Cruise Ship Diaries Part 7

In Part 6 I talked about some of the onboard events we had to cover (or as I later learned didn’t ‘have’ too) but on the Corals run probably the best event the entertainment staff ran was called Dancing Through The Decades (which you can see in the above link) which spanned the 1950’s - 70’s and also involved 3 costume changes for the cruise staff throughout the night. Starting with a 50’s rock n’ roll vibe, they’d be dressed up in outfits directly stolen from ‘Grease’. What I loved about the events was the character work that the cruise staff would put into it, you had the geeks and the jocks and an Elvis competition where three unwitting members of the audience would be pulled up onstage given an Elvis wig and blow up guitar and have to give there best Elvis to win a $2 bottle of shampoo (cruise staff joke not mine!).

It was the little touches like one of the girls running across the stage and throwing herself at an Elvis before being dragged away that made it fun and as I got to know the events and the cruise staff better I would know where I had to be for the character moments throughout the event. I felt by adding in some more footage of the cruise staff it would help as it would show how fun the events were and it gave more options in editing if it was a quiet night yet we still had to try and make the event look good when 7 people turn up! This also meant the cruise staff would begin to promote the DVD more for me which was appreciated and also it meant even they as staff would stand around and watch themselves despite having done those events hundreds of times, overall feedback was really good. It also helped that the crew bar was 2 decks below the universe lounge where the theme nights would take place and I’d join the cruise staff for a few pre-event drinks to get us going for running around acting like idiots for the next few hours.

This would let me get creative in the edit as well, previously event edits would last as long as the piece of music. I changed the music 2 or 3 times throughout, standard rock n’ roll for the start and maybe start the video in black and white to give it that 50’s TV vibe, then add in some 70’s style funk/disco music and even some star wipes and basic SFX to make the video visually interesting.

Another big theme night was Country & Western Hoedown, sample joke at the end of the event when one of the girls would purposely fall over would be ‘and we have a hoe down’! After a few weeks of filming this event and thinking how the hell do you make about 20 people line dancing interesting and not just a foot fetish video? First step was add in more shots of the band playing and I began to film little western skits for the start and end of the videos filmed in sepia. This was an easier shoot as it was largely people moving their feet in a line but there was always the ‘bang bang’ game which entailed everyone standing in a circle and pretend shooting each other with imaginary guns. Imagine every terrible joke about ‘banging’ you can and I heard them every week and I also learned not to film the people when they slow danced because 1.) it messed with the pace of the edit and 2.) people really didn’t like having a camera shoved in their face when they were slow dancing with their significant other

Later on we had ‘Peer Factor’ which was a new event being trialed for the first time on the Coral and that meant no one had filmed it before either so there was no template or past video to go from. Looking back now it was a very clever idea that utilised existing crew members for the various challenges during the event where two teams of 4 passengers would compete against each other in multiple challenges.

Firstly they would have to make pizza on stage (which lead to everyone being covered in flour every time), then shuffle cards with a casino dealer and stuff balloons into a sumo suit. Each event would be judged by a cruise staff member placed on stage as the ‘clap-ometer’, we’d then hear every gonorrhoea based pun and then someone backstage would move the needle on our stunningly expensive clap-ometer machine.

The finale of the event involved some of the ships dancers doing a short routine that they’d then have to teach the guests in a matter of minutes before they attempted it onstage themselves. I’m fairly certain the dancers hated doing this event as it meant they had to warm up properly and perform for literally a few minutes and then they were done.

Peer Factor was a strange event as visually it looked great with all the different events in the competition but much of it also hinged on crowd response and many times there were only a handful of people there. From a revenue point of view it also didn’t work as that meant at the most only the 8 participants would be interested in buying the DVD and you could bet that most of the people taking part were either family or knew each other which further reduced potential sales.

The last event of the cruise before we could finalise the DVD and make hundreds of copies within a matter of hours was always the Champagne Waterfall Party on the last formal night, these days its on the first formal night and coupled with the Captains welcome speech event but back in 2007 they were vastly different. The edit was fairly simple, start with shots of the glasses of champagne, then film 10 people in a wide shot pouring and posing, then close in for a mid shot for another 10 people and keep reframing every 10 or so guests. The cruise staff and band would then try and get the party going in the atrium and sometimes there would be a ballon drop from the top of the atrium around 11pm / or when people had finished pouring champagne. I’d then run around in my cheap company provided tux sweating like a maniac filming drunk people dance badly. It’s funny looking back on the madness of the last night going from that late shoot, to then editing the event, mastering the final DVD, praying it actually worked, then slowly having to check every single menu button and link / asset on the DVD to make sure they were all linked the correct footage. You didn't want to click on Glacier Bay and then a Junior Chef video starts playing!

Once that was all done we’d then have to burn all the pre-orders we had amassed throughout the cruise and maybe 30% more for sales on the last day. I forgot when it changed exactly but at some on a later contract the event was moved and to first formal night and someone took the decision that we would no longer film that last night event meaning we would have at least a full day minimum to get the the final DVD’s produced instead of a few hours, this also meant sleep and two bright eyed videographers in the gallery handing out DVD’s on the last day of the cruise rather than the walking death we usually were!

In Part 8 - Aruba!