A Career in Production Lighting: Cruise Line Industry
Hello, my name is Ralph Curtis and welcome to my Blog.
During the Mid 90's I started to get burned out on Club Med, the lifestyle was fan-freakin-tastic, the relationships and friendships I made will last a lifetime, but I wanted to try something different.
The Club taught me all I was going to learn as far as Cabaret lighting goes, it was time to move on. What I couldn't quite let go of was the traveling beach bum lifestyle, that was a hard drug to kick, so I decided to move up a notch and revisit the idea of Cruise Ship Lighting again.
When my last Club Med contract was over, I returned to the Cape and landed a series of Jobs, I needed to buy another car, so I started working 3 Jobs to build up funds quickly. I worked UPS overnights, then a Construction gig during the days, while 3 days a week I would work at a Supermarket in my town from 5pm to 9pm decorating cakes... yeah, I did that.
I worked this madness for a few months until a coworker from UPS told me about a production company in Boston, he'd seen their trucks around town, and figured they were quite busy.
Side Note: This story branches off into a few directions here, as so many events happened simultaneously. One branch was my introduction into the Production Industry in Boston, which I will post about separately, while this story branch deals with working for the Cruise Line Industry.
I guess my experience with Club Med made a difference this time around in seeking employment with the Cruise Lines. Not to mention that I had lost almost 100 pounds and was in way better physical shape, I just looked better in my clothes, not so much of a fat-body like I was when I left Cape Cod.
I put together this amazing portfolio with a head shot. The resume was looking pretty sweet: The Paradise Garage, Cape Cod Melody Tent, Club Med... I guess it worked, as I was working on a ships within a few months of returning home.
The Royal Majesty was the First ship I worked in 1995, this cruise was a 5-day run from Boston to Bermuda. It was a three-week contract filling in for the production tech who was going on vacation. Not a fantastic start, but it was my first steps to working on Ships.
This gig was a complete nightmare, I was so not ready for it.
I had 5 days to learn 2 major production shows, 3 other minor shows, and a few smaller acts that were performed during the interim. So basically 5 days to learn the shows, the boards, and the cues, plus it was my first time running sound, yes, I said SOUND,... apparently, I was to be the sound engineer as well.
( Ship The Royal Majesty )The Lighting board was this ungodly beast which probably was state of the art then, and was completely over my head. It was the Strand Lightboard-M96.
Needless to say, I was nowhere near show ready in 5 days. This was a midi controlled board so it was run via an audio click track. This particular board had show cues loaded onto program cards, there were multiple cards for some shows. The procedure was to load the cues from the first card into the board, then remove that card and place the second card into the slot, which enabled the board to run cues after the first cards programming ran its course.
That was a procedure that I could not get into my head. Not ever. So when the time came in the middle of the show, and the board went to look for the next series of lighting cues on the second card, it couldn't find them because I neglected to place the 2nd disc in the slot, or forgot to preload the disc, so the lighting cues went into a loop. I completely wrecked ALL of the shows on that contract there was not a one that survived... The shows that had manual cues were passable, but the 2 production shows for the week failed every time, and there were 2 showings per night... you know, just to compound the damage.
Mind You, I had my hands full with doing audio, 2 live mics and an orchestra, which was something I had never done before, I was so in far over my head my ego took a BEATING for sure. It was then I realized I didn't know shit. That second week was my last week on ship, I was completely in tatters, I dreaded walking into that sound cabin as it only meant failure.. the only way to get through this was to reach deep inside and locate some intestinal fortitude, and I reached Marine Corps deep..
The only upside to this cruise was, Bermuda was Nice..
When the contract was over I slinked off that ship in defeat but I took it as a learning experience, with the fact that I actually did an audio gig..
Sidenote: It was at this time I contacted Capron and began working for them almost immediately. So for the next few years I worked for Capron and the Cruise line Industry simultaneously.
In April of '96, I got a call from Royal Caribbean for a contract Sailing out of Miami on a 7 Day cruise. The contract was on the Sovereign Of The Seas. The Cruise Director was Ken Rush, so those of you who frequent RCCL and may have sailed with Ken, you know what a blast he is.
