(From Navy News website www.navynews.co.uk)
Lusty in the limelight
AFTER Shipmates and Commando, the spotlight falls upon HMS Illustrious now with a TV documentary dedicated to the ship's 2008 Middle East deployment.
Warship, which is due to air on Channel 5 from April 23 charts the highs and lows of Lusty's year so far, from leaving Pompey and spending the first month or so stuck in UK waters for a variety of reasons, to visiting Malta and steaming to the Gulf of Oman with her Merlins and Harriers.
To produce the six-episode documentary, its makers Granda have lived and breathed Lusty like her ship's company (minus the No.8s and steaming bats, however), sending tape after tape back to the UK for a team in London to edit and put together into the finished programme, complete with narration.
For every 70 hours of film shot by the team, 69 have ended on the cutting room floor (that's two and a half weeks of footage recorded for the six hours of documentary).
"What's made it difficult is that there's been a team of just three people on board - for a documentary of this scope and size you'd normally require three camera crews," explained producer/director Kate Jackson.
"But we've had amazing access to the ship and her sailors - we've done pretty much everything.
"I hope that viewers find it as an amazing experience as I have done. It's a unique environment."
An amazing experience, but one not necessarily to be repeated by the documentary team.
"Naval life never stops - you have no time to yourself and that's something that you really miss."
