Nays Baghai is an independent film-maker and underwater creative, and he’ll be on the Inspiration Stage at the GO Diving Show ANZ in September.
Based in Sydney, he is a graduate of Australia’s national film school AFTRS, and his feature film debut as a director, Descent, won the 2020 Sydney Film Festival and is now streaming on Amazon Prime ANZ.
His second feature, Diving Into The Darkness, featuring Main Stage speaker Jill Heinerth, won the 2024 Santa Barbara International Film Festival. This awesome film will be shown at the GO Diving Show ANZ on Saturday morning to kickstart proceedings.
In addition to his long-form work as a director, cinematographer and editor, Nays has also won 30 awards for his short-form and photography work. His portfolio of clients includes Sony, Rolex, Deloitte, SBS, ScubaDiver Magazine, Tourism Australia and many more.
As an underwater cinematographer and photographer, Nays holds a wide variety of diving certifications that enable him to operate in demanding environments inaccessible to traditional film crews.
Nays will be on the Inspiration Stage with this talk:
Making the Impossible Possible: Behind the Scenes of Diving Into The Darkness
Multi-hyphenate director Nays Baghai dives into the secrets of his award-winning documentary feature film about the legendary Jill Heinerth. In this presentation, Nays covers a wide range of topics, including:
- The dive training required to pull off the project
- The details of complex film documents, including scripts, storyboards, shooting diagrams and others
- The full list of caves and other underwater filming locations
- The endless array of challenges encountered by the team
- The gargantuan editing process
- The risks and rewards of rebreathers
- The parallels between film-making and technical diving
The GO Diving Show ANZ
This annual event, taking place this year on 28-29 September at the Sydney Showground at the Olympic Park, is aimed at showcasing the very best of our underwater world to everyone from raw novices who are either contemplating getting into diving, or have completed their entry-level courses, to advanced divers, right through to technical divers and veteran CCR divers.
There are an array of stages – the Main Stage, the Photo Stage, the Australia/New Zealand Stage, the Inspiration Stage and the Tech Stage – that will play host to dozens of speakers from around the world, as well as a host of interactive features to suit young and old, from VR diving experiences, trydives, a demonstration pool, mermaids, and much more.
Surrounding the stages and features will be a broad range of exhibitors, from tourist boards and tour operators to resorts, liveaboards, training agencies, retailers, manufacturers, and conservation organisations.
The 2024 GO Diving Show UK, now in its fifth year, attracted more than 10,000 attendees over the weekend, and spanned an area of 10,000 sq m of exhibition space, and the Australia and New Zealand variant aspires to reaching this level in coming years.
Entry to the inaugural GO Diving Show ANZ is completely free – register here to get your tickets for what is undoubtedly the diving event of 2024 in Australia. There is plenty of parking on-site and the venue is easy to get to with plenty of transport options, so get the dates in your diary now and prepare for an epic weekend celebrating all forms of diving.
