
[00:11:59] Andy: So I got a call from Jeff Kerr who we all know is a legendary producer of Air Jaws. And, I remember the first time I saw Air Jaws… original Air Jaws number one, I think it was just called Air Jaws. It was actually back in 2001 that I watched Air Jaws jump out of the ocean for the first time, launch into the air as the most spectacular hunting behavior on the planet.
[00:12:23] Andy: Like great whites, to me, were already superhero sharks. And then, they went astronomical, like Elon Musk- sharks into space. These guys were jumping into the sky. Old school TV. I was out in California. I was living in San Francisco, working at a tech company as a software engineer doing data mining, CRM, customer relationship management, really fascinating stuff.
[00:12:44] Andy: ‘Cause I used to be in software, I was a Microsoft-certified systems engineer. I was ghosting machines to build giant platforms for different companies and networks… really, once again, fascinating stuff. I was bored out of my mind, but when I saw Air Jaws for the first time, it completely, not only it, I don't know how to say it.
[00:13:03] Andy: It transformed me. It was crazy. So anyway, that guy, that director, Jeff Kerr, called me up this year and he is like, Andy, I wanna send you to South Africa. I'll be there too. And I've worked with Jeff before, but, he's never really given me, like, a poll position, like a front position to be in an Air Jaws show. He's like, I want you and Dickie…
[00:13:22] Andy: And I was like, wait a second. What, did you say Dickie? He's like, yeah.
[00:13:24] Luke: And of course we're talking about Shark Week veteran, Dickie Chivell here…
[00:13:31] Andy: You and Dickie, I want you to go down there and you're gonna try to capture, like, the most unbelievable breaches of all time. I was like, dude, this is a setup.
[00:13:38] Andy: This is a total setup. First of all, you said Dickie! Second of all, you said most unbelievable breaches of all time. You've already done that. Like, there's no way we can come close to this. He's like, well, I've got some ideas, I think we can do this. Are you interested? I'm like, hell yes, I'm interested.
[00:13:53] Andy: So, Jeff called me. We went down there and, you know, South Africa's kind of been turned on its head with regards to great white sharks. Like I mentioned before, Gansbaii, the first place I encountered them, has become almost a dead zone. That said, as of late, they kind of have been trickling back in there.
[00:14:10] Andy: But, anyway, there's a lot of theories behind it, from killer whale predations to, like I mentioned before, overfishing, climate change, everything else. Bottom line, he's like, I've got a cool new show, let's do it!
[00:14:21] Luke: I know that you've been involved with a lot of them and Dickie has as well, so, for those of you who don't know who Dickie is, Andy’s about to tell you who Dicky is!
[00:14:30] Andy: How do I describe Dicky?
[00:14:31] Andy: Alright, so Dicky is a good friend of mine. So, everything I say here is a positive, with a grain of salt. But he is one of the most craziest, unreliable, amazing, ridiculous dudes on earth. He's super passionate, but he is almost like Spicoli and Fast Times at Ridgemont High or whatever that show was.
[00:14:52] Andy: Right, so like, if you're working with Dickie, you need to factor in the Fast Times effect. As in, if you say “Dickie, we need you to show up on July 1st”... Just assume he is gonna show up a few days later because “his calendar was broken”, he might say. Or his watch was somehow set to the wrong time. Anyway, Dickie will get there eventually.
[00:15:12] Andy: And, when he does, he performs, he delivers, but working with Dicky is always fun because you really never know what the dude's gonna do. Anyway, Dicky and I teamed up on this and he is a very smart guy. He kind of plays like the, you know, stoner surfer on TV, but he's actually very passionate, a lot of experience, hardworking dude.
[00:15:32] Andy: And, when he is in the zone, he is in the zone! And the idea was that he and I were gonna team up to try to get shots of the biggest breaching sharks in Air Jaws history. And, again, I thought Jeff was setting us up here because, with Colossus and all these mega sharks that they had already filmed, they had that in the bag and it was almost like, it was like a tribute to Jeff, which is cool.
[00:15:52] Andy: I love the guy. Like, he's taught me a ton. And one of the things actually, he taught me, which is actually burnt into my mind. And, this is a small tangent here, but think about it. When Jaws came out in 1975, two years before I was born, it scared the living daylights out of the entire planet.
