Siobhan-Marie O'Connor: "There were so many different swimming elements to the role."
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How Daisy Ridley’s swim coach prepped the star for Young Woman and the Sea
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I do find it interesting that instead of having a double do the swimming bits and an actress do the talking bits, they picked someone who could be trained to do both. I can't imagine that many people who can open distance swim for multiple camera takes would also be able to carry off believable dialog of a character from different stages in their life.
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It helps you get into the character as well. It's a special sort of person who can swim in open water for hours at a time. It's way different from a 3 hour practice with a team.
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anonymouschicken
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Looks good! I'm glad to see Daisy Ridley getting non star wars roles. She was never the problem with those movies and I hope she goes on to have a long and successful career.
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Ouch. I remember some gruesome details from the semi‑recent try at circumnavigating the Old Blighty in a non‑stop swim (boat supported, obviously), that the athlete's tongue had basically disintegrated from all the salt water exposure. I wonder how she and the crew fared with all the long water filming sessions there as well, but I imagine it wouldn't have been exactly pleasant as well, even if hopefully to a lesser extent. True grit, applause!
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It’d be interesting to know if how much stroke kinesthesiological modeling was done during Ridley’s training to help bridge pool and open-water technique.
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I have a handful of friends that have done it, and a couple dozen people do it a year these days. It's an absolutely monumental accomplishment. Modern channel attempts are vastly helped by technological advancements: particularly meteorology, as weather conditions, especially currents, make the difference between swimming 32km or 50km.
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I always really appreciate that. Keanu Reeves' fitness and training for John Wick and the Matrix, the dancing and singing in Chicago (I think it was Chicago, I don't really like musicals), Tom Cruise and Jackie Chan just never ever letting off the gas.
I'm always impressed when some skill (singing, dancing, fighting, swimming) isn't swapped out for a double. The older I get the more respect I have for actors and acting.
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I actually meant Ross Edgley's The Great British Swim 2018, which was a tiny bit more extreme with a total length of around 2800 km, all in the sea, all around the UK ;-)
But I'd still imagine "even" just a 50 km Channel swim would still be really hard on their bodies as well, as would be the many long days of filming in saltwater not clad in neoprene (as the actress and the athlete she was portraying didn't use a wetsuit, I guess).
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anonymouschicken
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I heard that Ryan Gosling spent months intensely learning how to play the piano for La La Land. The studio hired a professional piano player as a hand double, but apparently he was never needed, and every piano scene in the movie is actually Ryan playing. Pretty impressive.
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I was a swimmer in high school and college, so I can pretty easily pick out when actors aren't as good of swimmers as their characters are supposed to be. From the short bits in the trailer where Ridley is swimming, it looks pretty believable.
Commenter above points out the swimming double. Often, you'll see that, but the "underwater shot where actor's face is visible" often breaks continuity with an awful looking stroke when films use that technique.
I've always thought that this level of "hey, actor, you have 6 months to get good at this offbeat skill" has to be a cool part of being an A-level actor.
Commenter above points out the swimming double. Often, you'll see that, but the "underwater shot where actor's face is visible" often breaks continuity with an awful looking stroke when films use that technique.
I've always thought that this level of "hey, actor, you have 6 months to get good at this offbeat skill" has to be a cool part of being an A-level actor.
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I haven't seen her before those movies, and my biggest takeaway from them was how Daisy Ridley's very apparent talent shone through the awful material she had to work with.
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The wetsuit makes a big difference by keeping you warm and floating, effectively turning such a long swim into a simple test of how much suffering are you willing to take. Ross can certainly take a lot, no questioning that.
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Your leg muscles use a shitton of energy and oxygen to move and contribute very little to forward motion. For a swim of any endurance distance your legs contribute nothing; better to leave the glycogen and oxygen for your upper body. However, to keep your lower body from sinking and generating impossible amounts of drag, you need to have powerful and very efficient strokes. While you're not kicking to conserve energy, at the same time in no way are you swimming slowly.
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I don't how the human body can function in water that's not quite warm for that long. Today's average in the Channel is about 14 C, or in the high 50's F. That's too damn cold.
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Edit: Correcting time for the swim.
I have a friend who last August swam from Stehekin to Chelan in Washington state. That is 50 miles of swimming. There was some problems along the way but he was able to swim the entire thing. Only two people have ever swam the entire lake from what I know. Its basically 36 hours +/- of non-stop swimming. I'm pretty sure he never wants to try to swim the channel.
My hat is definitely off to Daisy for having done all the necessary training in order to be in this movie.
