Six months in the Caribbean proved anything but plain sailing for director/producer Chris Terrill, who endured six months at sea to hunt for drug smugglers for Channel 5.

How’s this for an observational documentary maker’s dream? A steely Royal Navy warship is sent to the Caribbean for six months – not on exercise, not on a freebie but on a tough, operational, adrenalin fuelled deployment. The mission is twofold: to hunt down, intercept and capture some of the most ruthless and determined drug smugglers in the world and to provide humanitarian disaster relief in the event of killer hurricane strikes.

What a scenario, what an opportunity to record real life human drama and what a chance to experience and record high adventure on the high seas.

Ok, how’s this for an observational documentary maker’s nightmare? To film on a thirty year old destroyer built for the Cold War in the sweltering tropics; to have seawater, humidity and heat impinge constantly on cameras, lenses and microphones; to suffer constant power outages that suck the guts out of storage drives; eighteen hour days, sometimes more, that turn brain cells into mashed potato; constant expectation met mostly with frustration that, after a while, saps the very will to live….

Well, last year, I lived that dream….and that nightmare.

I joined HMS Manchester, a Type 42 Destroyer, on the Navy’s yearly deployment to the Windies code named APT-N (Atlantic Patrol Task, North). And I was on for the long haul - the full six months - as a fully embedded director/cameraman. The ship’s challenge was, just as it said on the tin, to stem the flow of class A drugs, especially cocaine, to the UK as well as to respond to hurricane strikes.  The old destroyer was a beauty - a sleek classic of the seas with a great turn of speed. Daily access to the ship’s Lynx helicopter afforded great photo opportunities and a fully supportive commanding officer was an open sesame to every aspect of the ship and her mission. They even gave me a nice blue uniform.

So, I was all set and I had planned meticulously. I had with me six cameras: A Panasonic HD 900 with standard lens, wide angle and image intensifier for shooting in the dark; two Sony EX1’s for the run and gun stuff plus a military night sight and adaptor - again for shooting in the dark (many of the counter narcotics operations are carried out at night in zero light in order to take the bad guys by surprise); a trusty Sony A1 with infra red capability for backup; two HD Heroes for POV shots and underwater filming.  More than enough cameras to see me through. Wrong!

Let the nightmare begin.

Warships, especially Type 42 Destroyers were not designed to make life easy for camera operators. And APT-N itself was not envisioned with filmmakers in mind either. Storylines were impossible to pin down. Operational plans were constantly changing (that’s the nature of dealing with duck and dive criminals) and there was an awful lot of ‘hurry up and wait’. Allow me to expand.

Equipment

A warship – especially in high seas – is a rolling, pitching tin box full of sharp edges, narrow passages and even narrower companionways (stairs). Just moving around the ship meant constantly bashing equipment. Also, much of the time I was riding on fast ribs chasing after suspect vessels so was frequently enshrouded in sea spray. Cameras hate sea water - they simply give up the ghost. And often I was working on stealth operations at night with no illumination. Trying to protect your camera at the same time as trying to attach an image intensifier in the pitch dark in a fast moving rubber boat is a challenge they don’t teach at many film schools.

Within weeks the ND filter wheel on the HD stopped engaging – so I was left on permanent ND2 (OK for day time shooting on the upper deck. Useless for anything below deck or in low light). Not long after that one of the EX1’s went down with salt water poisoning and the other one lost its top microphone adaptor. My options were constantly running out. And don’t get me started on the sound recording. Suffice to say, permanent wind added to the constant roar of the ocean and drone of the engines in deafening unison was a trifle testing to my top mikes as well as my radios. It was not much better inside the ship with the din of Tannoys, alarms, air conditioning, bells and hooters.

I was always mending, patching or adapting camera bodies, circuit boards, lenses, view finders and microphones (thankfully the ship’s stores had plenty of gaffer tape – although that was of limited value when I broke something else – my ankle! Well, fractured it actually tripping over a step into the bridge carrying too many cameras. I limped on. No choice).

There was a frequent need to tie down equipment in rough seas and the worst of all – power surges and outages that on more than one occasion destroyed rushes saved to drives.

You can appreciate the situation was not entirely conducive to creative filmmaking or even cogent thought sometimes.

Storylines

The very nature of the mission meant that nothing was ever guaranteed. We were playing a complex cat and mouse game with the drug smugglers. There was a lot of strategy based on intelligence from undercover sources but that intelligence was not always watertight. And, frankly, there was a lot of luck involved too. There was nothing you could ever depend on so I just had to take every day at a time and continually adapt the narrative. Same with the hurricanes. There are never any guarantees when it comes to the weather.

So, I could have spent six months bobbing up and down on the ocean with nothing to show for it either because bugger all happened or because I was camera’d out.  Them’s the risk on something like this.

Eventually, though, the Gods were kind and I did get my films. I won’t give too much away - you will have to watch - but the final products are nothing like I expected them to be.  That is the ultimate joy of documentary making: To venture into the unknown and hunt down the stories there to tell and it is always a surprise. It is that hunt for the unexpected, including having to overcome the challenges, that still makes observational documentary making the dream job….but, oh so often, the nightmare job too.

My Five Tricks of the Trade

 1. Never mind expensive camera covers. Take bin liners and gaffer tape. Cheaper, better and endlessly flexible.

 2. If you are a camera operator doing an interview open your left eye to make your interviewee look off camera and shut it to make them look down the tube.

 3. Forget research – just go in shooting from the hip. It’s all about spontaneity.

 4. Never be frightened to change course in a film. Hang the treatment.

 5. Don’t think of an impersonal mass audience out there when you are making a film. Imagine you are making it for some select and trusted close family and friends. It gives you an alternative focus and the sense of other’s appreciation and perceptions - different eyes with which to view and evaluate your subject.

Uppercut Films’ series Royal Navy Caribbean Patrol starts on Channel 5 at 9pm tonight.

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