[00:16:07] Andy: Right? I mean, it was very well done. Spielberg is a master at his craft. He scared everyone out of their bathtubs, out of the swimming pools and completely outta the oceans. Right. So, because of that backlash of Jaws being this monster that wanted to eat people, it became completely okay to go out and kill sharks to hang 'em up on docks.
[00:16:27] Andy: You were a champion! You were saving the neighborhood if you went out and murdered a shark, brought it back on shore, hung it up, weighed it, ripped its guts out. This is a monster that would eat your children. This is the one that would eat your wife, attack your boat. Bottom line is, sharks became public enemy number one.
[00:16:46] Andy: Right? So they were hunted to near extinction, especially great whites. So, yeah, I mean, after Jaws, the entire world was freaked out by sharks. They were public enemy number one and it was completely acceptable to go out and murder sharks. And you were a hero! Shark Week came around in 1988 and started making documentaries about sharks, starting to teach people about tiger sharks, hammerheads, great whites.
[00:17:10] Andy: The different locations they lived in because the world… again, I don't remember exactly when the internet showed up, but where we got our information was from the television, from the newspapers, from the libraries. I remember watching Shark Week when it came out. I started learning about tiger sharks hunting turtles in Hawaii, great whites hunting seals in South Africa, whale sharks in Mexico, all these amazing locations.
[00:17:32] Andy: I started to really amp up my fascination even more with sharks. So did the rest of the world! Fast forward to now… Shark Week has become the most iconic… they've made sharks the most famous wildlife creatures on the planet. They have their own week of television; 30, 40 hours of shows just about sharks.
[00:17:54] Andy: Shark Week has brought together this army of people that love sharks, care about sharks, and they'll do everything and anything for sharks. And it's proven right now that, like, the Jaws effect is being erased. And, in my opinion, because of Shark Week, because people love them, they're learning. Yes. There's gonna be the argument that you're creating fear, but I'm always in the camp that people are way more fascinated by sharks than they are fearing sharks.
[00:18:28] Luke: Obviously people are fascinated with it. And I think one of the real drivers for Shark Week throughout the years has been this Air Jaws series. You know, seeing great whites jumping out of the water. As you say, for you, it kind of blew your mind. I think it blew the world's collective mind. What did it mean to you to go out and have Jeff kind of, I don't know if he's actually officially passing the mantle over, but he's at least giving you a crack at it and running your own Air Jaws show.
[00:18:51] Andy: Oh man. I mean, again, I thought I was being set up, but it was a massive honor. It is a massive honor just to know that, you know, I'm contributing to this legacy of Air Jaws. And, when initially I thought like, there's no way we're gonna be able to top what Air Jaws was about and the imagery they captured.
[00:19:08] Andy: I started to realize, you know what, it's not about beating Air Jaws. It's about carrying on that legacy, inspiring people through the imagery, through the stories, through the science to love sharks and fall in love, even deeper with them, just like I did as a kid. Because I do, I get thousands of messages from kids and their parents that they want to be a marine biologist.
[00:19:27] Andy: They want to be a shark filmmaker. They wanna protect sharks, strictly and solely because they saw a show on Shark Week. They saw Air Jaws, they saw Mega Shark. They saw one of these films and, you know, again, back to Air Jaws, that was the most iconic hunting behavior ever captured. And, to put it into a franchise, into a series that, every year, now people get to see new methods of capturing it, new science behind it, different sharks.
[00:19:51] Andy: And that's what's really cool. Like, we name these sharks. They have become part of our family from Colossus, to Deep Blue, to Roxy, all these different animals have become like members of society, members of our shark family, our shark mafia, so to speak. So, yeah, I mean, it's a massive honor, but also I was, you know, I try to be humble.
[00:20:15] Andy: I try to work hard and you're only as good as your last job. And when Jeff said “hey, I need you to come down here and shoot an Air Jaws show and host it”, I was like, wow. I had to like, sit back for a bit, you know, absorb it, take it all in and then realize, yeah, I was born for this. I can do this.
[00:20:31] Luke: Yeah. Game on. Sounds awesome. I wanna talk about some of the shooting techniques and what you actually got, but I kind of wanna fast forward to a pretty incredible scene, when you guys found a wounded fur seal. Did you actually see that predation event or you just happened to come across the seal itself?
[00:20:48] Andy: No, we actually, we didn't see the initial hit, but we were out there, you know, right up next to the seal colony. And we were transitioning, you know, the early morning hours are the hunting hours. You get that low light level, when the white sharks are very active. They're hitting the seals because the surface is illuminated by the sharp angle of the sun.
