Bondi Icebergs is the most photographed pool in the world. This is where generations of children have learnt to swim, where the diehard have braved the frigid waters of one hundred winters, where the young and beautiful have come to bond and bake in the hot
sun. THE POOL is a stunning cinematic experience with a soundtrack that harks back to the 1960s and a cast of characters who each have a story to tell. It speaks to the enduring power of community and our collective longing to find it. No matter your background or where you’re at – everyone is equal in their swimsuits.
With The Pool diving into Australian cinemas on November 7, Nick L’Barrow spoke with the documentaries director, Ian Darling, about the intention to create a story that would bring joy to audiences, filming with the same cameras used in Top Gun: Maverick, and the importance of community.
Nick: Hello, Ian! It’s a pleasure to meet you. Thank you for taking the time to chat.
Ian Darling: No, it’s an absolute pleasure!
Nick: I know you’ve had a crazy schedule, flying across the country for Q+A screenings. What has the reaction to The Pool been like?
Ian Darling: It’s really interesting because we launched at Sydney Film Festival back in June. And we weren’t sure whether… it’s not a very Sydney-centric story. But, since then, we went to a fest over at Margaret River, and Byron, and Sunshine Coast, and Adelaide.
And what’s been so wonderful is just how it’s speaking to such a broad audience, not just swimmers. The most surprising thing is how it’s extracting quite an emotional response. I think when I go back to the intent of it [the documentary], coming out of COVID, I was looking for a happy film that was going to be about community, you know? When it’s taken away from us, we yearn for it. And I saw in COVID that we really miss being together. We’re very social creatures.
Anyway, the response is people are quite emotional that they’re either part of the group and they’re valuing it even more. And if they’re not, they’re using words like, “I’m yearning to be a part of it” or “I’m envious and jealous”. And I didn’t expect that. There was a couple of emotional ladies in Sydney who came up and said, “Look, we don’t swim, but we’re part of a book club. And we feel that this film summarises everything that we’re about”.
Everyone sits in a different seat, and it’s a non-traditional documentary. Especially for us, because we make pretty heavy social impact ones. And we though maybe it’s just time to let people sit and look at the waves, you know? Contemplate their own life and put joy into audiences. So, it seems we have been getting a positive response because it’s such a simple, happy film.
Nick: How aware were you of that strong community feel within the Icebergs before going and filming the documentary?
Ian Darling: Yeah, it’s sort of a good question because I think sometimes, I go in with a hypothesis and I thought the pool was going to be more of the central character. We thought that’d be the odd sort of story. But I never appreciated the breadth of community, and the stories, and how much people would actually open up to us and tell us things that they hadn’t told anyone else before. And that was really intriguing.
When Jason starts talking about his depression, obviously he was sort of wanting to do it, and because we had been there for a year filming, so people felt safe about it. And Donna, who had the ovarian cancer, she wanted her message to be shared because she thought this will be good other people who are going through it.
The sense of importance in that community to each of them… they all have a WhatsApp group, like many do, and if someone hasn’t turned up for a few days, they’ll call them. There’s a lot of loneliness out there in the community, and I think that was a much stronger element that I hadn’t appreciated. Just how much everyone’s looking out for each other.
Swimming is my main sport, but I usually swim alone. But suddenly, in these groups, you have a common language. You’ve got bankers, council workers, and ordinarily, their conversations might not be the same. But the other thing that really surprised me was how many hours people can talk about swimming. The most repetitive things. I’m guilty of it now! But I think that’s a really important thing. And that’s the great thing about still going to the cinema – it’s a shared experience. You’ve got this common language to actually talk about, and that’s one of the strongest things about community.
Nick: I’m glad you mentioned the cinema experience, because the way you shot this documentary is incredibly cinematic. Like you said earlier, this is a non-traditional style of documentary, where you might do lots of handheld, fly-on-the-wall filming. But the slow-motion swimming and drone shots really give it a cinematic feeling. I’m curious as to what the decisions behind the film’s visual aesthetic?
Ian Darling: I guess it’s all of the above. We wanted to make it a big cinema experience, both in terms of the way it was shot, and the sound mix. I’ve never really been involved with films that big, but Ben Cunningham, who is our cinematographer, is traditionally a wildlife photographer. He’s worked with me on a number of films, but we wanted to do this in a very non-traditional way.
