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The Thousand-dollar Lunch

One of the perks of being in the Cruise Line Video Production Business is lunch. Sometimes this can be a hurried sandwich grab and some chips, but not usually. Not if you time your shooting script right. Everyone has heard stories of fabulous wrap parties where tables full of food and drink get consumed and everyone has a real good time. Well, some of those stories are true. I always used to give my crew the best wrap dinner I could, and since we were often in some exotic port or city there were usually plenty of choices. Once I treated them to a “wrap spa” overnight experience in Nagasaki, Japan, including twenty-course gourmet dinner, bottomless Sake cups, massages by blind people and soaking in the natural hot springs of a three hundred year old resort. But that was just taking our reward for a job well done. Easy to pull off. A great lunch in the middle of a shoot in the middle of the day is a much more subtle and refined art. Possibly my best one ever was the Thousand-Dollar Lunch in Venice, Italy.

We were in Venice shooting the Maiden Voyage of the Grand Princess and we had a cute model couple who tootled around with us while we videoed their every move. The way I had come by this couple was a story in itself. The girl, Lisa, was an ex-model and was working in a top talent agency in Miami. I had used her to cast several models I used on a Caribbean Cruise for Celebrity Cruises and in the course of the casting I had gotten to know her quite well. Lisa had told me she was getting married shortly and the honeymoon was all set for somewhere in Mexico. She was marrying one of the models in her company’s stable named David. When I finished with the Celebrity shoot, Princess called and wanted us to cover the Grand Princess Inaugural Cruise in the Mediterranean (See previous article titled Midnight Express-Oh!). They wanted to cast two models to be the focus couple. I called up Lisa and started her casting for this couple. I asked her how her wedding went and she said it was great but the Honeymoon fell through due to something or other with the resort. That’s when I got this great idea. “How about a two week Honeymoon on a luxury cruise in the Med, I said, all expenses paid!” Well that wasn’t too difficult to sell. She and David were thrilled with the idea. I knew they would be a good addition to the crew. (Not
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always the case. See previous article “Smooth Shooting on Rough Seas”). The fact that I would be saving lots of money on models fees didn’t hurt. So off we went to Europe, and to this day David and Lisa get out the video we made of the trip and play it on their anniversary. Probably the best Honeymoon Video ever made. And that brings us back to the Thousand-Dollar Lunch.

Venice is probably the most photogenic city in the world and we “shot the sh@t out of it”
as they say. We shot David and Lisa in a gondola, David and Lisa in St. Mark’s Square, David and Lisa in a vaporetto on the Grand Canal. We were being escorted around in a beautiful vintage motorboat with a lovely Italian guide, all courtesy of Princess Cruises. When it came time for lunch, the driver of the boat said he knew just the spot. Yes he did.

We tied up at a picture perfect Italian Trattorria right on the Grand Canal. Grape vines were hanging over the trellises, the waiters were all dressed up, it was something right out of a promotional video. Hey, wait, we’re shooting a promotional video! So we just kept rolling. The Maitre’ D graciously opened the gate leading to the patio for our couple. They were given a romantic table right on the canal, they had pasta and wine and desert all served by the waiters out of Central Casting and we rolled on the whole thing. Of course, we all had lunch right next to them, just out of camera view. And what a lunch!
Unbelievable pasta and seafood and wine and it just kept coming. I’m sure we were there for nearly three hours. When we finally got the bill, it came to a few million Italian Lira. We really couldn’t figure out exactly how much it was, but we knew it wasn’t going to be cheap. When we finally did the math it came in at just over a grand. But we were in high spirits (not to mention the wine consumption) and we had gotten some absolutely gorgeous shots of the couple having a romantic lunch on the Grand Canal in Venice. “Come on”, I said to Jack, our Princess chaperone, “look at it as a location fee.” And that’s just how it appeared on his expense account. To be honest, shooting a similar scene in Venice, California would have cost twice as much and we wouldn’t have gotten lunch!! And really, if you are going to set a record for most expensive location lunch ever (this was just a crew of five) what better place to do it than Venetia! Molto Bene!

By: John nik

Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com

Timothy K. Melchior, The Travelographer, works for The Association of Media Producers in Burbank, California.

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