[00:21:07] Andy: As the sun rises, the angle penetrates deeper into the water. But I guess one of these sharks was hunting later than usual. And I guess the seals weren't expecting it. Maybe that's a tactic that they're using. If you're a seal and you're out at a seal colony, you know the early mornings are very dangerous.
[00:21:22] Andy: You know as the light comes up… okay, it's not so dangerous… Well, this seal made the wrong decision. The shark made the right one and actually hit the seal. And yeah, we came across this. I don't like to see animals suffer. I don't like to see anybody suffer, right. It's just not in my DNA. And seeing this animal, the seal swam to our boat sort of for protection, and it actually reminded me of Air Jaws One, I think. In the very first Air Jaws episode, Chris Fallows, they come across a seal that's pretty much mortally wounded.
[00:21:50] Andy: It's guts are spelling out. Chris grabs that seal, drags it back to Seal Island and puts it on the island. And, actually in retrospect, it wasn't mortally wounded. It had, you know, they’ve got pretty thick blubber, it protected its internal organs. It ripped a big chunk of flesh out of it, but it was all fat.
[00:22:09] Andy: It was all blubber, the animal survived. But this one, the one we came across was a bit more, it was a bit more, it was pretty torn apart. Yeah, and you know, nowadays really we understand that it's not really smart or ethical to interfere with natural history, natural behavior.
[00:22:29] Andy: So we weren't gonna… no, we couldn't help the seal. I mean, the seal came to our boat, swam around. I got a few shots of it as it swam past. And then we followed it for a while, actually with the drone. And then, as you see in the show, it unfolds that this small shark that potentially made the kill, tried to, you know, come back and feed on the seal, but the seal didn't want to die.
[00:22:48] Andy: Didn't wanna give up, good for the seal. Unfortunately, a bigger shark came in, or fortunately a bigger shark came in, and then finished off the seal. But it was not easy to watch, man. I, again, I'm on team shark, for sure. But, anytime you see an animal losing its life. You know, it's just, it's hard to fathom or it's hard to swallow… well not for the shark.
[00:23:11] Luke: Let's take our listeners into, kind of the mind of the great white shark in that predation event. And, you know, we're talking about Air Jaws and, in them jumping outta the water, but talk us through that environment, that particular island and their hunting techniques, that result in carnage like that.
[00:23:26] Andy: Well, it's interesting you bring that up because a lot of people ask me, how do I stay safe when I'm in the water? And just for a quick tangent, I mean the same way these white sharks are hunting seals, white sharks will use certain areas where they have the advantage… there's a drop off, there's deep water, it's dark water.
[00:23:43] Andy: There's a certain bathymetry, a surface structure on the bottom that allows them to be concealed. And, this is an area where it becomes a hot zone, like in Air Jaws. There was the, I forget what they called it, the Circle of Death, I think, where, you know, there's certain areas where you should not swim as a human, there's certain areas where seals know that you're way more likely to get hit by a shark.
[00:24:08] Andy: And usually, it involves deeper water. Because we've seen how they hunt, you know, they ambush, Polaris-style breaching outta the water, but in order to do that, they need deep water to get that momentum, to propel themselves outta the water. So, there's certain areas and right where we found that seal was a deep, deep water area.
[00:24:26] Andy: And, you know, usually you find the seals that get hit are the inexperienced ones, the younger ones, but this was a pretty big seal. And, I kind of feel like this one was almost like… it became complacent. And in natural history and natural evolution, complacency won't work. So, like complacent seals, yeah, this guy didn't make it because it was near a drop off.
[00:24:47] Andy: We didn't see the initial hit but we saw the carnage after. And then, you know, once it’s hit like that, it floated out into even deeper water where even more sharks were kind of… I don't wanna say lurking, ‘cause it's not a cool word for sharks. They're just swimming. When people say, oh, these waters are shark-infested… Um, no, they, they actually live there.
[00:25:06] Andy: That's their home. Humans are infesting the water, not the sharks, but, yeah, it was tough to watch man, but we knew that this was an area where the seal should have been paying more attention. It didn't. And, the shark actually, obviously the sharks, you see in the sequence that two sharks come in, the bigger one takes the meal.
