BETH ACCOMANDO: How was the screening at the San Diego Film Festival?
PIETER VAN OS: It was amazing to see a whole year of my life on screen in an hour and a half, summarized right there, and things I had forgotten. The audience asked a lot of questions, a lot about the food because it's not very good and if there was any real drama that they didn't show.
LESLIE DeMEUSE: People think it's a realty show but it isn't. It was more about what a group of people can do together. It's about stepping up to the plate and being more than you could as an individual.
BA: Roy, you have participated in the TRANSPAC for years, correct?
ROY E. DISNEY: I've done the thing sixteen times now. 1975 was my first race and I've done it every other year since because the race only occurs every other year. I missed one year with a broken leg. I always said that I think the moment that I think something happened to me was when we finally crossed the finish line. It was a hard race for us because we never sailed on an ocean before and there were a lot of things that happened that year and the boat was rolling around and there wasn't a night when we weren't scared out of our minds because you can't see anything in the dark. And we finally got by the buoy at Diamond Head and I remember we went by and I thought, "Wow, it's over, and I'm not sure I like it being over." And I think it changed me in some way and I think that's what we were trying to bring to audiences how an experience like this changes you inside for the better for the rest of your life.
BA: And Leslie, you have done the race as well?
LESLIE DeMEUSE: I did it when I was sixteen so I was very young and it just opened my eyes to a whole other world and it gave me some coping skills. Because when you are out on the ocean you have to deal with whatever comes your way. So I can deal with the challenges that come my way.
The crew of Morning Light (Disney)
BA: Did it play out the same way for you?
PIETER VAN OS: Absolutely. You really need the team to make it out there and to make it enjoyable. And we had a fantastic team.
BA: Okay so you are out at sea, in cramped quarters and on top of that you're being filmed. What's that like?
PIETER VAN OS: You have to get over the fact that there are cameras there and that they are going to catch you at the worst possible time like 3am when you have to go to watch and it's wet and cold and you're miserable and that's when they catch you. But once you resign yourself to it, you just smile and go on. But we got so busy and we were so tired that it was easy to forget the cameras.
BA: So how did you pull this off technically? Were the cameras all remote? Was there a cameraman onboard?
LESLIE DeMEUSE: We had three fixed cameras and one camera that could be moved around and then we had one cameraman who actually got the sound bites from the individuals as they went along. He wasn't a crew person but they did have an extra body on board, and he was not allowed to help the kids out. So he stayed quiet and out of the way.
ROY E. DISNEY: And he had to maintain all the equipment and he had to be up all the time because things go on all the time on a boat. And I'm sure he had a hard time finding a place to lie his body down and sleep at times.
PIETER VAN OS: Yeah cause it's cramped and everything is wet and hot, or cold depending on where you are. So you have both extremes, bodies are just lining the bottom of the boat while they're off watch and he just had to squeeze in there somehow.
BA: Now was you're cameraman a sailor too?
ROY E. DISNEY: Yeah his name is Rick Deppe, Rick had actually been around the world twice so he's a very accomplished sailor as well as a talented cameraman. So he was able to know how to stay out of the way, and to be where he needed to be when certain things happened, and to be able to anticipate things rather than trying to catch up to events after the fact. And I know the kids all tell us how good he was at not being in the way and still capturing the action.
LESLIE DeMEUSE: And he doesn't get seasick. We had a few cameramen who did get seasick and just didn't workout.
BA: Did you have boats following them too?
ROY E. DISNEY: Yes. Steve Faucet, the great adventurer, had a catamaran that he built some years back 125 foot long sailboat, which he had just last year had de-rigged, taken the mast out and put a couple of big diesel engines in as a long range high speed chase boat for some project he had in mind. And we leased that boat it was 125 feet long and sixty feet wide called Cheyenne and it could keep up with the race boats all the way across and stand off at some distance and be the camera platform to shoot the boat.
BA: What proved to be most difficult to capture?
ROY E. DISNEY: Well one thing Leslie and I know is by the fifth shot of a boat going through the water is total boredom and what's important is not the boat but the people on it and that's what we were trying to film and we knew the challenge of capturing the emotions and the humor and the difficult times and they got to eat and go to the toilet and take baths and do all the things you do ordinarily in your life but they are doing it on this little fifty foot space ship that's out there completely separated from the world so the relationships between people completely change from what they might be on land and everyone's forced to get along and to get the audience to see that and to grasp that, that's the challenge, and to see the character development that's going on.
Companion viewing: The Dove, White Squall, Dogtown and Z Boys