I wasn't the lighting guy in the main lounge for this contract, my responsibility was to cover all the other lounges on the ship as a sound and maintenance tech. There was a lot of moving around on this ship, but I figured the "Big Chair" could wait until I got a little more experience. I was just grateful for getting my feet wet again and moving at a slower pace.
(Sovereign Of The Seas)The Sovereign was a proper introduction to Cruise Ship life. It was a larger ship, a bigger Entertainment team with more resources. Working for the Cruise Lines was a different experience than Club Med, the visuals were completely opposite of living on an Island. I remember standing in the middle of the main deck lounge watching the land drift past the ship on both sides while we departed Miami. I had this feeling of being on an epic sea going adventure, an adventure where anything was possible and anything could happen. It was a feeling of freedom and mobility. I could feel the hum of the ship's engines, like a dull heartbeat that let you know the ship was a living organism. The excitement of the passengers, electrified the atmosphere onboard, it was hard not to feel completely euphoric.
As my last ship contract was only for 3 weeks, this contract would be for 6 months, and it gave me the opportunity to meet, and become friends with the other Crew members, the Entertainers and the Cruise Staff.
Unlike Club Med, contact with the guests on a Cruise Ship is frowned upon it was a major No no, so the crew tended to gravitate towards one another.
My cabin-mate was the Main Theatre Lighting Tech, the good thing about this was, he was dating the Dance Captain who had her own room, so he basically lived with her which meant I had my own space. Having your own cabin on ship was a major deal, you were considered royalty. You didn't have to share a bathroom or suffer an in-cabin party while you were trying to sleep.
There was a team of production technicians on the ship called "The Black Shirts", who mainly dealt with the main lounge, they were basically their own click. I hung out with them, got to know them, but for the most part, I was left to roam the ship alone and worked autonomously with the other talent in the piano bars and the disco. This really wasn't high stress at all.
The Sovereign had Ports in The Bahamas, Key West, their Private Island Coco Kay, and Miami. I had a complete blast in Key West it was quite the experience, if you have never been there before, try and make it a destination. As for the Bahamas, well, I lived there for over a year in total, so it was cool to see it once again. I actually ran into one of the Taxi Boat Captains who was a friend of mine from my Club Med days. He helped me organize an outing to Rose Island for some of the crew members who wanted to get off ship for the day. good times.
I wish I had more details to give about my experiences on the Sovereign, I did have quite a few, but they were more of a personal nature about hanging out and having fun, and less about production lighting, so I will spare you. Alright, here is a something I can mention;
I did have the good fortune to meet and hang out with a crew member on the ship that would eventually become my wife. I know RIGHT? this story is for me.
Sidenote: When that contract for RCCL ended I returned home to work with Capron again, so you know, when I left Club Med, I has sent out a series of resumes' to most all the Major Cruise lines all at once, so the calls from them started to trickle in over the next few years. I mentioned this to give you some context as the time between these Cruise contracts were 6 months or more...
The next contract I received was for Carnival Cruise Lines in Late 1997; it was a 7-day cruise out of Puerto Rico on board the Carnival Fascination. I was FOH Light Board Operator for the main show lounge. I was finally in the "Big Chair" and life was good.
The house board I used was an ETC Insight II, which ran the show via a midi click track signal just like on the Royal Majesty. I was familiar with this board as we had one at Capron, so I was much more comfortable here than on the Royal M, however, the board still needed to have the show program loaded, but thankfully it was only on one card. What I did differently here, was to learn the show controls and fader assignments so I knew what each channel controlled in case of a mishap.
(Ship Carnival Fascination)This way if I had to, I could run the show automatically. If experience had taught me anything over the last few years, it proved automated show programs usually have glitches, and sure enough a few nights during that contract, the midi signal did go down, and I ran the show manually. No, it wasn't the same as the programmed version, but it was passable. The stage never went dark, and I hit my blackout cues on time.
Sidenote: At this point, I had been working in Boston doing production gigs for some time, lets just say by the time I hit the Fascination I was becoming a seasoned production tech and lighting guy, I had my fingers in all of the pies.. Below is an image of the Dancers and Singers on the Fascination.
