The Grand Princess Sailing into Istanbul

So there we were, sitting outside the Turkish Customs Office in Istanbul drinking strong Turkish coffee with some swarthy guys toting machine guns who didn’t speak a word of English. My cameraman and I were waiting for Ali, our local guide/production manager/criminal, to finish bribing the authorities (or being paid by these same authorities to haul us off to some Midnight Express style prison where we would be ransomed off or left to rot if no one stepped up to pay the ransom.) Whatever. How we had come to this precarious state is an interesting story.

When Princess Cruises launched Grand Princess, she was billed as “the biggest, most expensive cruise ship ever built.” We were assigned to sail with her on her Maiden Voyage from Istanbul to Barcelona and chronicle the trip (Oh, please don’t throw us in that briar patch!) as well as make a “Welcome Aboard” video detailing the various highlights of the ship.

To this end we sent one crew to sail with the ship from the yard in Trieste to Istanbul and shoot what interior shots they could. We would follow with another crew and our models and meet up with the ship in Istanbul. Part of our plan was to shoot helicopter aerials of the ship as she came into port. The Princess PR Department was very keen on getting these images and others of the new ship’s interiors broadcast to the world via satellite to announce the Grand Princess Inaugural Voyage. Everything went according to plan until we arrived in Turkey. That’s when we discovered that:

1) The only helicopters in Turkey were those flown by the Government

2) No videotapes could be sent out of the country except by express government permission after screening them

3) No facilities existed in Turkey to view videotapes made by our American equipment. That’s when we turned to Ali for help.

We had met Ali several months earlier in LA when the Ad Agency he worked for (Grey, Europe) shot a Turkish bank commercial in Downtown LA (they just liked the look) and Ali came over as a production manager. We acted as the local production company for the shoot. Ali was now delighted to return the favor. He got permission for us to fly in a military helicopter with a pilot who spoke no English. Hey, it was better than what we could come up with! He assured us he had the ways and means to get the tape past the Government censorship and out of Turkey.

So up we went in the helicopter and, using hand signals, guided the pilot into flight patterns to capture some remarkable aerials of the new ship as she glided into Istanbul Harbor in the golden 6 AM sun. Then we landed and met our crew onboard where they had set up an Avid editing suite in (of course) an actual suite onboard Grand Princess. (This made the editor the envy of our crew but that’s another story.) Combining the aerials with footage our scout crew had already shot, we created a two-minute promo for the ship and raced with the tape to the airport where Ali disappeared into the customs office and left us alone with the Turkish gentlemen, the strong black coffee and our own dark thoughts.

After what seemed an eternity, Ali emerged with a smile. Two hundred bucks American and our tape was winging its way to the BBC in London where it would be broadcast to the world. We scurried back to the ship in time to make the sailing and bid a fond farewell to Ali.

Moral of the story: When shooting on location there is just no substitute for local knowledge.