Cruise Ship Diaries Part 3

The first person who met me in the terminal was Richard the ships Senior videographer who would be training me throughout my contract, we walked into the labyrinth maze that was the M1 (crew name for the deck 4 through-fare that stretched the whole length of the ship). First stop was to go and drop off my luggage at my room and meet my first roommate, ‘We’ll just drop these off as he’s probably still asleep’ Rich said, I just nodded thinking ‘wow he sleeps late as its already 11am’. As I opened the door ‘turn the fucking light off’ greeted me! I left my suitcases and quickly got out, Rich then explained that there was big party the night before for the guy I was replacing Kevin and everyone on the team was a little worse for wear that morning.

There were 4 photo department cabins on Deck 9 midships, which meant we had to go through passenger areas to get to our cabins while the rest of the our department were down on deck 4 in a crew only area, according to Rich the division in the team was not just down to what decks we were on, Deck 9 people didn’t get on with Deck 4 people. I got the grand tour of the ship but nothing really sank in other than getting shown to my muster area and getting my blue card which was all part of our safety training and maritime drills we had to do regularly every cruise for the passengers when they embarked.

We took a quick look in our video editing room which was formerly a small production booth on Deck 7 inside the Universe lounge which was 2nd largest entertainment venue on the ship after the Princess Theatre which was always Deck 7 forward on every Princess ship. 2007 was a few years before HD came in and we were still shooting standard definition DVD’s on gigantic Sony ex-broadcast cameras on DVCam tapes.

It is bizarre looking back that my first night onboard we didn’t end up in the crew bar (where I would spend the first night of every other contract) instead myself, Rich, Raj (my swearing Indian roommate) and a few of the other photog’s all sat around in our corridor drinking and listening to music to around 4am. To say I felt like shit the next day would be an understatement with a lack of sleep, jet lag and hangover, but I also had to take into account I was on a moving boat at sea and I felt pretty seasick as well all day.

Prior to ships I had been primarily an outside cameraman for shitty pop bands that mimed (S Club 7 I’m looking at you!) and my editing knowledge was very basic, but like a lot of people I bullshitted my way through to the job. My very first shoot onboard was for a Martini drinks demo which you can see below. I apologise in advance.

Looking back its pretty terrible but at the time…it was still terrible but Rich pointed out what I needed to do (like add live sound & don’t show people talking if we cannot hear what they are saying) and various other editing techniques to improve, more important was the export process and how once we had edited an event we had to get it on the Tv’s around the ship and in PAX’s cabins. Still it was on brand for what I had been shown in the interview which was film the passengers having a good time and to make sure the guests knew what you were filming for and ‘why yes you can see yourself in your cabins on ch 32 and yes you can buy it to take home with you). As I learned the job was 60% shooting and editing and the rest was raising awareness of the DVD onboard and trying to sell it, but I had survived my first shoot, completed the process and it was time to go to the bar!

Later that night two of the photogs Amanda & Adina said did I want to go on a hike the next day which was my first day off in port, I immediately jumped at the chance despite never having gone on a hike in my life.

It was turnaround day in Whittier, Alaska and thats the first day of a new cruise where most of the photo department is off until an hour before the ships sails and the videogs take it in turns to shoot the port sailaways.

Now as I mentioned I’d never hiked before in my life and even now I couldn’t tell you what path we took that day, I was wearing trainers and a hoodie, I had no food, small bottle of water and none of us had a mobile phone back then. Amanda & Adina had assured me they had gotten the directions from Sheldon one of our photogs and they knew where we were going, the plan was to walk up a big rocky hill, then down though some forest and rocks to a black sand beach where if we continued along the trail we would be able to get to and touch a glacier!

Of course being young and stupid if we had got close enough to touch the glacier it would have been extremely dangerous as glaciers calve parts of them selfs off on a regular basis. We took a wrong turn as our direction stated ‘turn at the small lake’ and there was some debate over what was the the lake or pond in this case. At one point we saw fairly fresh bear shit and a week into my Alaskan experience seeing a bear close up on a walk hadn’t even occurred to me yet and again how ridiculously dangerous that could be. How much potential danger we were in really didn’t dawn on us though I do remember saying ‘no one has any food on them right?’ to which the girls said no.

Eventually we got to the black sand beach and we could see the glacier in the distance however we also saw Sheldon who had given the girls the directions already heading back…yes, we’d taken quite a few hours to get only halfway. Even though I was in the best shape of my life I was absolutely shattered at this point, the girls wanted to press on and I said ‘cool, I'll wait for you here then!’ The girls pressed on but within half an hour they were on their way back and had not been attacked by bears or crushed by falling ice. Just because we could see the glacier it was still many miles away and we had to start thinking about getting back to the ship on time.

We were lucky that we had a late sail, but we still had many miles to walk and a time limit now. Adina was worried that she would be late for her evening gallery shift, Amanda was worried about getting back before crew all aboard time and I was just worried about getting back in one piece after walking further than I probably had in my life that day.

Once we got back to the big hill and could see the main road we took a quick break where Adina then took some meat protein snacks out of bag!!!

NO FOOD!!! BEARS!!! Admittedly they barely passed as food. Still we made it back on time and I celebrated like Rocky once we got back to the main road to the ship! Adina shot off like Forest Gump and we made it back with time to spare.

I’d survived my first week onboard and survived my first Alaskan hike and here is a short video from the day, before I realised it was going to take twice as long if I filmed everything!

Lost in Alaska!

In part 4, my first onboard birthday leads to my first onboard warning and suddenly I'm the only videographer on the ship!