The Shows on Cruise Ships were spectacular, as Grand as any in Vegas. The stage is huge and the production, props and costumes were all next level. These shows were so far above Club Med and what we did at the Paradise Garage, I was in another league altogether. When I got there, there was a 2 week handover from the previous lighting tech named Rusty.
Rusty gave me the info on the rules, regulations as well as the background on the stage shows regarding all the cues I needed to know. He introduced me to the Dancers the Cruise Director and the Sound Girl, her name was Michelle, If I remember correctly. He showed me around the stage, and filled me in on the Pyrotechnic procedures and safe storage. The current status of the pyro positions were inoperable because of missing loads and broken firing pods, all of which were on backorder. Rusty took a week to do a proper handover of the ship. I was grateful, as he seemed like a good guy, he told me exactly what I needed to know. and I would see 'Ol Rusty again.
The Dancers were all being trained on blocking positions for these pyro points, even though some of them had never seen the effect operational, they still needed to be aware for when they eventually came back on line.. I did my usual routine and attended all the rehearsals to check out what the shows were and how they were handled. Once every few weeks we would do a full dress rehearsal. Lights and Sound just to make sure we were all on the same page...
The stage on the Fascination was larger than anything I had worked on before, ( image above ).
The wings were huge, large enough to fly set pieces in and out and the backstage area was almost as large as the stage itself. there was even a catwalk, imagine that. I was in heaven...
On the stage grid there were a mix of Pins, Pars, Lekos and Fresnels, with about 2 dozen moving fixtures, none of which I was allowed to touch as they were all pre focused and pre programmed. I really didn't have anything to do here other than to babysit, run the programs and change burn-outs. The only shows I got to free form operate were the 2nd tier shows, Cabarets, Magic acts, Variety Shows, Comedians, these sorts of events.
Typically the main shows are designed in a studio on land, then a production company comes onto the ship and does the install per the Shows designer. They program the lighting and audio onto the ships consoles, at which point the shows run on auto-pilot. I was just there as a caretaker.
The Fascination was an awesome ship, I got along great with the Dancers and Singers, who by the way, also doubled as the Ships Cruise Staff. They however didn't appreciate the double billing as it left little to no time for them to unwind. I understood their point as no one really wants to do 2 jobs, but this is the way Carnival structured their contracts, where as other Cruise lines had separate teams for Cruise Staff and Entertainers.
One thing about doing these long contracts was I had a lot of opportunity to get off the ship and experience some of the ports of call. The image above and below were taken at the Sulfur Falls on the Island of Dominica. Christy, one of the ships dancers and I booked this excursion and hiked through the jungle on Dominica to check out the Island. This was just one of the many distractions available on the ships as there were multiple excursions to choose from at each port. I found that Ship life was so very different from anything I had experienced before, it was the complete total opposite of life in Club Med were you had an entire village to roam about.
On a ship you were literally living on a floating hotel, day in and day out for 6 months at a time, the amount of space available to you was limited and the ship could be somewhat claustrophobic.. therefore, when you got the chance to get off the ship, you took it.
Even getting off the ship in Miami just to do laundry or make a mad dash to Walgreens, was worth it just to unpack and get some breathing room. Some of the crew members maintained apartments in Miami at which point they would dash home check mail do some business and head back to the ship. Just that couple of hours on land was enough to create some welcomed breathing room and do a reset.
One day, I get a shipment while we were docked in Puerto Rico via Miami, it was of all the pyro charges and the replacement parts I needed for the pods. I was a happy camper.. I started replacing the missing pods, and repairing the broken ones which only needed a bit of TLC, once all the pods were assembled, a simple electrical test was all it took to verify the connections. I informed the Dance Captain that we were good to go and on the next cruise I would be loading the pods for detonation.
The actual detonations themselves were controlled by a seperate controller linked to the audio click track, all I had to do was sit on the abort button in case something went wrong on stage and we had to cancel a detonation. As usual, I attended the last rehearsal to see exactly what was going to happen and where the dancers were going to be. They intern were informed that the pyro was fixed and would be going off. I have to tell you, there was a lot of excitement in the air. For me it was the first time I was responsible for show pyrotechnics, I was completely jazzed.
