Daredevil Drug Runner.

The Daredevil Drug Runner.

Production Journal Extract.

I discovered the Production Journal written by Tim Riding, one of the producers at Raw TV,London. It is very interesting reading and provides an insight into the hectic day to day lives of movie makers. This journal can be seen on the National Geographic web page of ‘Locked up Abroad’ the episode titled: The Daredevil Drug Runner.

The reason I picked this piece of the journal is because I have just viewed the DVD sent me by the American digital team to enable a live tweet between me and the American audience this week.

On viewing the DVD, I find that the scenes involving my escapades at sea have been omitted. What a shame! Especially after all the hard work put in by the production team and actors and more so for me because the most exciting parts of my story happened at sea. And it would have shown the audience something new and added another deterrent to high seas smuggling.

Nevertheless, I will be forever grateful to Mark Wingett for his excellent portrayal of ‘yours truly’ and all the other actors who made this episode such a brilliant exposé of the dangers of being a smuggler.

The production team of Srik Narayanan and Tim Riding show their excellent skills in producing such a gripping and intense episode for a demanding world-wide audience who will appreciate the efforts of the camera crew and all concerned. I am thrilled to be the protagonist in such an outstanding production. Thank you, very much.

The Extract.

SUNDAY, 17 April 2011

We have a late call today as we’re shooting into the night. This is welcome news after all the driving from yesterday. The meat of today’s filming takes place at a marina in Boca Chica, beach resort about one hour to the east of Santo Domingo. Here we will film all of the boat scenes, where in the story Chris transports large quantities of hashish from Morocco to Spain in a RIB (rigid inflatable boat). Luckily for us, Mark our actor is an experienced boat handler, so we don’t need to use a double for these scenes. We begin shooting as the sun is setting, it’s a glorious location but one where you’d rather be relaxing not working. Still, as Chris Chance would say – move on! There’s a debrief about safety and protocol, then Gary (DOP) and Srik (Director) head off to shoot boat to boat footage of Mark in transit. By the time they get back it’s well and truly dark. One of the reasons we chose this location is because there’s a large breakwater separating the waters of the marina and beach from the main sea, making the water much calmer. The open sea along this stretch of coast is very choppy, so much that we decided it would be a bit too difficult to film in.

We film drugs being loaded onto the RIB on a small island nearby, Gary shoots this with a nightvision camera. At this marina are quite a lot of large, expensive boats, one of which is moored near to the island. It had the most enormous TV screen on it, a huge sound system, and an array of underwater lights that turned the waters a luminous blue. We all wondered whether the owners were real ‘drug barons’.

We wrapped shortly after midnight, and were back at our hotel before 1. Looking forward to a bit of a lie in tomorrow, it’s our day off.

PS: I can tell you that the posh yachts probably did belong to the drug barons because I visited Boca Chica some time ago and witnessed lots of traficante activity.

There is a restaurant across the bay where you can dine and watch captive sharks swim beneath you … such a lovely part of the world. Chris.

Read more: http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/series/locked-up-abroad/5752/Overview#tab-blog#ixzz1RF3jLL00