This was my third Red Bull Cliff search with Orlando Duque this year. We are starting to become his personal film crew. I hope we film him in some more exotic countries some day. This time we came to Croatia. We had several locations on our list. The firs was Canyon Zrmanje where they filmed movies about Winnetou in 60’s. I was quite a fan of the movies when I was young so I was thrilled to be on such a beautiful location. To stand on the same ground where they build Apache pueblo all those years ago. We only shoot interview on this location as it was unsuitable to dive here.
The same mountains under which Apache warriors fought with the greedy white Americans.
The canyon where the battle between Apache chief Intschu-tschuna and Old Shatterhand commenced before he joined the Apache clan.
Sony NEX-FS700 with Røde NTG-2 mic on a Manfrotto tripod. As we were shooting into the sun I put a Cokin ND grad on to lower the light values of the sun.
The next location was next to the sea so we slept the night in a beautiful Marina resort (map below). The Dragon’s eye (Zmajevo oko) is unique water system in the Adriatic coast. It is a salt water lake on the peninsula. It is a closed ecological system with the same anoxic characteristics as the Black Sea, Framvaren Fjord in Norway and crater lake Pavin in France. At one time in 1997 the lower anoxic layer rose over the whole lake which became white and opaque and all the living organisms in the lake died. This is very rare incident but nevertheless a legend about a sleeping dragon appeared and it is said that the dragon is waking up when something like this happens.
This was the closes ever that we had from hotel to the shooting location.
Overlooking the Dragon’s eye. I had minimum gear at the spot as it was very hot so using Hoodman sun hood was essential if I wanted to use build in LCD. I didn’t want to bring rails and lens support with me for the heavy 80-200mm zoom, so I opted for a lightweight 135mm f/2.8 russian M42 lens and for extreme close ups Samyang 500mm f/6.3 mirror lens.
We also had a DJI helicopter with 3-axis gyro for a GH2 camera for aerial shots.
Last location was on the Kornati islands, Veliki Garmenjak. Small distant island with great cliffs for diving.
All in all we saw some beautiful locations, Orlando made some great jumps and I hope to shoot something similar soon.