The first night of the first show full pyro was freakin amazing. The first detonation was 4 stage poppers in the middle of the show at the end of one of the major numbers. The last detonation was the finale, it was a waterfall effect just forward of the midstage position. That was freakin' awesome...
I understood and so did the new dancers why the Dance Capt kept drilling into them why they had to be in specific spots on specific counts in their dance routines. The pyro was a beautiful effect, but it was still a controlled explosion and really close to these dancers so perfect positioning was paramount.
That contract for Carnival ended well, I got no complaints from Tim Cabral at the head office in Miami, so I must have been doing something right. As this was my 3rd cruise ship in as many years I was starting to get a little burned out on the ocean traveling. My life, work and relationships on the Cape and in Boston were really starting to take shape, I was making some real professional connections and making solid career choices, so, when I returned home after the Fascination, I took two weeks off then started back to working with Capron in Boston.
Never say Never Again:
Production work in Boston was starting to get interesting at this point.. My knowledge and experience had grown so much since the days of the Paradise Garage and the Melody Tent, I was coming into my own and leading teams for event installations. I was getting base plans for venues, making my own designs, creating load list and doing successful events. Working on Cruise ships was the furthest thing from my mind during the summer of '98 .... However; November started to roll around, and the chill was in the air when my damn phone rang again..
It was Carnival Cruise Lines, and they had another contract for me. I didn't even ask where the ship was going, I just said yes to one last hoorah!
The ship I was on was called the Carnival Tropicale, It was the very first ship specifically built for Carnival in 1982.. Because the ship was small there was no need for a large production team,
so I served as Sound and Lighting tech, in fact, I was the only tech person on the ship so needless to say, I had my hands full, and I was completely ready for it.
( Ship Carnival Tropicale)The Tropicale was a 7 day cruise out of Puerto Rico with ports in St. Thomas, Grand Caymans, and Cozumel. This ship was fantastic, it was small and way more intimate, to me this is what cruising is all about, you are in close contact with your fellow shipmates, interactions was easy, personal and friendlier.
In my opinion the larger mega-ships of today are lost to the idea of what cruising was intended to be. They are too big, with too Many people, the sense of community is lost. Mind you, I have never been on one of these gigantic ships so I can only imagine the disconnect, can you even feel the water or the motion of the ship? I bet if you weren't standing by a portal you wouldn't even realize you were on the water.
I ended up getting really close to my shipmates on this cruise, more so than on any other ship I was on. The Dance Captain and I, (Image Left), became really good friends as we worked closely together to maintain the professional integrity of the shows regarding rehearsals, sound checks and the state of readiness for the stage.
For me there was a lot to consider, I had the Lighting of course, but I also had 5 mics for singers on stage, along with an audio track and a fully mic'd "Live Orchestra", so yeah I was deadly serious in the sound cabin.
The Show's Reggi went like this: I would load the show program into the light board, then load the Audio Track into the Audio Deck. I did a countdown for backstage then started the track, The click would begin for the orchestra, I would unmute their mics, then the singers mics. The Music would start and the click track would start off the lighting cues. The mics for the band would stay live, but I would mute and unmute the singers mics depending on the show number and costume changes, don't want live mics backstage during off stage changes.. that would be bad. Many a political scandal started this way..lol
The lighting as I said was via midi click, so I very rarely touched that board except to insert the program, the board was the ETC Expression.. another board I used frequently at Capron.
I wish I could say I did a lot of lighting on this ship but in fact my main focus on this cruise was audio.
My audio console was a 48 channel board, the make and model escapes me now but it was very robust. I had some issues with the size of the room and the quality of sound, but I learned how to deal with it.
I did poke some of the sound guys at Capron for some tips and tricks, but in the end I learned my theater and my sound system.
While I was on the Trop, we had the opportunity to do 2 specialty cruises, the first cruise was a Gay cruise, in February of '99. This cruise was unique and fun as hell, Lord knows I was familiar with this lifestyle environment, but watching my ship mates experience it was entertaining.. Their headline performer was Bonnie Pointer, whom I never met personally, but I knew she spent some time at the Garage and was friends with Larry.