[00:25:23] Andy: And again, there's the, you know… what's really cool to me about working as a filmmaker is that, I like to call it cinema science, the cinematography and the film and the data that we're capturing is video data, which is some of the most valuable data that a scientist can acquire. You're seeing what the shark is doing.
[00:25:39] Andy: You're not guessing what it does based on tag data and where it swam and how deep it went. You're visually witnessing the behavior and we've visually witnessed a bigger shark displace a smaller shark, feed on the seal. And, it was, you know, again, it was not easy to watch, but it was telltale behavior.
[00:25:57] Andy: Don't swim around seal colonies in murky deep water, or you might get your head bitten off by a great white shark.
[00:26:06] Luke: Yeah. And people at home might be thinking, well, the seal should just be a bit smarter, but I mean, the reality is great white sharks have evolved for hundreds of millions of years to be at this point where they can, you know, be swimming down deep, use that counter shading.
[00:26:20] Luke: They're actually really difficult to see, particularly at oblique angles of light. Like you say, Andy, in the mornings or in the evenings, you know, the light doesn't penetrate that much. It kind of goes diagonally through the water and lights up every little bit of, you know, stuff that's in the water. And if it's not crystal clear, right, you can't see those sharks down there, but they can look up and see a shadow pretty easily.
[00:26:38] Luke: And those shadows typically tend to be, you know, a seal leaving or coming back to the island. And, that's the type of thing you wanna avoid looking like. But it's the type of thing that on Air Jaws results in really great shots. Talk people through, I mean, people have probably seen a lot of Air Jaws, but if you haven't seen an Air Jaws, talk us through the normal technique of towing a decoy and what you're hoping to capture.
[00:26:59] Andy: Yeah. So generally, we try to utilize the, you know, things we've learned about these sharks, their hunting behaviors. We go out in the early morning before the sun comes up, we head out to the seal colonies under permitted, you know, research permits. We're allowed to tow decoys that are shark friendly.
[00:27:14] Andy: Sharks aren't getting hurt. To get them to actually jump, it's not as easy as you think, because often we're towing cameras behind the seals as well. And we'll see that the sharks will rush up. They'll look at it. They'll determine that it's real or not real. And they're abort. And sometimes, we can see that they'll rush up and it's almost like they realize, okay, I don't know if this is real or not, but I'm gonna go for it because this is an area where I'm hunting.
[00:27:37] Andy: This is where I get a meal and they'll rock it outta the water. Sometimes that… geez. I know in certain Air Jaws, they've clocked the G force on these sharks and it's gone, like, through the roof.
[00:27:46] Andy: Like, I can't remember exactly again, I'm not great at the numbers. But you basically tow the seal decoy behind the boat. Early morning. You want to tow it just outside the whitewash of the engine so that it's, you know, not obscured by the whitewash. And then the sharks, if they're in the area, it's almost like ingrained in them.
[00:28:03] Andy: They can't help themselves. And we're using the best cameras in the world. The super slow motion, Phantom Flex 4k camera, shoots a thousand frames a second in 4k. So when you slow it down and you're watching it, like, it happens in the blink of an eye in real life. But when you watch it in slow motion, you get to like deconstruct like all the little details of how the shark… The coolest things that I've seen, as the sharks launching outta the water, its eyes are rolled back to protect themselves, but it's biting at the seal usually makes contact.
[00:28:34] Andy: And if it doesn't, it does multiple bites as it's in midair, still trying to catch the seal. So it's not just like. It comes up once with its mouth open and hopes to hit it. It's actively hunting as it's flipping over backwards and sideways. These animals, they can't go to Starbucks, they can't go to, well, who goes to McDonald's.
[00:28:53] Andy: But anyway, they can't go to these places to buy their meal. They have to actively really athletically hunt every morning to get a meal and to see them doing that, like in real life is mind blowing. I mean, I don't know how many breaches I've filmed over the years, but every single time I see it, it's like, I almost, I get starstruck frozen to where I'm like, I gotta remember to hit record.
[00:29:17] Andy: And when I say hit record, these cameras that we're rolling with, it's like a conveyor belt. They're rolling, but they're not writing, meaning they're capturing, but until you hit the button, you actually hit it after it happens.
[00:29:29] Andy: It's called pre-record or cache recording. Because if we were just sitting there rolling on hours, sometimes it does take hours. Sometimes it takes five minutes. Sometimes it takes five hours. Sometimes they don't jump at all, but yeah, it's a lot of work and then there's everything from the cinematography perspective; the boat's moving, the shark's moving, the camera's moving, you're moving, you gotta get focus, IRA, zoom.
