The Flow Effect

All of a sudden we're on a plane flying north to the largest living thing on the planet. This project has been in the works for the past six months and is finally coming to life on the Great Barrier Reef.

Summer of last year, my dear friend Lachy asked if I wanted to be apart of his Grad Year Film Project..."Liv I want to do a doco on Freediving..." from then on the journey began.

Walking onto the tarmac at 5:30am with the film crew of 5, I felt very lucky to be apart of this adventure but also extremely nervous for what I had to bring to the table. Lachy is a magic man behind the lens and especially in the editing bay, so from the get go I knew the end result would be magical, just coming to terms with the fact that the film was centred around me...was hard to swallow. 

Our days were spent at different locations on the reef and surounds of Cairns. Lachy saw the film as an intimate documentation of the beauty of freediving and what it means to me as a female instructor. We only had five days to capture everything they envisioned, and boy oh boy was it a roller coaster! It takes a lot for me to string a sentence together at the best of times, and now with cameras, lights and a big fluffy boom in my face I had to get the words out. Somehow. If Lachy wasn’t one of my closest friends I don’t think I would of been able to get the words out the way I did, he made me feel calm, gave me time and we tried to make it flow like a conversation does. I’ve found I really need to connect visually or mentally to what I’m talking about when it comes to Freediving, the mental and physical feelings that occur when you’re suspended in the big blue are very hard to describe. And put all the filming gear in the mix it became even harder, but we got there!

I was a little apprehensive about shooting on the GBR. I’d just been to Lizard Island and witnessed the devastating destruction the cyclones and warm ocean temperatures had caused to the reefs up there. But when we jumped in, I was so pleasantly surprised, squeals through the snorkel and all, the underwater scenery took my breathe away. There was still hope for the reef! We dived and dived and dived for four hours straight that day. Hardly any time for a rest, we had to get as many shots, angles as possible to make this doco really come to life.

JANUARY - 2019

The private premier. I wasn’t nervous until the lights went out and everyone went silent. Lachy and the team really captured the rawest form of me. The inside of me that not many people know about, and did I want all these people to see me like this? I wasn’t sure. It was honestly one of the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Sitting in the crowd of 100 people, feeling the silence as everyone peered up at the big screen, listening to my voice that told the story…not easy. Imagine your favourite thing in the whole world, the thing that makes you the best you, the happiest you, the reason why you live and breath. Now imagine those feelings you feel when you’re “doing” this thing…and put them on a big screen for everyone to see. Yep, heavy.

I had to forget about the fact that I felt vulnerable and intimately explored. And come to terms with how fortunate I am to have this documentation of myself in my all time favourite element - portrayed in the most magical way possible. Yes I feel extremely lucky. Thank you Lachy and the team for a wild little journey x x x

‘Flow The Film, A Documentary’ is currently being entered into film festivals around Australia and the world. Keep an eye out over the next year or so ;)