What?s the reaction been like from diving publications?
DANIEL TRAVIS: We did a couple of interviews and one guy very specifically was saying he was taking a very positive spin on this film and doesn?t think it?s going to have an adverse effect. [He?s] very excited about it. Any movie that has a perilous journey, you can say that there?s a negative aspect to it. All those airport movies?
BLANCHARD RYAN: Yeah.

It?s not fair. They do a movie about someone who gets murdered in Central Park, and Central Park doesn?t get mad at the moviemaker. People do get murdered in Central Park. It doesn?t happen very often, but people have been murdered there before. It?s the same thing as this. It?s like it doesn?t happen very often, we?re not saying anything bad, it?s just that it has happened. We?re not making it up. It does happen.

DANIEL TRAVIS: Right. It?s a very specific and relatively isolated incident.

As far as the script for ?Open Water,? was it really tightly scripted? When you were out there floating around, did you change much?
BLANCHARD RYAN: Yes, it was very tightly scripted. I would say within, literally I could tell you words down to maybe one line or two lines.

DANIEL TRAVIS: And that?s not to say that Chris didn?t give us freedom to try stuff if we wanted to. He just always ended up using what was in the script because it was better.

BLANCHARD RYAN: (Laughing) It just turns out that we weren?t nearly as clever and creative as we thought we were!

DANIEL TRAVIS: And we had background meetings and we had discussions about stuff ahead of time. But once we got down there in the water, that was all scripted. And we had to be ready to go with the entire script. It wasn?t as if we were going to memorize pages the night before and then know that we were going to be doing that scene. We had to be ready to do any of the scenes in the film depending on what nature was giving us that day.

BLANCHARD RYAN: Sunlight or darkness?

DANIEL TRAVIS: Whatever the sunlight was, whatever the water condition, whatever we needed. We?d be out there and Chris would say, ?Okay, this looks right for this. Let?s go and do this scene right now.?

And speaking of conditions, is it true the jellyfish just showed up right when they were needed?
DANIEL TRAVIS: (Laughing) That was the day that we were shooting them.

BLANCHARD RYAN: They knew their part.

DANIEL TRAVIS: They showed up on set perfectly timed.

BLANCHARD RYAN: My favorite part was that usually if you?re with a bunch of people and you see jellyfish in the water, you say, ?Don?t get in the water.? We saw the jellyfish and Chris was like, ?Get in! Get in!?

DANIEL TRAVIS: Yeah, exactly!

BLANCHARD RYAN: ?Quick, quick! Jellyfish ? get in!?

Did you have any close encounters with the jellyfish?
BLANCHARD RYAN: Chris and Daniel both got stung.

DANIEL TRAVIS: Yeah, I got stung and Chris got stung a lot because he was also shooting basically like an otter with the camera [balanced on his stomach while floating on his back]. So he couldn?t see what was coming.

BLANCHARD RYAN: Plus, he went into them first then he basically kind of got them out of the way for us. But Daniel was in front of me.

What was the most harrowing day of filming?
BLANCHARD RYAN: There were a couple of days when it was just the currents. Like the first couple of days when we were filming before we tethered ourselves to the boat, the currents were so strong that Chris would start shooting the scene and we?d be like [floating away]. We?d be gone. And then the boat, they?d have to start the boat up, go around, pick us up again, and then we?d do another take. We were fighting so hard.

DANIEL TRAVIS: It was exhausting.

BLANCHARD RYAN: Just fighting, fighting, fighting the current. We were supposed to look like we?re just sitting there bobbing around in the water. Meanwhile we?re kicking underwater as hard as we can those first few days. Finally, we ended up tethering ourselves to the boat with fishing line.

DANIEL TRAVIS: Even then you?re still kicking to stay in the shot. It was constant.

BLANCHARD RYAN: Yeah, and to stay up. At least they didn?t have to go pick us up with the boat.

PAGE 3:Conquering Fears and Physical Exhaustion