This month we look into ‘how it all began’ for Tasman Bay Media, with ‘Part 3: Cruise Ships’.
When looking for further filming opportunities, Simon happened across an advert for production through the Carnival Corporation. After visiting Southampton to find out a little more, it was an opportunity not to be missed. Simon was flown around the world to multiple locations to spend up to seven months at a time onboard passenger cruise ships, visiting places such as: Panama, Alaska, the Caribbean and the South Pacific. While there he would go on land to film the cultural, historic and natural highlights.
Almost every time Simon stepped on land it was a different country from the day before. So it may be filming Whales and wild Bears in Alaska, the WWII U.S. defenses in Oregon, cliff divers of Acapulco, the Panama Canal, or the chambers of the Spanish Inquisition in Colombia.
With most jobs, at the end of the day you leave the office and go home, on the ship you’ve no escape. However you learn to love it and most of your normal ideas of what it’s like to be around other people are long forgotten. The best way to think of is walking into a bar on your own, on land you might go find a quiet corner until your friends arrive, on the ship you’ll sit down with the first person you see and make friends, they could be from any department on the ship and from any of the over one hundred nations represented by the crew onboard.
Over this four-year period Simon broke sales records in multiple regions and always put it down to everything he’d learnt about giving the viewer a story to care about.
It was here that Simon met Kate from Upper Moutere (who was also working onboard), they would go on to move to New Zealand, get married and form Tasman Bay Media.
Next month we look into ‘how it all began’ with ‘Part 4: TVNZ’.
Comments