Documentary cameras will follow long descent

_________________________________________________________________

Pensacola News Journal
By Larry Wheeler
May 17, 2006


What is it like to ride an aircraft carrier to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico?

A small Canadian film production company plans to find out.

Four cameras mounted on the decommissioned Oriskany by Parallax Film Productions Inc. will be whirring away today when the Navy scuttles the 56-year-old aircraft carrier.

Some of the film will be released to the public later this month, but the best will be included in a documentary about the Oriskany's final days, expected to be aired at a future date on the Discovery Channel.

Parallax is based in British Columbia. The company's director and executive producer, Ian Herring, has produced a number of documentary films for the Discovery Channel.

Herring's work frequently features dangerous jobs.

He has produced documentaries on skyscraper construction workers, salvage divers, oil rig firefighters and scientists whose research takes them to the slopes of active volcanoes.

His 2004 film "Search for Japan's Ghost Fleet" followed marine archaeologists on the hunt for a World War II Japanese submarine designed to launch attacks against the mainland U.S.

The company's Web site lists the Oriskany as a "current production," describing it simply as "engineers, salvage teams and demolition experts work together to sink an 880-foot aircraft carrier off the coast of Florida, creating the biggest artificial reef ever made."


____
www.artificial-reefs.blogspot.com