More stories from the Sun Princess: Public exposure, cabin stewards & Laundry theft showdowns!

The Sun Princess in 2008 was a great ship and I was really settling into the more laid back lifestyle onboard. One of my friends on the Cruise staff from the Coral Simon was onboard and so that meant it was easier to work with the team on the Sun as Simon clued them in on how I shot the events. My senior Travis was understandably more focused on the tour filming and as I'd established a good reputation from the Coral for my events fiming I was more than happy to cover most of the ship events on the Sun.

The biggest difference for me was that the schedule was 50/50 split down the middle, if I filmed a port or event then the following cruise Travis would film that port or event. He explained to me that the senior videogs role was the same as the juniors but they got paid more because it was their responsibility to make sure we hit our sales target on DVD's. The other main aspects of the senior role was to prep the schedule of what we filmed each cruise and this would be a combination of marking events on the food and entertainment schedule that we would film and liasing with the shore excursions department on what tours we would film ashore.

Travis gave me advice on editing and shooting and massively improved my skills, I learned how to blend live audio and music much better, learnt basic titles and graphics and improve my camera work by not zooming out on every another shot! Also to get a bit technical the way we processed the final DVD's was much smarter than the way we'd been doing it on the Coral, back in the dark days of 2008 at the end of every cruise we'd have to burn a master DVD and send a copy to head office in LA for safekeeping.

On the Coral once we'd filmed our last event the senior would then build a timeline for the whole DVD and export the whole timeline and back it up to a DV Cam tape as well. We also had different levels of quality, quicker poorer quality to broadcast on the ship so we could get updates out quicker which would also have a channel watermark and various advertising idents on them. Then for the final DVD we'd have to re-export a cleaner, high quality version of the files which would then be burnt to the DVD.

Except on the Sun we had more time and organisation which meant we would burn the final files as we went and Travis would build and link the DVD throughout the cruise, this meant once we had completed the last edit he only had to add one video to the master DVD timeline which saved us hours. Although with the longer cruising we had more time Travis just seemed completely chilled out and never got fazed by anything onboard, we also had a similar taste in music which I find always helps a videog partnership as you will both spend hours in the same room doing the more menial tasks of the job, like burning and boxing DVD's so you need music and alcohol to get you through!

Country Night was bizarrely a much bigger event on the Sun than it was on the Coral, but I think that was largely down to the majority of the Aussie guests who were much more of a party crowd than the Americans on the Coral. One of the best crusie staff I worked with was Lindsay who was like a female Jim Carrey, everytime I put the camera on her she would be able to contort her face or give me some comic gold. We also had Ceri from Wales, Devyn from Canada and Veronica from South Africa so a truly international team onboard.

So of course this happened on my first country night on the Sun...

As I liked to run all over the place and throw myself on the ground often when filming an event I over extended on a lunge and without realising ripped my trousers from crutch to knee. Ever the pro I didn't know I'd done it and it was only when I put the camera on Lindsay and she burst out laughing, she then pointed down and I saw what I'd been filming in my underwear for the last 5 miuntes or so.

Slightly horrified I ran into the photo gallery which was luckily seconds away and found some black gaffer tape and contrived to tape the remants of my trouseres to my leg. What a way to make an impression to the entertainment staff on your first shoot with them!

One aspect of ship life I neglected to mention was doing laundry onboard which is summed up by the GIF above. There is a crew laundry and passenger laundries onboard, offically crew were not allowed to use PAX laundries but we never got caught and it was a very minor infraction anyway. The reason was the crew laundry was about 5 machines down on deck 2 and that was it for over 1000 crew, so the odds on finding a free machine at the same time you have free time was not good. The PAX laundries were much cleaner and quicker so it was worth the risk if you didn't have the time.

The other weird thing was that laundry theft was rampant onboard ships with a staggeringly gross black market in stolen womens underwear! Guys would steal womens expensive underwear and send it home to their wifes!!! Even worse once a saw a note up on the M1 (main ships throughfare) that said 'Victoras Sekret' and a pager number! Yes, this brain surgeon had stolen some poor girls underwear and was actively advertising it for sale onboard for phone number to ring!

It wasn't just the creepy underwear thiefs though as anyones clothes were fair game if you were not their when your load finished. My biggest shock was finding one of my Reading festival band shirts had gone missing then a few days later seeing a Fillipino guy wearing my shirt down the M1. I may have lost my temper a little and said 'oh cool were you at Reading 96 as well then mate?' 'sorry sir?' the guy replied. 'You stole my t-shirt' I said 'no no I got it..' I cut him off 'If you don't take that fucking shirt off right now, I'll find out your name and where you work you thieving bastard'

The guy now terrified of getting in more trouble promptly took off my shirt and ran topless down the M1, part of me almost chased him and reported him but he had a head start and I had my shirt back.

So doing laundry onboard was a massive pain in the arse unless you had a cabin steward!!! Yes, as a staff memeber I could sub contract a crew member (usually from the laundry room and from India or the Phillipines) for around $20 a cruise to do my laundry, make my bed and fetch my drinks from the cambusa sale onboard. It seems weird but it was such a fucking chore to do some of these things onboard especially if you were busy working at the time they happened, therefore paying someone to do all this for you was a no brainer. Dependant on what you paid your cabin steward they would also clean your own personal clothes as well as uniform, and others would be a pager number away from bringing food and alcohol to your cabin. The black market economy on ships was booming and the Sun was no exception.

In the next cruise diaries - Cruising Australia & drunkenly wandering into the wrong cabin!