20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1916 film) 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1916 film) 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is a 1916 American silent film directed by Stuart Paton. The film's storyline is based on the novel "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" by Jules Verne. It also incorporates elements from Verne's "The Mysterious Island". This was the first motion picture filmed underwater. Actual underwater cameras were not used, but a system of watertight tubes and mirrors allowed the camera to shoot reflected images of underwater scenes staged in shallow sunlit waters. The film was made by The Universal Film Manufacturing Company (now Universal Pictures), not then
Journey Through the Impossible "The Children of Captain Grant" and "Michael Strogoff", as similarly spectacular plays. Verne began playing with the idea of bringing a mixed selection of "Voyages Extraordinaires" characters together on a new adventure in early 1875, when he considered writing a novel in which Samuel Fergusson from "Five Weeks in a Balloon", Pierre Aronnax from "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea", Phileas Fogg from "Around the World in Eighty Days", Dr. Clawbonny from "The Adventures of Captain Hatteras", and other characters would go around the world together in a heavier-than-air flying machine. Another novel featuring a similar trip around the world