Tony Robinson's Titanic Adventure
Making the Documentary
Directing a documentary can be taxing at the best of times, but filming a wreck two and a half miles under the ocean presents its own unique problems.
'The main technological challenge was imposed by the need to achieve a live TV link to the surface,' director and producer Mel Morpeth explains. 'To do that required some 6000 metres of fibre optic cable, and getting that to work proved to be the biggest bug.' The cable ran between a support ship on the surface and the Mir submersible which dived to the wreck. 'The trick was paying out the cable so as not to put too much strain on it and sever the glass core,' he says. That's no mean feat when you consider the ship can't be anchored (as it's two and a half miles to the seabed) and currents are constantly tugging on the submersible.
Once at the wreck, the team needed some professional lighting. 'Don't forget Titanic is virtually a black object sitting in a pitch-black ocean,' says Mel. 'Mir 1 needed to carry an awesome array of lighting, and Mir 2, cameras and more lights. If it wasn't for Jim Cameron's Hollywood background in lighting (team leader on the dive, with some 300 hours experience diving on Titanic), the classic images of Titanic that we are all familiar with would not exist.'
With an overall length of 7.8 metres, the two Mir submersibles were too large to enter Titanic, so the team used two smaller unmanned vehicles called 'bots', affectionately called Elwood and Gilligan.
'These are the real stars of our show,' says Mel. 'The bots are connected to Mir by fibre optics and have approximately 450 metres of cable so they can explore deep inside the wreck. The main point of entry is the huge gaping hole where the Grand Staircase once was. This gives the bots access to six decks, from where they can explore along the corridors and into the cabins.'
But that's easier said than done. 'All of the wooden walls and doors have been eaten away, so navigating the bots through these ghostly areas demands a high degree of spatial awareness and an advanced knowledge of the layout of the ship,' Mel explains.
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