Contrary to last year San Diego Undersea Film Exhibition, this year edition of SDUFEX sent chills down my spine on several occasions. The quality of the short films presented at this two evening event held at the beautiful Qualcom Theater in San Diego each year was... Inspirational

The evening on Friday October 5 was hosted by John Ellerbrock who, contrary to the 12th edition's MCs, did not read his script, leading to a way more fluid presentation which certainly did not bore the audience to death like last year. Not much self congratulations either, although this time, most of them would have been well deserved.

The night opened with "Solstice" by UK videographer Simon Spear. Amazing footage of basking sharks filmed off the coast of England, probably Cornwall where these animals are known to congregate. It took Simon 10 years of searching & diving to finally get to meet the giants face to face in conditions good enough (it's England after all) to yield awesome pictures.

This year also, the funky titles with blue and yellow wavy letters seemed to have disappeared and be replaced by more sober white on black elegant lettering. A few exceptions of course, like "The Eye of the Beholder" by Eric Hanauer which apart from its amateurish opening was quite enjoyable with nice shots of the manatees of Crystal River in Florida.

Films with no real story telling, just assembly of nice pictures, were also rarer, but still persisted. "What's down there" by Johana White, "Komodo" by Rusty Sanoian or "Underwater World of SE Asia" by Randy Bundschuh were amongst these movies filled with footage assembled together in a patchwork of bright colors on the tune of music not always synchronized with the action on the screen. Just like my own videos... However, this year, we saw more animal behavior in these movies which even if they are not as exciting as true story telling, still makes them interesting enough to stay awake until the next great video.

Intrinsic quality this year was also there, no more weird aspect ratios, no giant pixelization, a few blocking and hallowing here and there, but nothing too visible. Codecs are getting better and videographers are getting better at using them. I wish I knew how they do that... There was a few exceptions though, one of them was "Grouper Moon" by Josh Stewart, which follows the migration of giant groupers in the Caribbean. The grouper shoal scenes were blurry and dark which kind of spoiled a pretty good story telling, alternating top-side interviews of conservationists and underwater shots of the schools of groupers.

One oddball movie was shown the first evening that I can't really decide if it was awful or superb... "Colors of Cold" by Mike Meagher is an attempt to show the varied colors of the underwater world of the Pacific Northwest. Filmed in relatively extreme conditions off the coast of Washington or Oregon, it shows the green of the water (just like here in Southern California), the red of the anemones and other similarly tinted critters, the white of the tubular worms, etc... The idea is good and gives a logical consistency to the movie which is the backbone of good story telling but I am still struggling with the way it is shown on screen with these giant color rectangles floating around and merging with each other. That gave the video some sort of peace & love, retro-disco and 80's style that I did not really connect with. Maybe with some weed?

A few documentary type videos were shown, one by local resident Walter Marti: "Ocean Worm" who managed to turn "ew gross" into "gee, I did not know that". Interesting explanations of the hidden life of worms around the (underwater) world. The subtitles indicating the name of the worms on screen could have been more sober, the yellow on pink with thick borders really look like my own vacation videos.

Mike Boom, the class clown, presented "Letter from the Philippines" which addressed with humor the depletion of coral life from the Philippines waters by starting his movie with something like "I went to the Philippines, since the coral is all dead due to dynamite fishing and other man-made wonders, I went muck diving and came back with these amazing images".

The evening ended with "Cenotes of Mexico" by Berkley White, shot with DSLRs and GoPros, with an amazing opening scene of what looked to me like an underwater poppy field shot with an unreal wide angle at an unreal angle.

This time we spent the night in La Jolla, a few minutes from the Qualcom Theater and after a day of hiking Torrey Pines, shooting HDR top-side, myth-busting Black's Beach nude beach's legend with a 300mm telephoto lens and dining of black mussels and French fries, we were ready for the next evening of underwater wonders.

It hit us right in the face and the heart.

The evening opened with "Through my Eyes" by Adil Schindler shot around the Socorro Island, the "Mexican Galapagos". Jaw dropping. Awesome. Unbelievable. Heart pounding wonderful. Not enough words to describe the images that rushed on the screen, every second something new. This is the kind of movie that redefines everything: it's still an assembly of images, it still has the loud and upbeat music, but somehow the two merged together in a wonderful creation. Later that night another similar movie was shown "Baja' by Eric Higuera. Eric and Adil being divemasters on the Solmar V probably helped a lot...

"In search of a Man Eating Shark" by Eric Hanauer, who happened to be the MC that evening, was nothing like the Socorro videos. But what it lacked in quality videography, it made up for in story telling, and a story telling that spoke directly to my heart: each year the Discovery Channel shows "Shark Week" which is basically one week of shark attacks and blood baths and 2 minutes of "by the way, 150 million sharks are killed each year, so please help the bloody bastards" pseudo-journalism. I hate shark week. I hate when people are excited about shark week. I hence loved Eric Hanauer's "In search of a Man Eating Shark" which compared statistics with a lot humor: 5 people die of shark attack each year while 600 are killed by cell phones and millions by mosquitoes.

A very funny underwater music video was presented: "Our Blue" by Nick Stec. There is no word to describe this oddity. Just check it out on YouTube. I loved it.

Two other rather unusual movies were shown: "Below the Surface" by Jeffrey Honda which was shot at night using special lights that revealed the bio-luminescence of the filmed critters. It was quite an enjoyable "never seen before" experience. The other was "1932" by Edward Snijders. I can't say I hated it, but I can't say I like it either. It was a remake of a 1932 film, shot with modern gear but with the original sound track. Odd. Very odd.

The night ended with the usual 5 minute video by Howard & Michele Hall. "Raja" was shot in Raja Ampat, Indonesia probably with a budget that most of us would use to buy a house by the sea. And the result, was everything but spectacular. Of course the pictures are beautiful, of course the philharmonic orchestra does a great job syncing the music to the images, but what's exceptional about this? Nothing. We've seen this before. 2 years ago they showed images taken from a submersible. That was not great, but that was unusual.

So all in all a pretty good 13th edition of SDUFEX, I'll probably go next year unless the Mayas are right or I'm sent to China.

And in case you wonder, I counted only 2 occurrences of mantis shrimp this year, I think the star of the show is now the pygmy seahorse.