This one goes back a little bit. This was a shoot for Celebrity Cruse Line’s Solstice of the Seas and was by produced by my friends and associates at Digital Media Services where I am a Media Production Specialist. This crew has done over thirty ships including some of the largest ships in the world at the time (some were produced by RileyArnold Productions). It was photographed by Sean Deren, with myself as photography assistant, Brian Satchfield Producer/Digi tech, and Vince Mann Associate producer/key lighting grip. The first thing you may notice is that we are all doing multiple jobs. This is indicative of how you have to approach a shoot on a ship every thing must be compacted. There is limited room to store gear limited room to move gear and you only get one chance to get on the ship so you must get all the gear and all the luggage in one trip. Everything and I mean everything gets x-rayed one piece at a time. And this is the best part there are guests on the ship at the same time and sometimes other production crews. So how do we shoot around the guests? Well you shoot what you can when you can. Which means you shoot the buffet 20 minuets before it opens at 6:00 am, you shoot the night club at 4:00 am after it closes, you shoot the common area at 5:00 am, the pool at sunrise, the dinner restaurants in the late mourning etc. So when do we sleep? The week after.
This shoot was particularly challenging for several reasons. First off it was a brand new boat. It had just arrived in port for the first time and was indeed still being finished. Entire venues were still under construction while others were fully operating. Which brings me to challenge #2 the boat was full and functioning as a convention hotel for celebrity’s sales and marketing staff. #3 it did not leave port, which means it won’t be ocean in the back ground, it will be buildings and ships. And as I mentioned we were there for almost a week if we got 4 consecutive hours of sleep it was a miracle, and at one point were up for 29 hours straight.
Some tech notes:
We were shooting 360 virtual tours, Panoramas, and some traditional architecture shots. All of which can be seen here. Now we have always shot our 360s as a bracket and then layered them together and tone mapped them by hand in photoshop. This is roughly similar to what has become known as HDR or High Dynamic Range. However when you do it by hand you can artistically control how the added dynamic range is applied. So what goes in to producing a 360 degree photograph with a perfectly lit exposure? Well to do a circle it takes 16 plus photos with a wide angle lens. And in some cases as in a spherical 3 up and 3 down as well (see the theater and dining room) then 5 exposures of each frame. That’s over 80 frames per room. To do this you need some special equipment on your tripod that keeps the centre of the lens in exactly the same spot as you rotate the camera to shoot the 16 plus frames. We also so brought a small set of hot lights to punch up a corner here or a balcony there. Sean shot a Nikon D3 with a wide angle lens and cards were imported to Capture one pro. We used a Manfrotto spherical tripod head on a large Bogan tripod.
Again all the VRs and photos can be seen by clicking here.
Photographer Sean Deren is acclaimed for his technical prowess, extreme attention to detail and a clearly defined sense of humor.
many of the architectural lighting elements can be challenging and in this case we had stage lighting to deal with as well.
Vince and Sean
Brian shooting some production video.
the ceiling of the theatre which hides tracks that enable the performers to fly out over the crowd.
Sean is at the spot the 360 was shot. This was done as a spear so you can look up and down as well.
setting up.
triggering some exposures.
shootin a circle
Sean checking the files.
thumbs up for the video
Back to work
The theatre
vince hiding from the view of the camera so as to not be in the shot
late night workers
This is the width of some of the hallways that we had to haul gear through.
However some of the public halls are more spacious. 
Theatre hall
you gotta rest when you can!
one of the bars with a future theme.
Brian reviewing the data.
Sean and Vince
Whutch you lookin at!!
you can see the camera this is the spot of the shot. That is a DJ booth to the right.
out in front of the bar
The promenade and shops
it’s about 4:45 am or so.
detail of the Bar.
another detail.
set up for the jazz club.
shootin
the lounge
reviewing photos and doing mock ups to check for the accuracy.
One of the many restaurants
It’s mourning now very tired but Sean still has his sense of humor
Buildings near the Port of Ft. Lauderdale outside the window
Brian settin up a video shot
Brian shootin Sean
Brian producing
Setting up for another Restaurant.
I’m hiding while Sean is triggering the exposures.
Brian at the computer and the art director form Celebrity
Vince pulling cable
you can see one of the smaller hot lights we used to punch up the shadows
Art director looking at the perspective of the shot. Brian and Vince discussing the field of view and the best way to keep it clear
Focus
here you can see the rig between the camera and tripod that helps to make this all happen
Brian gettin the shot
pictures of the boss in an awkward position…
me hiding while they trigger the exposures.
Looking at the mock up VRs with one of the Architects that worked on some of the venues.
Shooting the casino while dealers run for cover.
Well there were many more days and many more venues but as I described with the lack of sleep and challenges above shooting production stills became less important as more and more of our focus was put on the job itself and delivering the highest quality product. Look at the shots here and as always feel free to comment and write me with any questions about the production.
