A dancer turns beneath the surface, sleeves spreading around her while light passes through the water. The result might look as though a camera has discovered a perfect moment in a lake. In Qingdao, one such production was made in a purpose-built studio tank, where the water itself was part of the equipment.
China Movie Metropolis, also called Qingdao Oriental Movie Metropolis, is in the city’s Huangdao district, Shandong. Its underwater production centre includes an indoor water stage and an outdoor pool. These are working facilities for film and television crews, rather than an aquarium attraction or an ordinary public swimming pool.
A pool built around the shot
The operator gives the indoor tank’s dimensions as approximately 21 metres long, 10 metres wide and six metres deep. That is a substantial depth for arranging a scene below the surface. The published area of 8,833 square metres refers to the whole underwater production centre, not to the floor of this tank.
The indoor stage has two underwater observation windows, 329 fixing points on its walls and floor, and a working platform around the tank. Those details reveal more about its job than a large area figure does. A crew needs ways to position scenery, cameras and equipment, and to observe what is happening in the water.
Think about filming the same movement several times. If a camera drifts or a piece of scenery shifts between takes, the images may no longer join smoothly. Fixed attachment points help the crew plan repeatable positions. They also create options for the arrangement of wires and safety lines; the operator specifically lists those uses in its equipment description.
The tank can be heated to around 32°C. That is a capability, not a statement that every production uses the same temperature. Heated water, controlled lighting and a defined working space allow decisions that are much harder to repeat in open water, where conditions can change independently of the crew.
Clear water takes work
The centre’s published systems include hair collection, quartz-sand filtration and ultraviolet disinfection. Their purposes are practical: maintaining water quality and visibility during filming. A beautifully designed set is much less useful if the camera cannot see it clearly through the water.
Filtration and lighting solve different problems. Removing material from the water helps maintain clarity; positioning lights determines which surfaces and movements appear in the image. Neither is a shortcut that makes every underwater shot easy. Performers, camera operators, lighting specialists and an underwater safety team still have to coordinate the scene.
The outdoor pool provides another set of options. The operator describes it as suitable for larger surface scenes, ship structures, wind and waves, rain or mist effects, and shots using natural light. Choosing indoor or outdoor water therefore depends on the image being made, rather than on one pool being universally better.
A real production: a painting becomes a dance
One documented example is the underwater dance based on Water Studies by the Southern Song painter Ma Yuan. It appeared in CCTV’s Poetry and Painting China programme on 28 August 2022. The studio’s account, published the following day, says the underwater production was filmed entirely at its centre.
The performers were Ren Min, Wang Xi and Chen Tian. The sequence responded to the painting’s different forms of water, using bodily movement beneath the surface. In the operator’s account, the producer explains that the tank’s width and depth helped achieve clear, brightly lit underwater images. Its heating was another reason the team chose the facility.
That example shows why the tank is more than a substitute for a dangerous-looking location. Water can change the apparent weight and pace of a movement, and fabric responds differently below the surface. Here those qualities served a specific artistic subject: translating painted water into a performed image.
The operator also names A Writer’s Odyssey and Across the Furious Sea among projects using the indoor stage, and Liberation: End Rescue among those using the outdoor pool. These are examples reported by the facility itself; they do not tell us which exact shot, depth or equipment setting was used in every production.
The part the finished image leaves out
The film complex opened in 2018 and advertises 40 sound stages as well as workshops and production services. Its water facilities sit within that larger place where crews can build, shoot and finish scenes. The indoor tank is one specialised workspace among several, with its own requirements.
Knowing the details does not spoil an underwater sequence. It adds another way to enjoy it. Alongside the dancer or the imagined sea, you can notice how the frame has been organised: where the light falls, how much room the movement needs and which objects stay still while everything else floats.
An underwater studio does not manufacture an effortless performance. It gives a team more control over the conditions in which a difficult performance can be recorded. In Qingdao, the windows, filters and fixing points are part of what makes that brief, apparently weightless moment possible.
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Sources
- China Movie Metropolis: Underwater production centre
- China Movie Metropolis: Indoor water stage: dimensions and equipment
- China Movie Metropolis: Filming Water Studies for CCTV, 29 August 2022
- China Movie Metropolis: Studio complex and facilities