Canada day carnage and videog side hustles!

I did not know too much about Canada before ships, I'd briefly visited Vancouver on the Coral but it had been a tunraround port so we'd had little time to explore. The little I knew was the typical stereotypes that they all loved hockey, everyone lived in igloos and had to hide from polar bears, and that they were a little bit like Americans except they were unbelievably polite.

Most of that was true however, they were a friendly bunch who loved beer & hockey and there was quite a large contingent of Canadians aboard the Sun from the bridge, photo department, shoppies, spa and many other front of house departments. Most of us in the western world know that July 4th is American Independence day but I have to admit I didn't know about Canada day, on the Sun due to the amount of Canadians this was a big deal and a massive party was planned.

Just to get one over on the Americans Canada day is July 1st and the crew bar had been turned into a massive hockey arena with homemade hockey goals at both ends of the bar. Ryan from the cruise staff was dressed in a full hockey keepers outfit and there was prizes to be won! I forget what was used for a puck but if you could score past Ryan you won a crate of beer. Imagine in this day and age of politicial correctness a social activity that encourages drinking, it would be cancelled within minutes via twitter.

Usually the music in the bar was whatever the big chart dance music of the day was or terrible eastern european techno music and with some of Canadas more famous musical exports at the time I didn't expect the music to improve! Thankfully there were several posters of Celine Dion, Nickelback and (maybe unfairly?) Byran Adams up in the bar that had big red crosses through them, instead we got the classics with Rush, the now legendary Tragically Hip and little known outside Canada grungers Our Lady Peace.

One of the highlights of the evening surely has to be a recreation of a tradtional Canadian hockey fight that was demonstrated by Jay from the photogs and Ryan from the cruise staff in the video above!

I was getting to know the cast fairly well regularly hanging out with the twins on shore excursions and I’d usually drop off their tour tickets when I picked mine and we’d hangout in the dressing room on non show nights trading pictures that we’d taken of the ports during the day. It was also a nice change of pace from the crew bar as some of the cast were not really into the crew bar scene or heavy drinkers which meant a typical evening for them would be hanging out in the dressing room watching movies on their big TV. Also being the video guy I had the hard drive will all the films on it as the ships DVD library was severely lacking.

There is a common view that dancers have an easy life onboard and thats true to an extent but when you get to know them you realise the amount of work that goes in with certain casts, the current cast on the Sun had some drama since they arrived with one of the male dancers going home injured early on and one dancer making a serious accusation against another staff member onboard which resulted in both the dancer and staff member being sent home immediately while the situation was investigated. I was shocked one morning to walk out of my cabin and see ‘do not use tape’ taped over a cabin door and a security sat outside protecting the room. The above two situations didn’t help when you also factor in regular injuries that would accumulate over the course of a 6 month contract and when anything like that happens the cast have to rehearse a re-block.

As I learned a re-block happens when someone is injured or replaced and its the line captains (now company performance manager) job to factor in more rehearsals so that the new cast members can get up to speed with the original cast, when its less serious and someone is ill or has a minor injury that still means rehearsals are needed so that the line captain can change the shows around to hide any of the missing cast members.

A great side hustle onboard cruise ships is filming show reels for the cast, officially you are not allowed to film the shows onboard at all but lots of people did it and you just had to make sure you checked with the right people onboard and definitely keep it on the down low. Usually it would be the dance captain who approaches me about filming the shows so they can have a professionally filmed version of the shows to take home with them at the end of their contracts. Some dancers would pay me just to film them and track them throughout a certain show so they had a ton of material of themselves, others would supply me with material and I’d cut together for them.

As long as the Cruise Director, Photo Manager & Dance Captain were in agreement I could film the shows, if any of the guests asked why was I filming the shows and could they buy it afterwards the standard lie was ‘we are just filming it for review purposes for head office’.

Usually when a videog films a show for the cast they’ll simply put a camera in the middle of the audience or right at the back and leave it locked off on a wide shot for the whole show. As I had the time and was friends with the cast I wanted to do a proper job and give me something for my showreel as well as theirs. Some of the shows did not have a full live band and the singers would live sing to musical backing tracks and these were the easier shows to edit, because before the days of synch functions in editing software you would have to manually synch all the different camera angles. Most nights the same show would be performed twice at 8pm and 10pm, so my plan was to film both with three cameras, one master wide shot from the back, one locked mid shot of the stage from front left and one free tripod shot from front right where I’d pull out close ups and follow the action. On the 2nd show I’d switch the front cameras around so I had action angles from front left and right.

This meant when it came to editing I’d have to manually synch up 6 different camera angles from 2 different shows and make it look seamless, not to toot my own horn to much but when the dancers themselves can’t tell which show the footage is from in the edit, then you know you’ve done a good job. Indeed I was editing one night and had Brittany, Krysten & Del sat with me telling me how to edit, for example I thought the show was perfectly synched but Del told me it was maybe a second or so out as she was on the left foot when she should have been on the right foot.

It was funny editing these videos as what I want as an editor goes completely against what the dancers want for a show video, I wanted lots of quick cuts on the action to give it some dynamism but as I learned most dancers want a head to toe mid-shot so that they can see their full range of body movement which is better for their showreels. Beforehand I suppose I’d been one of those people that thought the dancers had an easy job onboard and you can argue that comparatively many people have easy jobs onboard but after seeing how many times they had to re-block their shows because of issues and injuries they definitely did not have an easy time on the Sun.

I lost count of the nights when I’d be heading to bar around 11pm and they’d be gathered in the corridor waiting for the theatre to be free so they could practice, as they needed the main stage in the Princess Theatre to do their reblocks this meant that they had to wait until the evenings main entertainment in the theatre was done and then usually add another hour for the production crew to break down the staging before they could get in the theatre to practice for at least two hours.

Many times I’d be heading back to my cabin around 3 or 4a.m and the dancers would still be rehearsing or just be finishing, then most of them would be up again around 7a.m to go ashore on the excursions. These were definitely one of the most hardworking casts I’d ever encounter in my years at sea.

On the next cruise diaries - The world cruise starts, changes in the photo team and another nightmare roomate!