I don’t know if you’ve seen the Ichikawa film Tokyo, 1964, but I reckon it’s one of the best sporting movies ever made, and we got a lot of clues from that. When he brought that out, the Olympic committee hated it because it was so non-traditional. He was using this European camera style. He’d let athletes move in and out of the frame. And we thought, once we decided the pool was going to be a central character, was to try and make it feel sculptural.
In some of those early scene, we’d just get a shoulder or a bit of hair on someone’s back, or seeing Skipper’s head going up and down out of the water. We thought it looked much more interesting. They were sculptures in their own right. And I think that lent itself to the meditative intention of it. There were some beautiful opportunities just to sit with the camera.
It was interesting, Nick, because during the first few weeks, we were so tempted to keep moving the camera documentary style. But we knew we’d be much more rewarded by having that discipline of not trying to capture everything, but really trying to capture something. One of the early scenes, we called it the purple tumble turns, but the sky was purple, and we want as far back as we could with a 400-mm lens, and just watched swimmers turning. And there was a step in the corner of the pool, and it almost looked like this mermaid came up out of the water. And from that moment we created a whole scene around it.
Ben’s got this incredibly high end equipment. We shot most of it on the Sony Venice, which is the camera that they shot Top Gun: Maverick on. And we had these beautiful prime lenses. We hired a camera that shot 1000-frames-per-second, which was used in some of the butterfly scenes. We just thought this was honouring both the swimmers and the water. That was quite exciting.
Nick: You also mentioned the sound mix, and a big part of that for me was the incredible soundtrack, that outside of it working so well on its own, you do highlight in the opening credits. I’m curious to know how you balance using soundtrack and score to create an emotional feeling.
Ian Darling: In this instance, it was something presented to Paul Charlier, our composer. Our editor, Sally Fryer, edited some of the scene concurrently as we’d film them. So, the purple tumble turns for example, we would film it, she would put that together, and then we sent it over to Paul, and he came back with what he would compose.
He really wanted to ensure it was within the rhythm of the water. So, when the waves came over, you’d have this big bass drum. It was really reacting to that. We brought in these layers with the sound mix. One of the most dramatic scenes is the storm, which started out as a pretty bland, grey day. But when we got into the colour grade with Angela Cerasi, we made it to be this dark, menacing blue. And suddenly these horses started jumping out of the waves. And it was extraordinary putting that contrast in.
Then we got into the sound mix with Andy Wright, who got an Academy Award for Hacksaw Ridge, and he started with waves by giving them this booming quality. And we actually used a lot of military sounds to achieve that. And he actually used galloping horses, which sounded very rhythmic, but no one would notice what it actually was. He asked me what I thought it was, and I thought it was just a great sound of a tumbling wave! Nope – galloping horses!
And with the soundtrack, it was a bit cheeky putting all the music there up front. But we were trying to get a palette that kept coming back to the 60s. Whenever I walked into Icebergs, it felt like I was in the 60s, a decade where surf culture and beach culture kind of started in Australia.
But also in a bigger sense, I was thinking, “Why is it relevant now?” And in the 60s, there were some pretty tough elections. It was a decade of war and nuclear threats. Uncertainty and protest. And that’s very much where we are now. But also, when you think of the 60s, there are these incredible pockets of joy, and happiness, and flower power, Beach Boys, surf culture, and all of that. I thought that’s actually what Bondi represents at the moment.
When we were coming out of COVID, and we’ve got incredible uncertainty and who knows what is happening, Icebergs was this metaphor for this pocket of joy. And not only just there, but also once you dive in the water, you can have the troubles of the world on your shoulders, but you finish that swim, and you feel totally different. And we wanted the film to sort of feel like that.
Nick: I think you absolutely bring that feeling across in the film! To close out, we’ve mentioned a few times about the sense of community that you discovered at the pool, and even the reactions like those ladies with the book club who related to that feeling. I’m curious to know what in your life has been your “pool”?
Ian Darling: Gee… that’s a really good question. There are times in my life where I’ve been in the camp where I wish I had a community, right? I walk a lot, and that’s lonely. I swim a lot. But having spent a year at the Icebergs, in a really funny way, that’s the first swimming community that I’ve felt a part of.
I was around the band scene in Melbourne in the 80s. I played football and that was always a big thing, going there with friends. But I’m in that sort of halfway camp where I’ve been yearning for it. But I absolutely understand the importance of it. I’ve never been asked that question! It’s very interesting, but I think I need to reflect on it more.
Thank you to Ian for his time, and to Madman Films and TM Publicity for organising the interview. The Pool is in Australian cinemas November 7.
