Movie May-Aug, 2017
Part 2, the filming
Bright and early next morning the vessel wrangler, Dylan, arrived to guide us to the filming location. Once we arrived on site we were boarded by the 4 extras in full hippy regalia, the costumer, to make sure no one changes clothes and the sound guy. Near by was Mary Madeline, loaded with people and cameras, the camera boat also loaded with people and cameras including one on a long crane and several small tenders to shuttle people back and forth. And a helicopter with more cameras. They have promised us stills from the helicopter but so far we have not seen any. Dylan is in contact with the other boats, the director and the camera men and relays our orders to us. In the scene, we meet another boat and have a brief race and then go on our separate ways. A very short scene and not integral to the story at all so it is entirely possible it will be cut out during the final edit.
Alan is on the tiller with a crew of 4 that he has never met before and it quickly becomes obvious that they are not sailors. So much for the idea of turning Rhapsody over to them to sail. They are willing but have no idea what to do and only of them is even interested in learning. The minute the cameras start they drop everything and pose. It is an overcast and blustery day with the wind eventually building to 25-30 knots. For the first time ever, Rhapsody actually has the lee rail under, a good camera shot but not good or safe sailing. Normally we would reef the main but of course all the shots have to be the same, so we cannot. We are told to sail a particular direction, speed up, slow down, turn, follow the other boat, get closer to it, pass it, now fall off. Turn around, sail back to the beginning and do it again, over and over. As far as I can tell the director has never sailed. You do not just speed up or slow down on command.and no one really wants to get that close to another boat when you are under full sail.
At first I try to pitch in with the sailing but there are just too many people on deck so I decide to go down below and follow the action on the iPad. With Alan having to pay attention to the director’s orders and manage the boat he cannot also watch the chart and depth gage. For whatever reason the director has decided to film in a particularly narrow area between the reefs. Must be a good camera angle or something but very difficult to manage the boat. No one else seems to be paying attention to the reefs so I am, by default, the only one keeping an eye out and alerting Dylan when we are getting too close. Dylan then calls someone on the camera boat who talks to the director and hopefully we get the order to turn or stop.
We take a break at noon and a tender shows up with lunch for all, which is quickly devoured. After lunch the sound guy goes into action. On some of the runs the extras were told to yell and wave and on the rest of the runs they were to just mime the action, no sound. Eventually the light starts to fade. It is mid winter and gets dark early. Everyone is talking bout quitting fort the day and I put down my iPad. Except the director wants just a little more footage. Suddenly I realized we are heading directly for the reef full speed. By the time I realized and yelled to Dylan to stop, it was too late. With a jarring “thunk” we hit. The reef was exactly where the iPad said it would be and it was high tide.
Obviously that was the end of filming for the day and most of the tech support took off but we were stuck, really stuck. Alan tried everything he could with the motor to no avail. We all gathered on one side and then the other to attempt to wiggle off, no luck. The tide has just turned and if we don’t get off soon we will really be stuck, plus it is getting dark. Finally we got a line from another boat which was standing by. It was a massively heavy tug. There was some concern that it was too powerful and might rip Rhapsody apart so they had not used it before but now we are out of time. Ever so slowly and gently we were pulled off off the reef and back into deep water. A couple of divers were sent down with a light to inspect and they reported that everything looked OK. I checked under the floorboards and could not see any water coming in. Seems we were lucky. Rhapsody is a very strong boat. However, that night at dinner we were told to head back to Vuda to be hauled out and inspected. It seems they are through with us anyway. The haul out showed some nicks and scratches that should be fixed and we have lost both wind vanes but no serious damage. But before we could have any work done we got a message to get back to Rakiraki. The director needed some more footage. So back we went.
Assuming that we were dismissed, we had taken down some of the hippy dressing festooning Rhapsody. Now we needed to have the set dressers come and put it all back. For some reason the people who came to put it all back were not the same people who did it the first time so I don’t know if they really got it right but it must have been close enough. Again we sat around for several days before we were actually needed. The second day of filming was a repeat of the first one; sail closer, fall off, speed up, etc but in a different location with far fewer reefs. It was supposed to be just an hour or maybe two but in the end it took all day. Luckily we ended with no more accidents and this time we really were dismissed. Set design came back the next morning to collect all of their stuff and we were free to go with assurances that we would be paid within a day or two. That night we anchored at the lovely resort of Volivoli, just across the bay and discovered that most of the film crew were there, unwinding. Once again we were assured that the money would be in the bank within days.
Back in Vuda, Rhapsody was once again hauled out. This time we got the work done, all patched and painted like new. Vuda has a “no cash, no splash” rule which I can understand but we could not get ahold of anyone from the film company to show up to pay the bills so Alan paid himself and sent the invoices to the film people.
The business with the money has been a mess. First of all, we never met anyone in person. Everything was done online, much of it via text messages. The company could not pay cash, our money had to be deposited directly to our bank. The production company is based in New Zealand and our bank is in the US. We submitted account numbers and routing numbers and addresses over and over and somehow they could not seem to get it right. Finally we had the two women in charge talk directly to each other and they got it straightened out. Then the Fiji government got involved. We are not actually allowed to work because of our visa status but technically they had just hired the boat, not us. Turns out we were not supposed to do that either. We had not really thought about this. We just assumed that if they were offering to pay they must have sorted it out. Needless to say, this all took a long time but eventually they came to some kind of agreement and the money found it’s was into our bank account. Not as much as we had expected because of the government’s cut but still a nice tidy sum which included travel days as well as all of the days sitting around waiting and reimbursement for all the work. We were not able to convince them to pay for a new wind gage though. Apparently that was our own fault.
It is seeming less and less likely that we will be leaving Fiji this year.
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