Is it Live or Is It Memorex?!

Ok, just coming up briefly for some air. More details will follow later, but I can safely say that a week of shooting has been completed with a few additional days still to come. I have no idea how the finished product will come out, but from what I have seen I can tell you that the footage looks good. From my own personal experience, many scenes are rather intense, including having a very real looking AK-47 Rifle shoved in my face by a screaming and very convincing actor playing a Somali Pirate, demanding that I stop the ship he has just taken over.

We spent long days on board a military “Roll On Roll Off” cargo vessel in the Portsmouth Marine Terminal which served as a double for the hijacked Maersk Alabama. What I love is the conflict between reality and drama for television. As technical advisor we had the real life Captain of this cargo vessel to insure authenticity of facts, figures, processes and general shipboard Captain and Crew behavior. We needed to show “life on the bridge”, the control center of the ship, earlier that morning before the Alabama is captured. The question came up “Well, exactly what would the Captain be doing?” The director asked “What buttons would he be pushing?” referring to the massive panel of lights and levers. “Would he be at the steering column?” As an actor I also wanted to know what sort of legitimate and vitally important “Captain-like” action would he demonstrate? “Well,” came the reply “He’d probably be drinking a cup of coffee & looking out the window”. I could feel all our eyebrows collectively rise. The director came back “Well, how about in the Chart room, wouldn’t he be plotting a course? That would look interesting!” “Well, not really. That’s what the staff are for”.

So all the exciting button pushing and switch setting by a brave Sea Captain is primarily for the viewers, not what the Captain would actually be doing!

My next amusing bit of Reality vs TV is a scene where an officer makes an important satellite telephone call to alert the Navy, Coast Guard, and other vital military & support forces that the Maersk Alabama has been taken over by Somali Pirates. The script required an exciting scene where this call goes out. On the port side of the bridge (that’s left for all you land lubbers) there is a really cool looking radio station. It has two CRT screens, keyboards, microphones, electronic thingys that go “beep” and lots of impressive buttons. This is going to look very official. “So,” the director eagerly asks our Captain and mentor “is this where the urgent satellite call went out?! “Well actually, that’s the ship to ship radio, not the satellite phone.” Scanning the bridge our director then asks (expecting to find a really high tech electronic device) “Where’s the satellite phone”. “Right over there” says the Captain, pointing at what looks like a household white wall phone that would hang on anyone’s kitchen wall - the kind you’d find at Best Buy or Wall Mart. Just a regular, normal phone. So much for fancy Hollywood special effects in a real life documentary dramatization. I can’t spoil the secrets of how these scenes were actually played out, but I can say that there was a blend of real life and that heightened excitement!