I have a friend who last August swam from Stehekin to Chelan in Washington state. That is 50 miles of swimming. There was some problems along the way but he was able to swim the entire thing. Only two people have ever swam the entire lake from what I know. Its basically 36 hours +/- of non-stop swimming. I'm pretty sure he never wants to try to swim the channel.
My hat is definitely off to Daisy for having done all the necessary training in order to be in this movie.
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To add to this, open water swimming wetsuits (e.g. triathlon wetsuits) often use a thicker neoprene on the lower half of the wetsuit to increase buoyancy in the legs and improve body position. Having done a fair bit of open water swimming both in and out of a wetsuit, I definitely notice the difference, so I'm all the more impressed by people like Trudy and Daisy who can maintain an ideal body position using just core strength and technique.
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You just officially freaked me out with the jellyfish. The hypothermia part isn't a positive either. Sharks? No mention of sharks?
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Swimming is obviously different from running since water chills you much faster than air, but to a great extent, exercise will keep you warm as long as you have the capacity to keep working and calories to burn.
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The Sheep Look Up
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Scarlett Johansson and Charlize Theron have both put in disgusting amounts of range time doing three gun so their on-screen gun handling will look as natural and as much like a real world expert as possible. (Except for guns akimbo. That's a directors and producers think it's cool problem.)
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Hope this is a good movie, swimming is brutal just to stay afloat, but swimming for dramatic effect probably is like Olympic swimming mixed with dangerous stunts, and as someone who had to learn advanced swimming I appreciate this.
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My last (and only) open water swimming experience was in the indian ocean - much calmer, much warmer water. Oh, and I had fins on. And no real distance to swim, just some fun time. I can not imagine what it is like to cross the channel swimming. Just the thought of it makes me very anxious.
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All of UK's sharks are inland only, usually living around the Westminster Palace, №10 and 4 Matthew Parker Street. Currently taking bite‑sized chunks of flesh out of every resident monthly since 2010. The most insidious and dangerous species is the clown shark, Isistius toriensis BoJo...
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I didn't mention this because they didn't have Neoprene at the time. I'm not sure what flotation aids, if any, were used. I have done an assbutt of triathlons and yeah a thin wetsuit lets you 'cheat' at staying horizontal. You can go from 'mild kicking' to straight inactive lower half for some amount of time stripping the whole suit off in T1. Other than the actual ocean the worst chop I ever raced in was a lake near Springfield for some 'land of Lincoln' tri. The swim course was a regular rectangle, but wind and chop were going diagonally across, and everyone's swim path was a zig-zag the whole way. I think I swam closer to 2km when the route was 1500m. Chop was such you had to time your breaths to the swells and then breathe only into the trough of the wave. Really good race, though.
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I really appreciate this focus on the trainer and the process of training for the role; very often we hear the act(or/ess) perspective, but not as much a detailed discussion with the subject matter expert.
For people making digs at the trainer or actress: remember that the trainer is the SME for the physical portions, but the actor is the SME for translating that to a set production and presenting it well. Everyone is doing hard work, and very few jobs on a movie or theater set are sinecures. Hopefully more articles like this will reduce that attitude in general!
For people making digs at the trainer or actress: remember that the trainer is the SME for the physical portions, but the actor is the SME for translating that to a set production and presenting it well. Everyone is doing hard work, and very few jobs on a movie or theater set are sinecures. Hopefully more articles like this will reduce that attitude in general!
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I learned a whole new framework stack for my new job, was daunting and intimidating but I persevered. When will I get my article.
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It's also worth noting that there's a big difference between freshwater and saltwater swimming. It takes much less effort to keep buoyant in salt water due to the higher density. If anything, additional buoyancy can actually make it more difficult to keep a good body position since your legs tend to want to float too high, especially if you're used to a swimming pool. It also makes it much easier to rest, since even fairly skinny people like me can just lie back and float with close to zero effort, whereas it takes constant effort to avoid drowning in fresh water.
Of course, waves, tides and currents, and in the Channel traffic, tend to make sea swimming quite a bit harder work overall.
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Swimming believably is certainly a lot of work, but Daisy affected a nice generic American accent. Well done! At first blush, I would have expected a 1920's patrician New York accent (think FDR or Hepburn), but after hearing interviews of Trudy Ederle, I'm hoping it's more daughter-of-a-butcher, lower East side (think Jimmy Cagney).
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Is this accurate? A quick google search told me that maybe it's only 16 miles. If the English Channel is 21 miles and took her more than double the previous swim then maybe the New York swim was off. If the distance was correct I can absolutely accept that the channel is just colder and choppier.
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