A pacific tsunami and a disagreement with the cruise director

After proving myself to Richard and working hard I was finally able to enjoy my last month onboard the Star Princess. I had a great junior, my own cabin and a new photo team which brought lots of positive energy which can give you that extra kick you need to get to the end of the contract, however there were still certain days where I had issues to deal with.

While we were in La Haina, Hawaii there was a tsunami warning because of a massive underwater earthquake in the famed Pacific Ring of Fire, the resulting Tsunami reached 46ft (14 meters high) as it smashed into American Samoa, Samoa & Tonga. The earthquake measured 8.1 and over 200 people were killed mostly in Samoa where we were headed in a few days time.

News of the damage and loss of life was not widespread amongst the general population onboard and it was only when I went to see about booking tours for the port that I realised the size of the issue. There were some operators they had not been able to get hold off since the tsunami and according to reports from the island the locals were still searching for missing people and finding bodies.

Word of that spread slowly to the PAX and it was still to be decided if we would even stop in Samoa. I forget the exact situation but I was quite rude to two passengers who were complaining about missing their excursion, oh white privilege indeed. 'Yeah but they need our money right that's why we should go, we can help’ was their blunder ‘Yeah but I think they are still pulling people out the rubble so I’m not sure they even have tourist facilities for you to buy to help the local economy’ I smiled back rather sarcastically, of course they didn't reply and walked away.

As only one tour would be offered which was a bus tour to the unaffected parts of the island myself and Cyrus immediately thought what a good, well good seems the wrong word from an ethical point of view but from a video producer point of view it was an opportunity to film something meaningful for once, so for that reason we were both still looking forward to going there. Most of the PAX fully understood the situation but there were still some absolute scum who despite knowing about the tsunami and loss of life were actually still complaining about their excursions being cancelled and demanding compensation from the pursers desk!

The day of Samoa arrived and my manager tells me that only one of us needs to go ashoreto film, as the ship is doing a small reception with the islands government and as senior videographer they wanted me onboard to film it. My first question as always was ‘but this won’t fit on the DVD, therefore why are WE filming it?’ Apparently it was a direct request from the new Cruise Director (name redacted) who I hadn’t really dealt with yet, more on him later.

This is one of those arguments where as photo/video we were revenue based therefore if it isn’t going to make us any money then why are we doing it? There was an ancient rule that I’ve mentioned before about the Cruise Director being able to use video for a few hours a day to film the morning show but this was not that either.

I asked why it needed to be me staying onboard to film this reception as it was plunk down one camera and leave it on a wide shot for the whole shoot. I was told I was needed there because I was the senior videographer when to me the much more important filming was going to be ashore that day, however I had complete faith in Cyrus to still do a great job.

If we were being asked directly by head office to cover this because it was good PR for the company, fine I could understand that but it seemed like it was just the Cruise Directors idea and as my manager told me ‘We don’t want to piss him off’ as he is key in making sure that the cruise staff promote Reflections at the onboard events. That said, I got on great with the Cruise staff and thought it was an empty threat also I was leaving in less than a month and really didn’t give a shit at that point.

I think it was the mayor/governor of the island who came on with some dignitaries who posed for many pictures with the ships senior officers while numerous speeches were made that lasted well over 2 hours. Then I had to go and film the ship unloading a pallet of water and other supplies to the island. When you think about how much assistance we could have given onboard one pallet of supplies seemed like an embarrassing token gesture at most & even the senior officers seemed slightly embarrassed by the whole thing.

Anyway after what seemed like hours of filming I still had no idea where or what the footage was for, until I heard the Cruise Director announce over the ships PA that the PAX would be able to watch the whole thing at 6pm on their morning show channel. Needless to say I was not happy at this, the photo manager was my direct boss and the entertainment department had no say over photo/video operations. My manager was not impressed either especially since I had around 2-3 hours of footage that still needed to be captured and then exported and back then we were on DV tapes still that would take 2-3 hours just to capture the footage!

I received a page from Rich telling me the 1st purser Andrea wanted me to make a copy of all the days footage so that the local Samoan TV station could run the footage on the local news and that they needed the tape before the ship sailed away in 4/5 hours. There was simply not enough time to do both tasks in the allotted time so I’d either have to piss off the first purser or the CD.

In my mind this was not a hard decision, the CD had completely over stepped his bounds without consulting anyone in the Photo department and there was absolutely no benefit (bar keeping him happy) to completing his request first. On the other hand the first purser was head of all hotel department services onboard and was my managers direct boss himself. Also sending a copy of the footage was great PR for the company and would strengthen ties with the island itself so I had to speak to Rich and ask him who we would piss off.

Andrea the first purser even stopped my editing room to see what was going on and after a quick consultation with my manager we decided to side with Andrea over the CD, so overall a massively disappointing day and a prelude to more issues I would come to have with the new CD as well.

If there was one bonus from that waste of a day it was that my junior Cyrus filmed an absolutely amazing video that looked like a Unicef appeal video which mananged to be moving without being exploitative at the same time, I think he even started and ended the video with quotes about the the triumph of the human spirit, even on his 2nd contract (I think) it was after this video that I realised how good Cyrus was and of course if you are one of the best juniors in the fleet then you get the best run in the fleet coming up which was Antartica.