[00:29:49] Andy: All these things have to line up perfectly. And, it just comes with practice. But I think we captured some really spectacular breaches on Air Jaws: Top Guns, and I'm hoping people like it.
[00:30:00] Luke: Yeah, I think they will. It's definitely a tribute to the series and there's some spectacular stuff on there.
[00:30:05] Luke: And for the people who are worried about sharks, you know, getting the odd decoy here and there. I mean, probably for those people, they're assuming that a shark is always successful in its predation events. And they're certainly not. As fast as they are, they're going after also very fast, savvy, smart prey, and those seals are quick.
[00:30:23] Luke: So, you know, the sharks are out there jumping after 'em trying to predate on 'em all the time, they're missing all the time. We're probably doing 'em a favor and just helping them, you know, line it up a little bit, get a little bit of, you know, pregame training and just… I do like watching the seals though, particularly after a predation event or, you know, an attempt, I should say, when the seals can now see them.
[00:30:45] Luke: And it's, like, kind of this standoff in the water. Because, you know, the shark doesn't immediately charge back down and try to do another, you know, breach attempt to, you know, surprise it. It knows what's going on. And there's always a standoff between two animals and there’s just a totally different size structure between 'em, but it's not uncommon to see the seal go after the shark, go up and nip its tail or its fins or bump into it or something.
[00:31:06] Luke: You're like, dude, go for it. Yeah, that's cool.
[00:31:08] Andy: Yeah, they say, and when they do miss, the success rate from there plummets. If they don't get the seal on the first go, it's likely they're not gonna get that seal because the seal’s then tuned into the game. The seal will then continually jump at the shark’s tail.
[00:31:23] Andy: Stay away from the business end. And then usually they make it out alive, but it's gotta be a tough life for a seal. I mean, every day you go out, you think you might get your head bitten off by a giant sea monster. It's gotta be pretty scary. I just wanna say one other thing because this is the stuff that they never see on Shark Week.
[00:31:42] Andy: The amount of times that you're out there trying to capture a breaching behavior and you're framed up. Everything's great. The light is amazing. The sharks are, you know, jumping. Everything's good, you're lined up. And then, literally, someone says “hey Andy”, you know, or you get distracted for a split second, and then you turn around to, or you, you have an itch.
[00:32:05] Andy: You wanna scratch your, whatever you got. Something happens where in that split second, you take your eye off the ball, you take your eye off the decoy to adjust something, to reach down, to grab a drink. Whatever it is. The amount of times that we've done that. And the sharks, it's almost like they know… they're like, okay, let's wait.
[00:32:24] Andy: He's about to… Yep, he's about to look down. He's about to check his… I don't know, whatever. And they jump and you miss it. And then you're all there like, are you serious? But one time actually, I had a shark jump, I press record. Everything was looking great and, right in the middle of the save, the battery died on my camera.
[00:32:42] Andy: So, the best and worst part is those cameras will save all the way up until the power gets pulled from that camera. So, I had this incredible breach, early morning sun in the background. You see the shark coming up, it's coming up. It's amazing. You see it’s snout coming up. And then, right as it now gets to about it's, like, eyeball, it stops, it freezes.
[00:33:01] Andy: And that was it. That's all we got. There was nothing. It was just basically like the tip of the iceberg. So, just so everyone knows, all the shots you see on Shark Week; it comes with hours and hours and days and days and weeks of towing, weeks of trying, weeks of bad weather, good weather. Rough conditions, good conditions.
[00:33:18] Andy: So it really takes a lot of… we make it look easy on TV, but it's actually a lot of work.
[00:33:24] Luke: And what did… Air Jaws has been famous in sort of underestimating, at least for the, the end product, the amount of time that it does take, and it does take an incredible amount of time. So, this show, how long were you on the ground, for how long were you actually physically towing for?
[00:33:39] Andy: We were in South Africa for a whole month but we actually were shooting a number of different shows there. You know, that's the cool thing about working for Shark Week. If you're teamed up with the, you know, with Discovery, they're like, hey, we wanna do a film about Colossus. We also need a film about Dynamite.
[00:33:55] Andy: So we're basically shooting multiple shows at the same time. But we were there on the ground for a month for Air Jaws: Top Guns.