Remember my old friend Rusty from the Fascination? yeah well, Carnival had sent Rusty on board to help me out with this cruise. Apparently, Rusty had been promoted to some sort of Technical Managerial position for Carnival, and was sent by head office to make sure the contract cruise was handled properly. Having a headliner like Bonnie Pointer on the cruise, was enough to prompt Carnival to send in technical backup to replace me, apparently they had no faith in me. Little did head office know I worked with more "Talent" than Rusty had seen in his life.... Rusty was in way over his head.
The Cruise starts off well, sound check day comes around and Bonnie is on stage getting ready. Rusty comes into the booth and kind of takes over, the "move out of the way, I'm here now" deal.
She is not enjoying what he is mixing, and begins yelling for more monitors, so he's turning her up, but the monitors start to clip on stage, then Rusty starts to hit a wall where the stage monitors begins to feed back in the house PA. I'm sitting there watching him go through these changes, while Bonnie is on stage getting more and more frustrated. She was clearly not happy with his performance.
Mind you, I had been on this ship for 4 months now, this was My Show Lounge, no one knew this room better than I did at this moment.. I knew where the hot spots were, what levels to pump the monitors before feedback, I trimmed all the the frequencies that were prone to feedback, I bypassed the audio snake that was in the ceiling causing static in certain mic channels... I lived through all the turmoil Rusty was going through at this moment and I wanted to watch him. Poor old Rusty was frazzled, his hands were shaking and he was trying to cope.
The room just turned into a noisy mess and no one was happy, Bonnie came off the stage and walked up to the sound cabin window. She started in on Rusty asking him what was going on, but because this wasn't Rusty's house, he had no idea what to say to her, and I wasn't saying shit.
Bonnie turned away to talk to her manager and I could tell Rusty had enough so I leaned into him and I told him I would take it from here, I told him to walk it off, go to the bar have a drink and come back in a few. He got up and left the cabin.
See, the problem here was; Bonnie didn't know the limitations of the room and Rusty was unable to express that to her, he was in a "Yes Ma'am" mode, and that served noone, as Rusty was trying to do more than the room could handle.
This is where working with performers like Dionne Warwick and Frankie Valley at the Melody Tent paid off. I explained the room to Bonnie, I told her about the ship and what she was working with. We then went back to start the mix onstage again. I put her soundtrack on and raised the monitor levels slowly until we got them at the proper levels before they started to feedback. I showed her where the hotspots on stage were for the mics and monitors.
I told her that stage was too small for the volumes she was looking for and pointed out that the stage monitors were in front of the first set of house speakers meaning we were in a constant threat of feedback. I jokingly said to her we do broadway shows here not Disco Dance parties. I let her know I would take care of the house volume at showtime and get it as loud as I could without turning it into a muddy feedback fest.
The Show came and went and everyone seemed happy, Bonnie got what she wanted and I was once again, The Phantom of the Sound Cabin.
Hopefully Rusty went back to Miami and told them the ship was in good hands
The second specialty cruise was a Nudist cruise, yeah, just so you know, there are never any hot women or hot guys on a nudist cruise, that is not how it works and life will never be that kind..
The main take away from doing a nude cruise was; staring longer than 5 seconds is considered creepy..
I had never had that much direct eye contact in all of my life...lol
The highlight of this cruise was our "Cabaret Show", the Cruise Director came out between each act, wearing less and less each time until he came out for the last number wrapped in only a towel, which of course fell away as he exited the stage..
I wish I had more to tell here, but it was just a week of out of shape naked people running around the ship, honestly it was kind of disturbing. To be completely transparent, I had done a fair amount of "Skinny Dipping" when I worked for Club Med, tho that was usually done at night, with some young lady I was having fun with, and never in broad daylight.
My time on the Cruise ships came to an end after this cruise, it was my best contract to date and I couldn't have ended on a better note. I think I finally got all of the Island hopping and cruising out of my system. It was the summer 1999 and I was ready to get back to Boston.
I touched briefly on Production work in this Article I will dive into it in the next blog post as Capron needs a section of it's own.
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