The sad tale of 'John' the 2nd American videographer - Part 1

By now you know my feelings on 'Chad' my American junior videog, he was a decent videog but as a person a complete piece of shit & self centred arsehole so whats bettter than having one of these guys to deal with.. how about two!!!

Yes, unbelievably head office called me to let me know that I'd be getting an additional 2nd American junior videographer called 'name redacted' lets just call him 'John' for legal reasons. I had mixed thoughts and my first reaction was 'why are you sending him to me?' I was only a few months into my first contract as an acting senior videographer and was still learning the ropes of the job myself and we still only had one editing computer onboard as well, as it was I was on permanent nighttime editing as Chads tour edits would take priority in the day and I couldn't see how we could schedule in editing time for 3 of us around the one computer.

Apparently the reason he was being sent to us was that we had a spare berthing in our department as Chad (as well as being a dick) also snored like a racist chainsaw and had managed to wrangle his own cabin was no one could put up with him. Well, Chad was about to meet John.

I received some more information from head office about John and I was told he was in his mid 50's and had never worked at sea before but he had worked in Hollywood on films such as Top Gun, Terminator 2 and Titanic!!! Head office's plan was to send him out for a few months at sea to see how he acclimatised to ship life and the company in general then the plan was for him to shoot all of head offices corporate content.

Once we got word of John's background I was fairly excited, I mean bizarrely I was going to be in charge of someone who had worked with James Cameron and had worked on some massively iconic films. I couldn't wait to hear tales of working on Top Gun, Titanic & Terminator 2 and once word spread around the ship that someone who had worked on Titanic (the film not the actual!) was coming onboard people were lining up to work with him.

Ironically the berthing issue that had resulted in John being sent to us on the Star meant he would be sharing with Chad, now usually the two videographers are not put together as the arguement is no one wants to share a room with their supervisor in a sub department of two. Of course the photogs always argued this point because photogs had to share with the asssistant photo managers but as both Chad and John were first contract juniors of the same rank it didn't matter.

Beginning a life at sea can be a major shock to most people so I was a little worried about how someone in their mid 50's who had never worked at sea might adapt, but we also had Brian an aussie photog who was older on his first contract and he was fitting in fine so that asswayed my fears a little. Once we met he was fairly quiet as to be expected and once he was settled we had a quick a chat in the video room while Chad was still out on tour. He was a little quiet which was understandable so I showed him some edits of the type of work we'd be producing and I got him to shoot 2nd camera on people danicng and waving at the camera for the sailaway party. The first issue was that he was introducing himself to the PAX and he was quite a tall guy but he stuck out like a sore thumb and I could see a potential issue with him apporaching families and children. I went over and told him the standard patter that we say at the sailaway party 'hi folks, I'm Neil one of your Reflections DVD videographers onboard so give me a smile and a wave and then you can see yourself on the ships TV channel 28 and on the cruise DVD'

I told John say something like that so people don't think we are crazy weirdoes and I laughed, he just nodded and I let him get back to it but he was still not engaging with the PAX and also I had to tell him when he went over and started filming the ships dancers who were out of uniform as always that they were crew. His footage was okay if a little short (maybe 10 minutes of footage) and he had the camera running between shots which for editing was a nightmare, so a little red flag on the firs day but nothing we couldn't put down to first day nerves.

John's first solo shoot the next day was a Martini Demo in the atrium, I'd shown him examples the day before and it was our shortest shoot around 30 minutes from start to finish and I could bash out the edit in 2 hours. When it came to editing I said had notes prepared for John or I told him I could talk him through it and let him make notes, or if he was happy I'd leave him to it and I'd come back to review his edit once it was done and show him the export process. He was happy to sit by himself and edit so I left him to it and popped my head back in 4 hours and saw him squinting at the screen like he had trouble focusing.

'How you getting on?' I enquired and Chad was sat in video room as well waiting to get on to edit his tour from that day, 'oh yeah I think its good' 'okay lets take a look then' I said. It was terrible it looked like he'd stood in the one place for the whole event and not moved once, all he'd done was zoom in for close ups from the same position and also lost focus a few times and this was shots that were in the edit as well. I turned and looked Chad who just shrugged - he knew it was total shit as well. It was also only 2 minutes long which was extremely on the short side, I asked John what he thought of the edit and he replied that he thought it was good. It was not it was an abomination of an edit that I couldn't put on TV, I said 'Right John you've been in here for hours go take a break and we'll export this as Chad needs to get on to do his edit'

I now just had to come up with an excuse for removing the edit from the DVD and how did I bring this up with John? After John left Chad also informed me that he'd actually helped him edit it over the past hour and he had only edited 20 seconds in 3 hours. The red flags were beginning to acumulate.

On the next cruise diaries - Part 2 of the Saga of John the 2nd American Videogapher