Cruise Ship Diaries Part 11

Heather had been lucky enough to do a helicopter shoot of the canal which we were all excited by the potential of the footage, however when we saw the footage it was extremely shaky and there wasn't much of it. This was disappointing because the plan was to make that footage into another DVD that we could package and sell as additional content, the bad news was because hiring a helicopter is expensive it took months before head office gave us permission to try it again and I must have bugged the shit out of Heather about getting the chance to do it the next time.

Finally she relented I got the shoot so this time instead of taking us to the locks our driver took us to a tiny industrial area where this tinker toy looking death trap was waiting for me and Christian our assistant manager.

At this point I'd never even been in a helicopter before let alone tried to operate a camera in one! I was also slightly unnerved by the fact that our pilot didn't seem to speak any English and myself and Christian didn't speak any Spanish, of course these are trivial concerns when you realise the helicopter has no doors! Yes, admittedly great for filming but also THERE WERE NO DOORS! and one tiny tiny seat belt that went around our waists.

On the technical side of things Heather had taken up our small camera which was responsible for much of the shakeiness in her footage as our regular cameras back then were massive DV-Cam Sony ex-broadcast cameras that you had to rest on your shoulder. As I didn't want a repeat of what happened before I sent an email out to the other senior videographers in the fleet to find someone who had done this shoot before and could give some advice.

I think it might have been Travis Dixon (who I would work with on my next contract) who replied saying 'take the big camera, bungee cord it to something in the helicopter (just in case!) and keep the shot wide as much as you can.

Now this was in the days before Adobes warp stabilization and other post tools to fix shaky cam, so you had to minimise the vibration of the helicopter anyway you could - for me it was putting the camera on the helicopter floor and wrapping it two pillows.

Now, I'll freely admit I may have had my eyes closed for a good few minutes until the blind terror subsided and the actual HOLY SHIT this is pretty fucking cool for a work day feeling kicked in! Of course communicating what we wanted from the pilot proved troublesome as he would just smile and give us the thumbs up whenever we tried to give him directions!

With the adrenaline fully flowing the pilot then deicded to take us over Panama City on the way back to the airfield which gave us some amazing shots of the citys skyline.

The vistas like the picture above were truly breathtaking and it was still barely 10a.m in the morning which of course meant after we landed another trip to the Melie hotel for a half day of relaxation.

Once we got back onboard the footage was fairly decent for my first attempt and we did on DVD sales that cruise because of that footage, after that cruise the helicopter footage would be added to the DVD as a generic segment as head office still would spring for us to do a helicopter shoot every cruise.

It is funny looking back as I remember being completely blaise about the shoot beforehand on the day (probably due to 2 hours sleep) but once I'd finally opened my eyes about 10 minutes into the flgiht it was awesome. Admittedly we couldn't tell the pilot what direction we wanted him to go as he didn't speak a word of English and we didn't speak a word of Spanish, so this meant he did a few loops around the ship before heading back to the city.

Next Time - The Panama Papers Part 3:Drive by shootings in Panama City