[00:34:02] Luke: Yeah, just waiting on the right conditions and, you know, everything to line up to get the particular piece of storyline that you're after for each show, right?
[00:34:09] Andy: Exactly. And I mean, they don't call South Africa the Cape of storms, or the Cape, you know, Cape Town, in that whole Western Cape area, the Cape of storms for nothing, because it gets very, very rough.
[00:34:21] Luke: Yeah, well, we got a few minutes here, but I've had a few people talk to me about, you know, their experiences underwater. And I think you uniquely are sought afterwards with stuff like that. So with all your experience with sharks and everything, is there a dive that you wish that you didn't do? Or is there a dive that, you know, kind of haunts you at night occasionally? Something that got super sketchy?
[00:34:43] Andy: It was taking my wife, Emma from Sweden, where I am now. I met her in Africa, I don't know, 15 years ago. And, she's a Swede, she's a tough Viking princess type. And, I took her diving for the first time out of Tiger Beach, which is, you know, not great white shark territory, but tiger shark territory.
[00:35:03] Andy: And, I was shooting… actually a commercial for GoPro and GoPro's helped revolutionize how we film Shark Week. And I remember she had never dived with tigers before. Her only other shark was like reef sharks. So they don't really count. But I said, “listen, babe, just stay out of the shot, hold it stable”.
[00:35:21] Andy: She was shooting behind the scenes of us capturing this sequence with these GoPro athletes. And I just… my advice to her was very slim. Stay out of the shot and keep your shots stable. That was all I told her. And I forgot to mention to her that tiger sharks will sometimes sneak up on you and try to bite your head off.
[00:35:41] Andy: And literally, on camera, we have footage of my wife with a tiger shark sneaking up on her. She's got blonde hair. It thought her ponytail was a dorado filet, like a mahi mahi or something. It swam up, put its entire mouth around her head. And this is all on camera. And the only… for some… I mean, sharks, you mean they're professional predators.
[00:36:02] Andy: They kill things for a living and this thing snuck up on her without her knowing, put its entire mouth around her head. Was about to bite down. All I could say was what the F and she literally at the last second, pushed this shark off of her. We have it, again, as I said multiple times, all on camera.
[00:36:20] Andy: We're never gonna show anyone this, ‘cause it looks really bad, but she saved her own life. I gave her the heads up to, you know, what the F what… how do you not see this? But then, I had realized it was her first time ever. I gave her no good advice other than stay out of the shot and keep it stable.
[00:36:37] Andy: So I did, like you said, keep me up at night. I had nightmares for weeks about that, ‘cause I thought, like, what a jerk? How do I bring my, like, the love of my life, out with some of the most dangerous predators on earth, not give her the full rundown. And then she almost gets decapitated. She survived, which is good.
[00:36:55] Andy: And, actually just a quick segue, Emma, she's in her first Shark Week show ever this year. It's a hammerhead show. I think it's called the monster hammerheads or legend of the monster hammerhead. The schedule just came out today. So I don't know all the names of the shows, but that was the scariest time in my life.
[00:37:14] Andy: It never happened to me. It happened to my wife, but, I would never have, you know, lived it down if she didn't make it out alive. So, again, my fault.
[00:37:22] Luke: Well, it sounds like if it's not keeping you up at night, then, you know, the moment that she remembers that and reaches over to slap you in the middle of the night, that's certainly gonna keep you up.
[00:37:30] Luke: Honestly, that story takes the cake. That's a really good one so far. Best one I've heard.
[00:37:35] Andy: Okay. Yeah, it was scary.
[00:37:38] Luke: Alright Andy, we're gonna wrap this up mate, but it's always a pleasure chatting to you. When you're… when you're back over state-side, we'll have to connect, I think I'm a lot closer to your hood these days.
[00:37:46] Andy: Yeah buddy. Sounds good, man. I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me and happy Shark Week.
[00:37:53] Luke: Alright, that wraps up another episode of Shark Week: The Podcast. Stay tuned to this feed for more interviews with shark experts that'll give us the behind the scenes scoop, just like Andy did, on what really happens out at sea. Thanks Andy, we'll see you again soon. Thanks for listening to Shark Week: The Podcast.
[00:38:10] Luke: Be sure to rate us five stars and subscribe for more shark, fun facts. I'm Luke Tipple. I'll see you next time.